Planking complete

Well, this post is a wrap up of the planking operations.  I basically repeated the same steps as outlined in my previous post for 14 planks in total.  Altogether, it took me about two weeks to fully plank the boat and now can finally peel it off the moulds.  (that is of course if I haven't epoxied it down)

Here's where I left off in the last post; 3 planks down on either side

Same planks viewed from the front of the boat

5 planks down on either side.  Keep in mind that each plank represents a day's work

A nice trick I found for testing the lap bevel using a tacked down batten and a straightedge

6 planks down... and finally the end is almost in site!

And the final plank, called the sheer strake is installed

And the tent comes down.  Turns out, someone in the complex wasn't too happy about the tent, (ahem #24 cough).  Fortunately I finished planking on the exact day that the first $200 fine was to be delivered.  What tent? I don't see any tent.

The platform is being lowered enabling a nice view from above

And from the balcony

Best of all it plucked right off of the moulds no problem.  Finally it looks like a boat, boy am I stoked!

Next the boat will be going in to my shop so I can prep it for paint and build the interior finishings.

Planks 2 and 3

Ok, I've sort of hit a rythym with the planking operations.  I've learned a few things as

I work and continue to discover new tricks and helpful techniques.  The shaping and fastening process is not one that I can speed up.  Rather I've settled into a pace that allows me to install 1 plank per day.  It goes something like this:

Day 1: Spile and cut out planks (mirror image for each side)

Day 2: Fine tune the fit of 1 plank, cut in the rolling bevel, gains, and scarfe joint. Glue that plank in place.

Day 3: Fine tune the fit of the 2nd plank. Spile and cut out the next row of planks.

Day 4: Fine tune and install plank 3, etc...

As you can see, once the first day is out of the way, I can glue 1 per day and make sure the next one is ready for the next day.

What have I found the most challenging? 

Well going into the planking, my worry was with cutting the scarfe joints to fit.  As it turns out, getting a good fit is not that challenging when you use the spiling method that I will show.  The hardest part was just keeping the tools sharp as this hard plywood does a number on the plane iron and chisels.  In terms of fit, the hardest parts were preparing the previous plank bevel where the plank will overlap, and cutting the gains as you will see in the pictures.

STEP 1. The first job is planing in a rolling bevel where the planks overlap.  The amount of overlap is 3/4" so a line is marked 3/4" in from the edge.  The bevel is correct when the plank will sit flat on the lap area.

Testing the lap bevel.  When the bottom corner of the ruler is sitting at the next plank edge it should sit flat on the bevel right up to the lap line as seen here.  The bevel cannot be curved or inconsistent.     



The back and front end of the previous planks have already been tapered down to a knife edge.  This is called a gain and will allow the planks to appear flush at the ends of the boats.  Confusing?  More explanation will follow.

STEP 2. I lay the spiling batten onto the bevel I just planed in a prepare to mark out the next plank.



Here's a little trick I thought I would try.  I simply tacked pointed sticks to the spiling batten so they would hit the top, bottom, and middle of the plank end.  The three points give me enough information to transfer a curve onto the plank.  It ended up working very well.

Here's how the spiling batten gets marked at each station.  I've used it a few times so I colour coded the lines, this station is the green line.  The two dashes are 2" in from the bottom edge and top edge of the plank to be.

Then the spiling batten goes onto the plywood to recreate the shape of the plank.  I measure out 2" at each station from the marks, tap in nails, bend a batten over the points, yada yada yada you've seen me do it already. 

STEP 3. Here I have two mirror image planks that I've cut out with a circular saw.  This will make up the rear 2/3rds of the plank with another shorter one for the front.  Now I use the belt sander to fine tune the edges down to the line.

STEP 4. The ends of all the planks get a scarfe joint.  I purposely made one part of the plank 5" too long for a 5" overlap.  The scarfe joint is sanded in, tapering from 5" in down to a feather edge.

STEP 5. Both ends of the planks will get a gain planed in.  A gain is a complimentary bevel on both edges of mating planks so that the outer surfaces become flush.  I start by marking a line 18" in from the end, then tracing a line along the edge from full thickness down to nothing.

