This project has been compiled and contributed to by a number of members of the Model Ship World forum to assist newcomers to this hobby and enable them to carry out simple planking operations. It has been put together partly in response to the numerous questions asked by new members regarding “how to do planking” and it will hopefully give them in a practical way a full and simple method to help them on their way to bigger and better things in the future.

This instruction is not to plank a ship in the traditional way used by the shipwrights of old but rather it is a simple demonstration of general methods to plank a hull to satisfactory standards that the newcomer can be proud of and display with an element of pride.

There are numerous books which deal with this operation, some of them are excellent and generally cover the full aspect of the planking operation itself to varying degrees some are a lot better than others. However it is the bits that are missing and the lack of pictorial detail that poses the biggest problems from a newcomer’s point of view.

Hopefully this project will explain some of the mystery and make the whole planking operation less stressful and painful. The plan is to show a simple step by step detailed planking procedure while explaining the reasons why it is done this way and what can occur if it is done another way. Many books touch only briefly on the stem and stern areas of a ship and as such don’t show the detailed operation required to allow a novice builder to successfully overcome what is sometimes a difficult part of the model building process.

 

Regards,

Greg Brooker (southlander) & Dirk De Bakker (Kelvin12)
August 2006