I'm narrowing in on the Redfish Spring Run, and I'd like to cut my own strips. I've watched a bunch of videos about how to do that, and was wondering about the ideal width for strips. Commercially available strips seem to be 3/4" with some vendors offering 5/8" (not sure if that's nominal or actual width) I'm wondering if that's because those are the ideal widths for making strip boats, or if it's just an artifact of the most efficient and cost-effective production process, i.e., ripping strips from the edge of "one-by" lumber, yielding a finished width of just under 3/4" prior to planing. (which I hope is optional, because I don't own a planer)

So what exactly are the trade-offs regarding strip size? I'm assuming that the limiting factor is the ability to fit to a compound curve. In watching Nick's videos, it seems like when building a particular boat, if you stripped it with let's say 3/4" wide boards you're going to have to taper some number of strips to get them to fit the compound curves. If you go wider, you'll have to taper more of them, and if you go narrower you'd taper fewer - but now you'd have more strips overall, which means correspondingly more work (beveling, etc.). Do I have that right?

One other factor though - is it important to stick with a single, consistent width or just convenient? That is, let's say you had piles of strips with varying widths - maybe 1/4" up to, say, 2". Could you mix and match, choosing the widest one that will actually work in that particular spot?