Adding cedar strips to the canoe mold

Once the cedar strips are ripped and milled, it's time to add them to the mold and start forming the shape of the canoe! Consideration for color variance should be taken here, so pay attention to the shade of strips being added to each side unless you like random patterns. 

Before adding strips to the mold, put some duct tape over the edge of each station mold. Since you'll be using wood glue to bond the strip's beads to the cove of the neighboring strip, the duct tape will prevent the canoe from bonding to the wooden station molds and making it difficult to remove when finished.  

Using a c-clamp, I held the bow and stern inner stems to the mold on one end while attaching strips to the other end. Wood glue is applied to the stem, which has been tapered so that the strips lay flat against it. Once the glue and strip is in place, a staple gun is used to tack the strip to the stem and to each mold. A spring clamp provides additional pressure at the stems while the wood glue cures. The staples (over 1,000) will be removed once the cedar stripping is complete. 

I used red cedar for all of the strips except 4 (2 on each side). These two strips are pine and give the canoe two distinctive, lighter colored stripes down each side. The inside and outside of the canoe is sheathed in fiberglass, so adding a different species of wood isn't a problem and is common among wooden boats for design and aesthetic purposes.