Thread: Nice rowboat, nothing fancy.

I've had to scarf a lot of planks "on site" over the years and I've never liked it. With a boat sitting in someone's yard, or at a dock, you don't have a lot of options, but on a boat of this size and as a new build, I'd make the planks continuous on the bench. The way I see it with all lapstrakes and carvels to a similar degree, is you have to "present" the plank to the boat a few times, so you have the ability to get a dead nuts (technical building term) fit. The first "presentation" is to see if the boat is willing to accept this iteration, which without exception will be turned down. It is a boat and these are of the female persuasion, so we're pretty much doomed on the first try, but at least you get to check fits and mark where things might need trimming. If you're really talented or especially good looking, the second presentation might be accepted, but lets face it, none of us are this good looking or skilled, so she'll reject you once again, though you now know pretty much just what she needs, to accept your next attempt. It's usually at this point the plank become a full length deal on a boat of this scale, for me. It's been fine tuned, beveled, had it's gains cut, etc. Now, when the bitch, (I mean boat) sees you with that new honking length of scarfed plank, she's pretty much helpless to say no and you've got a date for the evening. It's simple genetics really. You showed up with this hairy, unrefined, rough edged, probably ugly hunk of, not nearly long enough planking, the first time around - so what did you expect from any self respecting woman - she told you to kiss off, but winked, hinting you should try harder. So, you dressed the plank, maybe rubbed some smelly stuff on and generally cleaned things up, but the real clincher, at least in my experience, is when they see the full length of that freshly cleaned up puppy, they get all googgly eyed and invite you in.

Ok, this is redickerlous. I have to finish this thing. Am making some time for it (in among all the other stuff that needs doing) and will try to keep the momentum going. There really isn't an awful lot left to do (well sort of, but not really).

So before Christmas and New Year and all that I had it as in the previous post. However, before I could put the next planks on I had to glue up and shape a tapered backing piece on each side, because of the way the next plank sits against the existing one near the stern. These backing strips taper out to nothing about 5 feet forward of the transom, and will provide a solid gluing surface for the next plank on each side. The strips were laminated in situ, out of the three strips I had left over from when I laminated the frames (these were the strips that were temporarily on the inside of the frames, just to take the crushing loads against the blocks of the bending forms). One and a half each side, in two layers, worked out well for what I needed here.

So the bloody things are on, and mostly carved to shape (see attached pic). Carving rolling bevels on good cedar is fun. Still need a final touch up, but I was running out of light. Final touch ups in the dark tend not to work so well (don't ask me how I know).

Also, I had an idea which should make it easier to fit the next planks. Will try that out over the next couple of days, and see how much trouble it results in.

So here's the cunning idea to make planking easier. The planks are as light as a feather, but have so little stiffness that they are extremely awkward to handle by myself. I could round up extra people to hold things, but that's always a hassle since it means work is dependent on the availability of other people. Then there's the prospect of dealing with people who are well-intentioned but have no idea what they are doing, which can often be more trouble. It's better (IMO) if I can just do things when it suits me.

So, the obvious solution (well, obvious now, if not previously) is to make the pattern for each plank stiff enough, after it (the pattern that is) has been marked out and fitted to the boat. This has a number of advantages. For a start, once stiffened the pattern itself becomes much easier to handle. In fact, it becomes stiff enough to act as an impromptu bench for gluing up the plank scarf joints, which is handy. It will make storing the patterns easier if I want to keep them for a possible second build (which seems sensible, now that I've made them).

However, the big advantage is that with the pattern now being self-supporting, I can use a few lightweight spring clamps to hold the plank to the pattern. That means I can easily carry the whole lot over to the boat, prop it up in the middle and at each end (using bits of wood clamped to the strongback), and then ease the plank down onto the gluing surfaces by removing the spring clamps one at a time.

The whole kaboodle is still very light. Each pattern skin is only 3mm MDF, with the longitudinals being 11x15 meranti. All joints have butt blocks behind them, and the lot is glued with Prep Multihesive. Deflection is about 400 mm each end when supported on the flat and in the middle. In the attached picture, the ends are just clear of the floor. Obviously when it's on edge there is hardly any deflection, and the whole thing is generally very easy to deal with.

All things considered, I think this is a pretty good option.

So, the next two planks are scarfed and glued. At the moment they're stacked on top of the pattern while the glue kicks off. Tomorrow I'll unclamp them and do the final fitting. I went a bit belt and braces on packing tape, to keep any glue squeeze-out of the interior surface of the planks. With a bit of luck it might even work.

