: Is it worth whiled cutting your strips a +1/4" and running them through
: a thickness planner on both sides before putting on bead/cove?

If you have a thickness planer you'll use it for everything--especially your strips.

I would not cut my strips oversize. I think that 1/4 inch strips areactually too thick to work right with the common bits sold for beads and coves. The bits have a 1/8 th inch radius. On1/4 inch stock that cuts a complete semicircle. The joints fit tightest when the strips are set over flat sections of your forms, but over curved areas--and most of the areas ARE curved--the bead starts to pull out of the cove. When you use thinner strips these cutters cut arcs which are not complete semicircles. You have some ''wiggle room'' in the joint.

Start with your 1/4 inch strips and take off just a little to get them smooth and even. Or, go for 3/16 strips. They work just as well for most solo kayaks.

What you want to avoid is having strips which are even a small amount over 1/4 inch. The cutters with 1/8 inch radius will leave shoulders on the beaded edge and thick lips on the coved edge. That means more sanding.

I find sanding to be the least precise and most time consuming part of fairing the hull. Using a planer to get strips of even thickness reduces sanding at this point in the building process. I think the time saved makes planing worthwhile.

There are other options, tho. One is to reset the saw and run all the strips through again. Since your stock is all going to be thin, light, strips of nearly identical thickness you can tighten your featherboards to a higher degree and get more precision. Since the blade is only skimming the surface of the strip it will run at full speed, not wander, give a smooth finish, and remove any high spots.

If you have a sanding disk for your tablesaw you can use that instead of a sawblade. It sands the strips as well as bringing them all to the same size.

If you can't afford a high-priced saw sometimes you ha e to resort to other techniques.

PGJ