I did a bit more stripping today on the rib ends.  It's a very difficult area to clean up with lots of small spaces to scrape.  I use a artist's pallet knife to get into the small spaces.  I pulled off the lower plank on the bow end and did a bit more stripping down in the narrow dark space of the bow. That plank was broken, so it had to come off, plus it gave me a bit more room to work. I also removed the square patch of planking someone put on the last time it was recovered.  They used larger clinch nails than were used elsewhere.  I'm starting to see that I'll end up replacing maybe about half the planking. The planking at the gunwales will come off so I can rebuild the rib ends, the planking at the ends is broken and then there are holes, bad spots etc. 

It's been a while since I made any progress on the canoe.  It's been over 100 almost every day for weeks and there is only a few hours in the morning that it is tolerable to work out in the garage.

I was trying to strip the little space between the inner and outer gunwales and realized the outer gunwales have to come off when the new canvas is put on, so I should pull them off now.

I also removed the first piece of planking that will need to be replaced.  This gives me lots of room to work on the tips of the ribs.

Here are some of the planking nails I pulled out. You can see how they are bent from being hammered into the clinching iron.