On the face, a lap line is marked in 3/4" from the edge...

...and the bevel tapers from no bevel down to a feather edge.

STEP 6. The newly made plank is clamped into place to check the inboard and outboard fit.  This one looks pretty good.

If your still scratching your head over the gain, here's what it looks like.  The new plank tapers down beautifully for a flush fit.

Here's a great trick I learned from ducktrap woodworking for when those gains just down fit right.  A 40grit sanding belt pulled taut and run through the joint will kiss off any high spots for a perfect fit.

Checking the fit in the stem rabbet.  You can see that a gain has already been planed in for the next row.  And yes, I did have to touch up the rabbet as I went along but it was pretty easy.

STEP 7. Finally, the plank gets glued.  All gluing surfaces get a coat of regualar epoxy, no thickener added.  This lets the epoxy soak into the wood for a good grab.

Then I add some thickening agent to the epoxy so that I can slather a thicker amount to the lap area without it just dripping off.  Plus, the epoxy will do a great job of filling any gaps in the fit.  Not that I have any ;)

And finally,  the plank gets clamped in place with "F" clamps and backing sticks.

The thickened epoxy squishes out as the plank draws tight.  I tooled the epoxy squeeze out into a nice little fillet and called it a day.

So that's a day in the boatbuilding life,

Life lesson for the kiddies out there: Don't play with epoxy without latex gloves.  Don't ask me how I know.


The first planks are underway!

Installing the first plank, called the garboard plank, on the boat was extremely challenging yet I'm happy to report that it came out very well in the long run.  Once again, I'll use pictures to illustrate the process that I used on this plank:

This manky lookin' strip is called a "spiling batten".  Spiling is the process of making a template for each plank and this is how it is done.  The strip is roughly sawn to fit so that it lands between the marks for the upper and lower edges of the plank to be.  Being my first time spiling I found this pretty tough, the overall shape of the batten in order to lie flat was kind of like a Mario mustache.

At each mould a straight line is drawn along the fore or aft side of the mould.  Then I measured up from the lower edge 2" and made a mark.  I also measured down form the upper edge 2" and made a mark.  Later when the spiling batten is laid flat on the plywood I can simply extend these marks back outwards to get the correct width at each station.

I shaped the front end of the spiling batten to fit into the rabbet.  It took a few tries but now I can just trace it onto the plywood.



The batten is clamped in place while it is marked out.  See the big bunch of clamps near the centre?  The 8' strips of plywood were to short so I glued two together with a gusset across them.



The spiling batten is now laid down on the marine plywood and tacked with nails.  At each station I measure out 2" from my marks.  Notice that the batten is longer that the plywood, each plank will be made of two pieces attatched with a scarfe joint.  As I would find out, this is one of the most challenging parts!

Nails are tacked into the marks at each station.  I used one of the lining battens bent around the points to trace both edges of the plank as a fair curve.  I also marked out a 5" long scarfe joint on each piece.

After rough cutting each piece with a circular saw, I set about with the scarfes.  I used a combination of a hand plane and portable belt sander to make a 5" long taper on the ends down to a feather edge

With much fussing over proper fit and alignment I glued the scarfe joints together with epoxy and hoped for the best.  At this point the planks are still a little over size so some trimming can be done.

The completed scarfes: looks better than I could hope for!  Once the excess is sanded away these will be invisible.

With the scarfes done, I turned my attention to sanding down to the final shape.  My strategy was to clamp both planks together to speed things up and make both sides of the boat identical.  The best way I found was to hold the belt sander perpendicular to the edges and swing it along till I was down to the pencil line. 



Finally, I can start test fitting the plank.



The garboard is tricky because it twists nearly a full 90 degrees from the centre to the ends.  Let me tell you, this hard plywood does not want to bend that far without serious persuasion. 

Here's a look at the fit at the front of the boat.  Again, serious twisting required.

The whole plank fits really well!

