Thursday 28 August 2003

1st Layer Planking (Lime)

Where the lime meets the centre of the hull I rebated the ply to accept the wood so the finished hull would be only one thickness of wood (when the walnut was applied) above the ply level.

And that was the first layer of planking finished.


A view of the back of the hull with the lime planking finished.

A view of the front of the hull with the lime planking finished.

I decided to start planking the rear of the boat at this stage, probably because i was bored with the other planking !


The hull had to be turned over now, I made up some blocks off wood for the hull formers to rest on and screwed it with some very small screws to stop the hull from moving around while it was being worked on.
This proved to be very successful.
I alternated the planking on each side of the hull, doing 2 planks on one side then two on the other, this assured that the hull remained straight and was not pulled to one side.
I had to remember to mark the centre lines of the blocks for the dummy canons.
A few more are positioned , the technique I used is to nail through an off cut of wood let the glue dry and then break the off cut of wood away the nail can then be removed easily. (You can see this on the bottom plank)

The start of the planking always a daunting task, firstly I laid a couple of lime strips along the hull fairly straight with the decks.