Tricks for Taming Rogue Strips
Heat Gun
Every place on your boat were you are twisting
or bending a strip into place can be done with ease by using a heat gun
to bend the strip.
Air dried woods bend very easily (northern white cedar is THE BEST!) with the heat gun because the natural glue that holds the wood fibers together, called lignin, becomes plastic when heated. Kiln dried woods like western red cedar will not bend as well because the lignin has changed in the drying process. But they will still bend if you go slow and try a few test pieces to get the feel for working with it.
An important point to remember about wood bending is that nearly all the bending happens on the compression side of the wood (inside of the curve) so to use a heat gun effectively you must apply heat to the inside of what will be a curve.
As with any wood bending, clear straight grain wood is important for success.
Clamp one section, near where you will bend the wood and hold the other end with a leather gloved hand (that heat is very hot!) or spring clamp and apply the heat from the heat gun to the flat of the strip. Hold the end of the heat nozzle about two inches from the wood and keep it moving back and forth. Twist or bend the wood with your hand building tension into the wood. You will feel the tension release as the wood reaches the right temperature.
Kiln dried woods will take more heat often toasting the wood surface before tension is released.
If you bend too far too fast you'll hear the wood start cracking as it starts to break on the tension surface (outside of the curve). Don't be afraid to break a few.
You have to over bend the piece because it will spring back. If you end up with a tighter bend than you wish you can just re-heat it and straighten it a bit.
Hot Glue
Tricks
The problem with making strips conform to the
stations, is that in difficult spots you wish you had more stations closer
together to clamp/ staple to. I use only staples on the bottoms of my hulls.
And I use hot glue tricks to help add holding power in tough spots.
I hot glue short scrap pieces of strip perpendicular to the hull strips to align and support while the glue on strips dries
I hot glue supports across multiple strips at the stems.
When I'm beveling/ fitting short strips into the hull or deck I use 3/16" X 3/16" scrap pieces hot glued under strips to prevent a strip point from diving below the hull surface or to support a strip between stations.
I strip my hulls from the sheer up and from the keel down. Sometimes these two surfaces don't to want align as they meet, especially near the stems. I'll use a scrap strip of northern white cedar, cut it to a 1/16" thickness for flexibility and hot glue and clamp it under the two surface edges to bring them into the same plain. See photo above. This 1/16" thick cedar scrap makes it more flexible to follow the needed curve. Be very careful not to push the hull in as you hot glue one of these strips behind the surface because you will create a depression.
I will hot glue scraps of strip on top of hull strips and apply spring clamps to close a stubborn joint.
You can use hot glue and Western red cedar scraps of different widths and thickness to clamp in any spot. The more you use hot glue the more creative you can become on using it to clamp in places you didn't think possible.
Bead & Cove No More!
I think you will work faster and be happier beveling
the edges of your strips. I built my first two strippers this way and I've
built my last ten this way.
You can waste A LOT of time fooling around with router set-up. B&C sounds great because the interlocking profiles allow you to go round curves, have maximum glue surface, and self aligning edges. In theory. This is great if you buy a kit. B&C is milled for you.
As an idea it's great. We all like those great ideas.
A novice will not know how much time and work it takes to make the B&C strips yourself. Can your align your B&C cutters perfectly? If not, the hoped for benefits may be disappointing.
If you already have routers set-up and have milled bead and cove before, it's easy to forget just how much work/time is involved in the whole process of set-up, testing, swearing, set-up, testing, swearing, set-up, testing, swearing and milling, from start to finish.
With hand beveled strips you must align strips between stations and use spring clamps to hold the edges in place. I use beads of hot glue to keep the strip edges aligned and in place, so I can remove the spring clamps and go on to the next strip.
B&C is supposed to be self aligning, but you'll get in trouble fast if you count on it.
I'd suggest hand beveling the strips instead.
Just bevel one edge of each new strip with a SHARP block plane. It is quite easy if you clamp one end of the strip in place on the boat and work the other end, beveling and test fitting the edges as you work from the stem to the center of the boat.
The trick I've
found to beveling strips is to keep 1/2 of each strip clamped in place
from one stem and work on the bevel. This allows you to keep the strip
under control while bending the strip in a convex arc so the plane will
move smoothly, taking down the edge.
This also makes it easy to quickly put the strip in place to judge how well the bevel is working, without walking back and forth from a bench to bevel and test.
I loosely clamp each new strip to the previous one with four spring clamps. One at each stem and two straddling the middle. Remove and replace clamps as needed to make your bevel.
You will be making what is called a rolling bevel in that the angle and amount of the bevel will change from the stems (little or no bevel) to the center of the hull (the most bevel). In all cases your goal is to bevel just enough to make the outside edges of the strips contact in a tight joint.
I hold the block plane with the base up and plane away from my body, so I bevel the bottom edge of the strip. You must keep an eye on the top, exterior edge, which will be the visible part of the joint. You don't want your bevel to break this edge. Start with just a very slight angle, you will be surprised at how little a bevel you need.
Also, when you hold the strip off the hull it will not be perfectly straight and if you hold the sole of your plane parallel to the strip length the blade will not cut much or at all. However, if you hold the plane sole at an angle of 45° or more you will be able to engage the full blade cut in the bevel you are cutting.
Look at the gap you see on joint between the two strips. This is the amount of bevel you must make on the bottom, back edge of the new strip.
Hold your block plane against the bottom of the strip and make the same size gap. This amount of material to be removed when you are beveling the edge.
Bevel a section about two feet long and test the fit by holding the strip in place on the hull on top of the last strip on the boat.
Once you like the fit of one end of the strips, clamp that end of the strip in place on the hull and do the other end. You will find it easy and fast.
After using B&C on the bottoms of my boats for years I'm going back to just beveling the strips. It's that easy!
All the best,
Rob Macks
Laughing Loon CC&K
Have Fun Building!
NEW! go to A Transparent Glass Lay-up
"Working as a Pattern Maker in advanced woodworking shops for 45 years I was
always safety conscious and never had a serious accident. Then came retirement
and this hobby of building a strip kayak and I lost the tip of my thumb in my
circular saw a 1 * years ago. I was still being careful but not as much as I
could have been. I had a wooden table saw insert in my Craftsman table saw
with a nail in it as a strip spreader and the strip jammed at that point. I
was watching my right hand fix the problem while my left hand drifted back
into the blade. I couldn't believe this happened to careful me. Then after the
fact I took the time to build Rob Mack's feathering system he had in an
illustration. Had I done this in the first place I would still have a thumb
print."
John in IN
Saw/Featherboard
set-up for safely ripping strips
Your auxiliary fence board need not be as high as this one.
If your fence doesn't have holes to screw through, make them. One wide
feather board is all you need pressing down on the board you are cutting
strips from.
Set the fence for your strip thickness. Raise the blade, start cutting a strip, then stop the saw. Lower the blade. Clamp the featherboard right over the blade position. Turn on the saw and raise the blade into the featherboard. The featherboard should have enough holding power (with feed stands supporting the rest of the board) to allow you to let go of the board to walk behind the saw to pull the board through to finish the cut of each strip.
Your fingers cannot touch the blade. Use push sticks.
You can add a magnetic or clamped featherboard to the saw table top to apply side pressure on the board to press the board firmly against the fence.
Please take
time for safety.