I don't remember your background, but I found the bow and stern to be a major PITA.
Especially for my first strip build.

If you can get this done there is nothing difficult about the rest.

Good luck.

Thanks - yeah, I would have to agree about the PITA factor. The bow would definitely have been easier with a bandsaw, but my jigsaw and belt sander did OK.

My first take on the stern had some definite bumps and gaps. I spent some time working on it with a sanding block, though, and it seemed to clean up OK - the gaps are obvious when you hold it up to the light, but if I'd actually installed it I suspect it probably would have been OK, "fair to good" maybe (except I didn't really understand how the "clamshell halves" were going to fit together so may not have left enough room on the tails to make the joint....)

On my second attempt (on which I'm hoping to apply the final pair of strips tonight) the alignment is much better, and I focused on closing gaps, so I think I'll be starting out with "pretty good" - definitely not perfect, though. I think I'll go ahead and call it "good enough" anyway on the grounds that a "pretty good" kayak actually on the water beats a perfect stern section still sitting on my workbench. If I were to do it again, though, I'd experiment with Etienne's thin strip lamination technique.

After all this practice I'm pretty confident in my ability to strip the hull itself reasonably accurately - but of course there are plenty of other opportunities to mess things up, such as in the fiberglassing process. I plan to practice first, as Rob advises, but there's still nothing like the real thing.

I just went ahead and placed an order for epoxy - that's a big chunk of change. I don't really mind tossing out $20 worth of cedar strips and starting over, but we're getting to the "get it right the first time" point for sure.