Plane

There are quite a variety of hand planes available. There is also a big price range, cheaper Stanley block planes start around $25 and are adequate for our purposes. However, you can easily spend several hundred for the high end models and they are a joy to work with.

The MOST important thing is to sharpen the blade very well. There are several methods to sharpen, either using stones, or very fine automotive sand paper (scary sharp method). Both methods improve with the use of a jig to hold the blade at a constant angle while sharpening.

Cedar cuts easily with a sharp plane, it is such a pleasure to finally see your boat taking shape as you plane off all of those ugly glue blobs and knock down the steps between strips.

Use the plane for the rough shaping work then finish up with a long sanding block to fair the curves.