OK, so it's a stripper and not "traditional all wood construction" as the thread category indicates. That's a different scenario to some extent, but with old dead strippers, seldom a pretty one. Most strippers are glassed with two layers of six ounce woven fiberglass on each side of the wooden core, one covering the entire hull and the other being a partial layer which doubles the cloth over the bottom for more durability. Both the inside and outside of the hull get this layer-and-a-half approach. The glassing is done before the gunwales, keel or other trim is installed and the gunwales will eventually sandwich the glassed hull up along the sheer line when they are finally installed.
The stems are usually left bare right at the ends and strips of bias-cut fiberglass cloth are applied after the main glassing to cover the stems. They overlap onto the main glass layers for an inch or two. Bias-cut fiberglass strips are cut 3"-4" wide from the roll of fabric with the cloth weave running diagonal to the strip you are cutting out. When saturated with resin, the bias weave allows the strips to conform to and wrap around tight curves and contours (like stems) much better than just a normally cut strip of cloth can do. Once the main layers and bias-cut stem strips of cloth have been applied, the weave texture gets completely filled with coats of plain resin, then sanded smooth and eventually painted or varnished.
If you can't remove the keel and absolutely must glass over it, I would probably glass the boat's outside in sections. Run a long bias cut-strip about 6" wide over the keel, bow to stern and onto the flat next to the keel. I would then glass the bottom partial layer in two pieces, right and left, running up to the keel (but not over it) and overlapping the keel bias strip. Then I would add the full layer in right/left sections - up to but not over the keel, and finally another bias strip or two over the keel. Once the filler coats go on over all this, they will go a long way toward smoothing out the layering and there won't be a tremendous amount of sanding needed to get the area fair. Be aware though that the glass-covered keel is still going to be a terrible potential weak spot and abrasion concentration spot if you run shallow water. If it was my boat, I would grind, plane or sand the keel off if I had to long before even thinking about glassing over it.
And yes, rebuilding an old stripper is more work than building a nice new one, and not a hell of a lot cheaper. It's also more difficult than building a new boat. The end result is almost never anywhere near as fair or nice looking as the new one would be and in the vast majority of cases, it simply is not worth the cost or labor involved. If a used stripper has anything more than minor scratches you don't want it, and if it shows discoloration of the wood under the fiberglass, then it has serious structural and core-leakage problems and you should run away quickly (at any price - even free).
As to why this seemingly home-built canoe has a serial number (from the other thread)... Some states require a serial number engraved or riveted to any boat, even home-builts. You fill out a form, pay some money and they issue you a serial number. Some additionally require typical boat registration and numbering, and some even require an inspection before you can legally use it. That may be why it has a number and why that number is not in the typical format used by manufacturers.