The double-skinned sandwich construction pattern has proved its worth already. It's just so much easier to deal with, even when just gluing up planks on the bench, or when I just want to move it out of the way. Sure, there's a slight extra cost for each pattern and a bit more work making them, but both are negligible. Tomorrow I'll test it out for fitting full length planks to the actual boat. I've thought it through a bit, and think it will go quite smoothly.

Scarfs turned out fine. So when cleaning things up a bit I found another use for this sandwich construction pattern. I had already fitted it to the boat, and checked both sides, back when the pattern was single skin. I figured (hoped ) the boat and the pattern wouldn't have changed shape since then, so took a bit of a gamble and decided to trust the pattern without checking it all over again. I'll find out tomorrow if this was a good idea or not. These very light planks can be edge set a bit anyway, so there is some leeway if things have mutated slightly.

Anyway, the other use for the fancy pattern idea: with it having a decent depth on its sides (17 mm) it's easy to run a flush trim router bit around the pattern while the planks are clamped on top of it. Hey presto, two shaped planks. Then set them up one at a time and ran another pass with the router on the outside of the lap, this time with a 3mm bullnose bit with guide bearing. Hey presto, shaped planks with bullnosed laps. This is good.

So then, just for added fun, I swapped bit and guides again and ran the shallow rebate to take the thickness of the glass halfway across the lap. For those who don't recall, the bottom and garboards are glassed (200 gsm) and I stopped the glass halfway across the width of the lap, just because this made more sense to me in engineering terms than stopping it outside the lap (I thought that might cause a stress concentration on the thin planking). So anyway, that meant the laps needed a very shallow rebate on the inside. Again, this was easily done using the thick pattern to guide the router.

Gains are cut now too, and the backing pieces down aft are faired off, so the next two planks are ready to go on the boat. Ran out of light today so will fit the planks tomorrow. However, I did do a dry run with a plank clamped to the pattern, just to see how it would go. Should be fine. It all sits very nicely, clear of what will be the sticky bits, and can then be neatly dropped into place by working along it. I think this system is going to be a winner.

Ok, that worked.

This system totally rocks. It makes fitting the plank easy, clean and stress-free. I had three temporary supports, of scrap timber just clamped to the three permanent frames. Put the plank and pattern up dry, marked top and bottom edges halfway across the midship frame so I had a handy reference mark, then put the whole lot on top of the boat while I mixed and spread the glue on the frames, lap, stringer, etc.

As soon as the glue was spread, picked up the pattern and plank up and sat them straight down right on the marks, then started dropping the little spring clamps out and bending the plank into place, working my way to each end. It turns out the boat and the pattern hadn't changed shape during my long hiatus, since the plank still fit the boat perfectly.

Anyway, short version is it's on and looks perfect. No dragging, no smearing, no wobbling all over the place. Just clean fitting with minimal squeeze out everywhere. Couldn't have gone better.

The starboard one is going on tomorrow.

Starboard plank is on. Have also started bevelling stem, frames and transom for the next pair of planks.

Made some more progress. The next pair of stringers are in, and the laps are bevelled to receive the next pair of planks. Tomorrow I'll whip up the pattern for the next planks, and with a bit of luck I may even get the plank stock scarfed as well.

Came up with a nifty trick for bevelling the laps (which I actually stole from a Tom Hill article in an old issue of Wooden Boat mag). It's the old Stanley #78 rebate plane with a custom guide made from a couple of scraps of stringer and planking stock. This just happened to be a perfect push fit on the standard Stanley screw-in bar for the rebating guide. The underside of the wooden guide is notched to match the depth of the rebate in the stringers, so all I have to do is run the plane along the lap with the guide resting on the next stringer, and it automatically planes the correct bevel while I merrily have my brain in neutral. This is very quick and easy, much better than doing it without the guide and having to check things all the time.

Given the lightness of the planking and stringer, I had to support things with my spare hand underneath the plane to prevent excessive deflection while planing, but that's no drama. I still got a bit of deflection halfway between frames, so it needed a bit of checking for accuracy of the bevel, but it's still a very good method. Obviously if you were building without stringers, you could still set up a temporary batten along the next lap line to run the plane's guide against. It's a handy trick, and worth considering if you are doing a clinker build.

So the next two planks are on. Only two more to go, then the thing will be fully planked.

Sheer clamps are already scarfed up, so I'll be notching those in next. After that it's just the usual make pattern, make planks, bung planks on boat. The current plan is to have the last two done by Saturday night.

