planked!

I have had a lot of fun and it's been intense but I got the planking all done. I have had the last 2 weeks off work and split the time between boatbuilding, housebuilding (for my best friend who is very sick) and childminding. I feel exhausted and am ready to go back to work next week back to meetings, bureaucracy, dealing with difficult people and occasionally getting to talk and do science. Well, maybe I'm not.

Planking is fun albeit a bit stressful at times. I decided early on not to try and do a pair of planks in one day. So, my routine was to cut the planking bevel and gains (I used my hand rebate plane then cleaned up with a block plane for both)

bevels and gains cut

check the planking fit and mark some key positions relative to bulkheads and then put a belt of 400gsm biax cloth over the inner side of the puzzle joints of the new plank. This took me about 3-4 hours. The next day I would coat the bevel with epoxy (thinned with TPRDA) so that the joints wouldn't starve and then mix up a batch of thickened epoxy smear it on, put the plank on with a whole lot of screws on blocks (thin strips of 20mm thick ply were also good for this)

plank in place and clamped

I learnt a few things while I was planking that I had stuffed up during my set up. Firstly, somehow, either the centreboard case or one of the bulkheads that it contacts weren't exactly plumb. While planking, I could see that two bulkheads were slightly bowed when I sighted across them. I think that it won't matter or that I will be able to adjust them when I turn the boat over (by breaking the small tabs of epoxy and moving them before doing the proper fillets). I also noticed earlier on that my stem was a bit thicker than it should have been. This placed it and the forward end of the sole a little higher than they should have been by about 3 mm. This meant that I had to have a tiny gap between planks and bulkhead A and between the planks and mould 1 in order to keep the hull shape fair (otherwise the planks would have looked pinched in). This also, I don't think will be a problem in the long run. Overall, I'm very happy with how the planking went. The hull looks great and symmetrical and fair. I'm now looking forward (!) to filling screw holes, sanding, fairing, glassing and painting!

strake 2 is done

I've been lucky enough to have the last few days with uninterrupted building. Well, I did have to look after the kids a bit but mostly, I got to build until I had to come inside to cook dinner.
After getting the garboards on with no worries, I thought it would be simple to get on the next strakes. In retrospect it was but in practice it took me most of a day to cut the planking bevel then work out and cut my gains. After talking to Mike Randall (of Vicky Bee), I decided to gain the planks at the transom end and the bow end. As I didn't want to remove too much material, I spent a long time planing then checking then planing then checking.....By the time I got them right and had them both dry fastened in place it was too late in the day to get he epoxy on.
So, this morning, I started gluing them on and was finished and had the squeezed out epoxy cleaned up by about lunchtime.

Here are some pictures of my progress:

transom with the planks gained in

looks like a beak 

view from above of lots of clamping blocks

another beak picture

Bevelling the sole and adding the garboards

Now, I'm getting excited as this is where the boat takes shape. The Garboards are the lowest pair of planks and on this boat they are the biggest and require a reasonable bit of twist forward. Andrew Denman warned me that hoop pine ply is stiffer than Gaboon/okoume and this made me worry that I wouldn't be able to put this plank on solo. I made a bunch of the L-clamps that Vivier recommends and that Mike Randall strongly advised to help in this regard.

First thing was to bevel the edges of the sole to accept the garboards. This was done by cutting with a tenon saw at each station to match the angle of that station. I then lined up the cut marks with a batten and drew a line. Then I used a power plane and finished with a hand smoother and felt pretty happy with the results

witness cuts to match the station angle

 I then coated the beveled edges with Bote-cote epoxy with TPRDA added. This is their epoxy monomer (it's not thinners) which makes the product soak into the end grain very well and edge grain as well but to a lesser extent. It's the mix that Mike Randall also used and I coated all my planks and bulkheads with it (especially the edges).

this looks OK dad

Next thing was fitting the garboard. I test fitted it and once I was happy, marked on the position relative to bulkhead C. Then I mixed up a batch of thickened glue and smeared it on the bevel and the edges of the bulkheads and started attaching it from amidships and then gradually forward and aft. This wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. The plank lined up nicely with all the marks as I screwed through the top into tape-covered plywood blocks to clamp it into place

starboard garboard attached

another view

bulkheadA/stem/keelson/sole/garboard join

 Now, I need to stick the other side on.

attaching the sole

After checking the rough fit of the stem and being satisfied with it, I beveled the forward face as per the rough bevels indicated in the plans. It was nice to be able to use a drawknife and my beautiful birthday present from Briony - a Lie-Nielsen rabbet block plane - to tidy it up

I glued this in place attached to the keelson and bulkhead A and then bolted the forward end to the building jig. When I did this, I pushed it aftwards about 5mm to rectify the springback that I got after glue laminating the stem.

Next, I sanded back the bottom surfaces of glue lumps and to key in the glue to attach the sole. Here is the bottom of the centreboard case where the logs meet the keelson with intervening stuffers (all these timbers are regrowth mountain ash/ swamp gum/E. regnans - which is very strong and more durable but a similar density to Douglas fir)

After a dry test with the sole and after giving it a second coat of epoxy on the inside surface, I glued it on. This was a little exciting and nervewracking as it means the start of the planking.

I lined up the centreboard case cutout with the centreboard case and the edge of the sole nicely lined up with the planking marks on the stations. My only concern was that the sole did not come as far forward as it showed on the plans. I wasn't too worried about this as there was plenty of gluing surface for the sole and it might just mean that there is a small gap that I need to fill before I eventually glue on the outer stem. It's hard to know what that gap might be as I can't really visualise yet what the garboards might look like in this zone