: Are there any brands that are particularly good or horrendously bad? What is
: the recommended blade/tooth configuration for ripping strips?

The usual practice with cutting strips with a bandsaw is to cut the strips slightly oversize, and then run them through a planer to get your smoothness and final, even thickness.

The general rule has been that you get about as many strips from a circular saw as you do from a band saw. Cutting with a circular saw reduces a lot of wood to sawdust because of the thickness of the blade, but that what you gain with a bandsaw blade's thinness you give up later in planing the strips to size. (If you are going to make bead and cove strips you'll probably want the superior thickness control and smoothness you get from a planer anyhow.)

If you want to freehand cut your strips your planer will bring them down to size for you. When cutting iregular ( worse than just plin warped) stock it is frequently the practice to snap a chalkline to show a straight line roughly down the center -- or following the grain -- and free hand cut that to give starting edges for further rip cuts.

A short fence ( 4 to 8 inches long) gives you a good support for ripping from warped wood. cutting warped wood can be a challenge, but with some interesting rewards. You may get a strip that is already bending in the direction you want it to fit the hull, and thus avoid steaming it !

If you don't have a surface planer, consider sanding one side of each strip with a belt sander or disk sander. Use that smooth side on the inside of the boat, and get it lined up properly with the other strips so the inside is smooth.

It is easier to smooth off and round the outside of the boat than the inside. A belt sander with a coarse belt takes down the high edges on cedar and pine in a very short time.

PGJ