GLUE UP:

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the glue-up process.  It's a pretty stressfull job for many reasons:  the plank has a tendancy to slip around on the wet epoxy, it's very messy and drippy, the correct alignment is critical, and I found that on a hot sunny day the epoxy will start to harden pretty quick so I had to work very quickly.  Add to that the fact that my hands would get pretty gooped up with epoxy so I didn't feel like pulling out the camera.  Here's the process I used:

• I mixed epoxy and spread a thin layer onto all gluing surfaces.  This un-thickened epoxy will grab the wood really well.
• With the remaining epoxy I added a filler for a thicker mix that will fill and gaps and applied it to one side of the glue joint.
• Then I pushed the plank into place and clamped it up using F clamps spaced about 6" apart.
• Finally I left the clamps on overnight for full strength curing before releasing them.  This means I can only do 1 plank per day as I only have that many clamps.

Here's a shot of both garboard planks installed:

4 long days of twisting, pulling, sweating, and grunting.  Totally worth it! 

Lining off the planks

Lining off the hull is the process of marking out where the edges of the planks will end up on each mould.  There's a few ways to get the job done, but as I found out a little experience and practice goes a long way.  I actually ended up trying four different variations before finally being satisfied.  It was heavy on my mind that the line off marks would dictate the overall look of the boat, I wanted to get it right before commiting to cutting my expensive marine plywood  ($150/sheet, Yikes!). 

In the end I followed the intructions found in The Boatbuilders Apprentice.

• I divided the vertical distance from the keel to the top of the stem by the number of planks (7)
• I did the same calculation on the station mold closest to the centre
• I divided the flat portions of the transom as equally as possible
• Then I ran a long pine batten through these marks and clamped them lightly



Two plank lines clamped in place

• The battens have a tendancy to naturally curve in a pleasing way.  By sighting from either end I could bump them one way or the other and nail them down at each mould when they looked fair.

Here's the mistake I made the first couple times: Notice the sharp inner corner on that closest mould?  The 2nd plank had to land on that transition.  That meant making the first 2 planks narrower and making the rest wider.



All 7 planks lined off.  This gives a pretty good idea of what the boat will look like when planked.  I think they look pretty fair so I marked each mould at the edge of these battens.

One final view of the lining battens.





Assembling the backbone

In this post I'll talk about assembling the stem and stern to the keel and fastening the whole ensemble over the station moulds.  I have scaled the boat from the original length of 10' 6" to a more useful 12', now I get to see if all my calculations are correct.

The sternpost notches over the back of the keel and is epoxied/screwed

The stem gets the same treatment.  The keel is a little wide still leaving some room for fine tuning

Starting to look vaguely boat-like.

After assembling the backbone I flipped it over and centered it on the moulds.  The amount of overhang fore and aft are calculated based off the plans.  The overhanging 2X6 on the frame allowed me to design a brace for both stem and stern.  In this way I was able to correctly align them and make everything rock solid.

The keel is flexed over the moulds and screwed down.  This curve to the bottom of the boat is called "rocker" and makes it easier to row.

The angled 2X6 holds the transom centred in the right position.

A 2x4 crosspiece with some shims provides a spot to screw down the top of the stem.

The stem should be level when correctly centered.  I must have done something right!

The last step before moving on to planking was to carve a rabbet into the stem where the planks will terminate.  I had been dreading this step since the beginning but in the end it was actually very easy.  Here's how I did it:

The lofting provides an inner and outer line, called the rabbet and bearding line.  I tapped nails through the lines into a template behind the sheet.

Next I clamped the template to the stem and tapped nails through the same holes to provide marks on the stem itself.

Flexing a wood batten over the nails I traced both lines onto the stem...

...and I just started chiseling.  The scrap piece I have is 3/8" thick to simulate the planks, an easy way to test the fit.

The stem rabbet blends into the keel and becomes a part of the rolling bevel.

The stem rabbet is completely finished.  Chances are pretty good that some fined tuning will be needed but this is a great start!

Wheww... long post.  I'll be getting into the planking in the next few posts.