After the usual Sunday morning family cook-up breakfast yesterday, I went out to see if I could get this mythical planking process under way. I covered the stem molds in black builders plastic that I had picked up Saturday afternoon. Then I used cable ties to secure the permanent stems to the stem molds, with a couple of thin nails thrown in for good measure.
Bow shot.......
.....and stern.
Then I had to stop, so as to head back out to the Army Cadet camp to pick up my son & his mate. It wasn't until about three hours later before I was able to get back onto the job.
Working as fast as I could, I cut more strips of the plastic & covered each of the intermediate molds with them. Once this was done, it suddenly dawned on me that I was finally ready to start whacking on some planks.
With this project about to move further into the harsh world of non-reversible reality, I nervously grabbed the first couple of planks & got to the task of aligning & fitting them. I think I got the sheer strakes reasonably straight. I followed the edges of the molds as best I could, and to my novice eyes it all looked ok.
The light just beginning to fade but I desperately wanted to get at least one more round of planking on each side before knock off, so I ploughed on. This second lot of planking took a bit more fiddling around, mainly due to my wanting to stagger the butt joints as much as possible. Even so, It didn't take very long at all and I started to get excited at finally seeing a more three dimensional outline of my boat emerging.
One part that had me worrying was the edge alignment toward the ends. The planks just wouldn't maintain the twist that I would've liked, meaning that the bead of the second strake wouldn't quite lay properly into the cove of the sheer strake. I tried & tried to correct it but, in the end, I just had to accept it. It doesn't seem to be out by all that much, & it'll hopefully sand flush anyway, but it's not perfect & it bugs me. Similarly, the gaps at the stems (mainly the bow), caused by my amateurish shaping efforts, came in for some fussing and swearing.
Of course, these minor defects will hopefully be compensated for by my seemingly unavoidable tendency to absolutely drown everything in copious amounts of glue.
Speaking of glue, I called up Dave from Drive Marine Services in Beverly Hills, NSW (our local Boat Craft Pacific people) and spoke to him about my glue concerns. He was excellent & told me that the stuff that they sell, while slightly better than what I've already got, would behave in a similar manner with regards to foaming out of gaps. He recommended that, since I'd already bought the durabond, it should be fine to use & to save my money. That's honesty & service that you don't find every day.
I must say that I've been pretty impressed with these guys in general. Some of their stuff was a bit more expensive than elsewhere, but other items were quite competitive. Moreover, when trying to get quotes and/or information from loads of other confusing/ignorant sources, Dave & his people couldn't be more helpful. I would highly recommend them.
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