Thought I'd post a quick update on progress.

Built my strongback, cut out and assembled my stations a couple of weeks ago. Haven't done final alignments yet - need to finish the bow and stern bits first.

Did my first take on the bow assembly by laminating up some 1/4" poplar and oak boards I got at Home Depot. Lower bow came out OK but not perfect, so I did it again with some African mahogany I found out the Woodworker's Club, came out much better this time. I liked the laminated look of the original upper bow, but made a couple of errors and in particular found it very difficult to cut the recess for the strips. Did an alternate version using some 5/4 cedar I had lying around - much, much easier to work but not sure yet if it's pretty enough :-)

For the stern, after a couple of false starts I finally finished a set of left and right halves last weekend. I broke apart the forms and re-assembled into a single unit per the instructions, and decided I could do a better job so started over this weekend. Seems to be going much better this time - I guess I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Overall, while the baidarka stern has been tricky, I think it's been a great crash-course in strip building. I've had to practice making significant bends and twists, beveling and fitting cheater strips with complex compound curves, and some intense clamping strategies. I've broken a lot of strips - but the cost of mistakes is pretty minimal when you're just working with the stern. Throwing it away and starting over might have been a harder decision if I were looking at a half-completed hull, rather than just the stern. Looking forward to getting started on that hull, though!