At the stern, I discovered that somehow I had managed to get the spacing of the strips off by about 1/4 inch. So if you looked at the kayak from the end of the bow, a strip on the port side was closer to the keel than the corresponding strip on the starboard. After some close measuring, I found that the cheater strip on the port side was wider than that on the starboard. My choices were 1) to trim the next strip or two on the port side to get the two sides back in line or 2) to take out the cheater, reposition the strips, and then cut and glue in new cheaters. I knew I would be bothered by the mismatch if I didn't go back and line things up. Option 2 it was.
How to remove the cheaters? Well, the wood glue I'm using (Titebond II) is not waterproof. It can be softened with steam. I shielded the strongback and forms with foil to minimize the amount of steam and water that would get on them. I pulled the staples holding the cheaters and adjacent strips. The steam softened the glue. Knife blades, chisels, and wooden wedges provided enough gentle leverage to get the glue to separate. These two images show one of the cheater strips nearly removed (yes, it was a mess).
After the cheaters were out, I peeled off what softened glue I could and trimmed the rest with a sharp chisel.
On the bright side, all this work gave me the idea to get rid of that pesky triangular space that shows up where a cheater tapers out (see the first picture in this post). The solution is to use a hacksaw blade to trim the end of the triangular area so it has a wider, more squared off end. As a result, cheater strips don't have to be tapered impossibly thin at the end. The next three images illustrate this process.
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