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!