In this series of videos I document the building of a pair of mahogany strip-planked microBootleggers. I built these boats for a customer who wanted "book-matched" mahogany strips and a carbon fiber interior built without staples.
I start out the videos with the milling of the strips. I got some beautiful mahogany, the only problem was it was over 2" thick, and I wanted strips less than 1" wide, so I had to do a lot of work to get the strips into usable dimensions without wasting much. Because the mahogany is relatively heavy and quite expensive, I milled the strips to 1/8" thickeness. This allowed me to get more strips out of the wood and keep the weight of the wood low.
I carefully keep the strips in the order they came off the plank so I can install them on the boat in the same order. I did not cove-and-bead the strips, instead I hand beveled each as needed to fit on the forms.
The techniques I used here are choosen to achieve that result. Please note that there are many "correct" was to do this, if you are viewing these videos as a reference prior to or during the building your own boat, don't feel you need to do it exactly the way I did it here just because I chose to do it this way. In my books, The Strip-Built Sea Kayak or Building Strip-Planked Boats, I may describe doing things in a slightly different manner. The steps described in the books work and may well be easier for the purposes of building your own boat
