I learned strip building from the folks at Wilderness Boats in Oregon, who had purchased David Hazen's company and commercial rights to the brand and Hazen's designs. I was their farthest eastern dealer (in Illinois) selling Wilderness Boats (along with Old Town, Lincoln Canoes, Sawyer, We-no-nah, Beaver, Grumman, Hyperform and Phoenix kayaks and Kleppers, Alcort Sailboats and Hobie Cat). Norman Sims (co author of the great new book "Canoes - A natural History in North America") and I started building some models in his garage which weren't commercially available (a Hazen double kayak, my 22' fur trade canoe, and a couple of smallish solo canoes. We also built a gizmo that would take the lines off of existing boats for duplication in strips. Norm got a strip replica of his Morris and I got one of a Jensen marathon cruiser.
When we started (mid 1970s) Wilderness was retailing Sitka spruce strip Hazen Micmacs for around $690 and to do that they needed to crank them out pretty quickly. They typically figured on about 75 man hours of labor to build a 16'-18' canoe. Boats from the marathon builders like Jensen and Camp were in a similar price range in those days. There was no such thing as bead and cove yet (not that it was much of a big deal) and there was none of the current one or two strips per day pace that many amateur builders can now build with. This was boat building for money.
We weren't selling our personal builds, but we built them using the same methods that we had learned to build with. Sanding was done with big disk sanders, inside and out for the raw wood and also for the final sanding on the glass. Tightbond-type glues are terrible for that because the sander smears them. Weldwood is perfect for the job because it sands away very cleanly and is much easier to work with than catalyzed glues like epoxy - and much cheaper. We would strip most hulls in three evenings. The first night we would strip the bottom panel (stapled). The second night we would trim the bottom to its final shape, bevel its edges to meet the first side strips and strip one whole side. The third night we would strip the second side. Night number four would be spent pulling staples and then sanding the wood smooth with the big disk sander and getting it ready for glassing.
We mixed the Weldwood in small batches in plastic margarine tubs or similar. Half a dozen strips would be clamped, flat sides together, and stood on the floor with one edge up. A small batch of glue would be mixed and then it was rolled onto all of them in one swath. One by one they would be stapled to the forms and the whole batch would be attached and done in about ten minutes, ready to start adding another batch and mix another small amount of the glue. This would be repeated until the side was completed. I used two staple guns. One "normal" Duo Fast gun shooting 9/16" staples into the forms, and a small Bostich T-11 "Tackler" model to shoot another line of staples straddling the glue joints between forms. The T-11 staples looked like 1/4" round-leg office staples. Their holes are so small that they nearly disappear on the finished boat.
Within a few years I had pretty much tired of strip building and after buiding some "unusual" boats with it, moved on to other and more traditional forms of boat building and restoration (wooden and fiberglass sailboats, inflatables, etc.) If I ever build any more strippers, using any method, I will absolutely do it with Weldwood as it has always worked great for me, though it's certainly not the only glue that works for stripping.