Scraping

I first scrape the boat with a heavy duty paint scraper. This removes the any glue drips and starts to knock the corners off the strips.

A guide to building canoes and kayaks with wood strips and epoxy.

Sheer Strips

Like the hull, I used strips taped to the bottom of a bench plane to make consistent width strips with the bead removed. These strips were then beveled to create a tight joint with the sheer strips on the hull. At the ends the sheer strips need to be tapered to meet each other at a nice point.

In 2010 I started making a strip-built Petrel sea kayak using cedar strips, fiberglass and Carbon-Kevlar Cloth. I documented much of the process on video and below are the short videos I produced showing many of the building techniques incorporated. The above video provides a quick overview, follow the links below for more detailed looks at the individual steps.

Anyone building a strip-built boat from scratch eventually has to decide how much wood they need. At the same time they may be curious as to how much the boat is going to weigh. While it is not immediately obvious that these two questions are related, they both depend on the surface are of the boat. Every square foot of the surface needs to be covered with wood and every bit of wood weighs something.