On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:59:46 -0500, "Jonathan W."
wrote:

If it is not fair, it will be uneven, bumpy

which among other things, means that your glass will not lie flat, but
rather be uneven/bumpy with the potential air pockets, and although I
have no scientific language to back me up, my *experience* over 25 years
of playing with glass and different resins is that bubbles and air
pockets are eventually trouble.

They are weak spots to drop an anchor, crack, and create a pocket for
water/rot, or step on and crack.

Plus, one has put so much effort into the construction by the time you
get to what you are talking about, why stop short and create an ugly
mess that will forever require explanation? I would think that any
potential *extra* strength you might save by not fairing will be loudly
offset by the loss of pride in a finely finished object.

I don't know, the suggestion just give me chills.

My opinion only, worth exactly what you paid for it

Thanks for taking the trouble to respond. Once again, I have left off
crucial details. The boat in question is a cedar strip canoe. The
strips of cedar are normally ripped 1/4" thick and 3/4" in width,
making them as long as necessary.

The edges are then milled using a routing table so that one side has a
bead edge, the other has a cove edge. This means that when the boards
are glued together as the hull is formed around the sixteen stations,
it is already pretty smooth, with no ridges or bumps. It's analagous
to tongue and groove boards.

Since the cedar strips are already pretty thin, and I've heard of
people actually sanding through in spots in their zeal to achieve the
perfect curve, I just wondered if anyone had made a canoe this way and
decided not to fair the interior.

Reading through the book by Gill Gilpatrick about how he builds cedar
strip canoes (he teaches kids to build them in shop and also teaches
adults to build them and has written a book about it, and has build
many many canoes.), he is a bit of a minimalist. He doesn't lap join
his strips, he just butt joins them and doesn't even care if they
don't meet at a station. He advocates the minimum sanding necessary
to fair the hull and stop there.

As to the interior, well lets just say he'd rather be paddling than
sanding. In addition he does not advocate using either bow or stern
stems. He just bevels them with a rough hand saw and clamps them
together with glue. He does lay a large bead of resin mixed with flox
or the like into the bow and stern area and he claims that makes as
strong a bow and stern as adding stems does. He is a Maine canoe
guide and takes folks down some very rocky rivers and claims he's
never seen one fail, even though the rest of the canoe might be
trashed.

Anyway, no need to worry about dropping an anchor onto the hull: it
won't be carrying an anchor.

No need to worry about looks either, it should have the look of a
carefully assembled wooden hull with no ridge, gaps or bumps, if I do
a decent job of milling the strips and adding the bead and cove edges.
One more point, once I mill the strips, I will be running them through
a planer to get them to the exact 1/4" thickness so they will be very
smooth before they are assembled. No saw marks to remove through
sanding.

Thanks again.

Corky Scott