: I started to plane a strip for my shear strip and tried to bend it to follow
: the first three forms. My strip would bend for the tip of the stemform to
: the second form fine. It looks like I need it to bend almost 4 in. in the
: next foot. When I tried this my cove broke before getting close. any
: sugestions?

for the extreme upsweep at the end of some canoes, David Hazen's book shows an alternate method to severely bent strips. He lets the main strip run straight to the bow (or stern) and stacks shorter pieces of strips on it. when the glue has set he pulls the staples and uses a saw to cut this stack of strips to the desired shape. A very thin strip ( or a regular strip held at a 90 degree angle to its usual orientation) is used as a spline, or flexible curve, and alighned with the upper edge of the building forms. While it is held in place by an assistant, a pencil mark is made to show the cutting line.

Since the strips are not bent as much at the ends of the the boat the lines of the wood are parallel to the water line, which can be a pleasing look. Additional strips which are added go on fast because they, too, do not need to be given severe twists and bends.

Rather than custom fitting "cheater" strips, with the strips applied straight, and then the outside edges trimmed back to the design lines, you are only trimming, on one edge, which should speed up production wihtout cutting quality.

Hope this helps

PGJ