Walking The Planks

Who would have thought that superimposing square ridgid boards onto a constantly curving surface would be so much work?! I mean, just because nothing is straight, and the things that are curved change their shape as other things are put on them, and the designer obviously had only a loosely theoretical understanding of boat construction when he laid down the lines, that shouldn't mean that it should take two days to get two boards in place. Yet that's how long it took us. And by us I mean three of us, BiL Earl, nephew Chris and myself.

It didn't really take two days to get them in place, but it took us that long to figure out to put them there. If only I had read the books that I had bought. Although, in retrospect it wouldn't have done any good as the books I have are geared to sail boat designs and I'm building a classic power boat hull. No, this was a case where I had to waste some wood and time figuring it out by myself. Now that I see how to do it I'm anxious to start in earnest.

Here's some pictures of what's been happening in the boat shed.

This first one shows the first true plank to be put on. It's hard to tell from this picture but it twists from vertical to near horizontal over a span of about 5 ft. It also has some funky carving on the inboard side to make it mate flush to the keel. It wasn't like I could just run it through a joiner at an angle to get it. It was all hand sawn and planed. Also you might notice that the very bow is slightly different. I previously had a rather monumental piece of work up there holding it all together and had some rather fanciful ideas on how wood might bend around it. It turned out to be both impraticable and unnecessary. As with nost of the design, I'm finding that a lot if it is wildly over built. So I took it off and replaced it with a simple sawn knee. The curve of the hull, at least at the garboard strake, looks a lot better.
You'll also notice the three strips of planking on the outboard sides. Those are there for now and where kind of a test before I had really figured out how to plank the damn thing. We'll see if they stay.

This next one shows the garboard strake on the other (starboard) side of the boat. This one was cut from a 16' 2X8 that had knots in all the right places. For the smaller pieces, I take dimensional lumber (2X6s mostly) and cut in in half for two 3/4 in thick pieces. In this case, it was too wide to reliably run through the band saw, so after cutting it to size we ran it through the planer a few times and created a pile of chips about as high as my three year old. Then it was too long for the steam box so I had to cut 6 inches off to make it fit. In the end it's a true work of art. You might notice a pile of thin strips to the right of the picture. Those are reference battens. I'm using them to fit in the planks. Its a somewhat convoluted process I'm not going to take the time to explain here. I'll share if someone brings it up in the comments. Anyway, in both pics you can see the Earl fooling with something at the stern. What could it be?

Why it's the keel and skeg! I hadn't really thought about putting them on this soon since I planned to do as most boat building information tells you and plank from the outside in. Since I'm now going the other way with all that, it turns out I needed it now. So there it is. I've been saving some choice pieces of oak for the job and it went on as I had designed. One interesting note: to fit the curve of the keel to the curve of the skeg I used my own variation of a technique I saw as a kid. When I saw it is was carpenters putting a scarf joint into some beams for a house. It involves running a draw saw between the two pieces of wood as a slight pressure is used on them. Not enough to stick the saw but enough for the saw to bite the extra between the gaps. It worked a lot better than fitting, marking and sanding the two pieces. Not good enough for inlay work but close enough for a home made wood boat. Anyway, here's BiL putting the nuts on the threadded rod that holds the skeg to the keel.

Tomorrow's a big planking day (took today off to go to the zoo). Also, I'm in an eating contest. So little to do, so much time! Wait...