I've been looking at the thing upside down a bit, and seem to have the plank lines about right. Too bad if they aren't, because at this stage there's no changing them anyway.

For scarfing the sheer clamps I ended up just using the same router jig that I used for the stringer scarfs. Works a treat. Perfect scarfs in no time flat. I even got smart enough to mark out a permanent position for it on my bench, so I can easily use it again whenever I want (like for gunwales or whatever).

Obviously I had a mess something up, just to keep things traditional, so I did that by cutting one of the scarfs the wrong way around. Even better, I did this after trimming the stock to length. Might as well mess things up properly. No point doing it by halves. So, end result is that one sheer clamp has the offcut scarfed back onto it to get it to the required length. Hey ho. It shouldn't be noticeable on the finished boat, and it'll still work just fine.

Well, so much for getting the last two planks on by Saturday night. Had some extra stuff to do during the week, which slowed down progress on the boat.* However, I did manage to get the sheer clamps on by Sunday night, so it's not all bad. Next job is bevelling off the starboard lap, then making a pattern for the sheerstrakes. That's today's work.

*Had to help a bloke drop some trees, and clean up the mess.

Ok, so I DID get the last two planks on by Saturday night. It just happened to be the Saturday after the one I originally meant.

Starboard sheerstrake has just gone on, so boat is now officially all planked up. The Farce was with me. Happy I am being.

Of course, it still looks like an upside down half-finished boaty sort of thing, but hopefully wont for much longer. Current Infallible Plan Which Cannot Go Wrong is to have the thing right side up and looking much more boaty by the end of the month.

I could cut it off the strongback tomorrow, but while it's still all set up I'm going to put the gunwales on and do some fairing and filling. At the moment, with just the sheer clamps in, it's a bit more flexible than I'd like. Putting the gunwales on while it's still braced to the strongback makes sense for a boat this lightly built, so that's what I'm going to do.

Took a couple more shots today while doing a big clean up. These are flipped to give an idea what the beast will look like when finished, just because I felt like seeing it right side up. I figured I'd turn the world upside down instead of flipping the boat. Much simpler.

It's generally looking pretty decent. Sheerstrake width is a bit out for looks at the moment as it doesn't have the gunwales on yet. Plank lines are ok, although I'd probably tweak them slightly if building another one to the same design. I'll take my time assessing them once the boat is finished, but they're pretty good for a first stab at it, so it should pass muster.

Slight detour today. I decided to make up some more U-and-wedge style clamps for handling the gunwales. The ones I made for planking don't have enough width in the opening, and for doing gunwales the opening's depth could usefully be less too. So, I'm whipping up a few dozen with a 60mm width and depth on the opening, out of a scrap of old 17mm ply I had lying around. For comparison, the ones for the planking are 30mm width and 180 mm depth on the opening, and made from 12mm ply.

Anyway, while I was ripping out strips of ply to start the clamps off, I remembered another project that needed doing. I currently have a pair of swallows nesting in a corner of the carport. This is cool, except that swallows have a tendency to produce swallow poo. They're rather good at it in fact. So, I had a brainwave to deal with the depredations of Flutter & Chirp Pty Ltd, Manufacturers of Finest Guano.

The result is shown in the attached picture. It just slides on and off the horizontal 4x2 that is fixed to the wall as a tool hanger. Again, just made out of old bits that were lying around anyway. I can periodically clean it off while the miniature theropods are in residence between their annual migrations, and it will save me having to clean off various garden tools and the concrete floor. This has got to be better than last year.

Back to making clamps now...

So, clamps. Got them roughed out, and will clean them up tomorrow or the next day. I made a simple jig for doing the initial cuts for the throat on the drop saw. That sounds more ISIS than it really is.

Pic attached. This jig holds the plywood squares securely, so they can't flip out while being cut, and keeps fingers well clear of the blade. Depth stop is set on the saw of course, so the whole process is quick and easy.

Taking most of the waste out was done just by drilling 10mm holes across the base of the opening, and snapping out the waste. I used this method as it was more convenient than trying to do it the same job on such small pieces with a jigsaw (or at least with my jigsaw, which isn't that great).

To do a final clean up I'll use my home-made router table. I've whipped up a jig for that too, which will be clamped to the table. The crosspiece is wide enough to keep fingers well clear of the router bit, and will prevent them from kicking up. The clamp pieces can just be slid into place, then along the main guide, to give a cleanly finished throat with radiused internal corners (I'll be using a 16mm straight cut bit for this job).

After that I'll just bullnose them and give them a bit of a sand. They'll use the same infamous box of wedges as the planking clamps.