Chuck Seiler

Mark, How do I get the planks to butt up against each other???...alot of practice and alot of reworked hulls. Bottom line is that it is a matter of 'attention to detail'. You have to plan where everything is going to be. The first strake sets the tone for the rest of the hull. When fitting the next plank (under), once the basic form/curve is achieved and it has been soaked/clamped/dried, it is a matter of micro-fitting the plank and mating it to the one above. The inside bevel is important as well, or else you will ALWAYS get that gap. It takes time. It took the better part of a day to get W+1/1/S (1st strake under the wale, plank 1, starboard side) fitted in. The rest are coming a bit faster...but by no means with blazing speed.. Chborgm, Ya gotta be kidding me? This has got to be WAY easier than CONFEDERACY. There are only 3 strakes below the wale and the hull is pre-lined. That first plank below the wale is a *&$%! because it is so long. In mind, that allows problems to creep in. Once that one is done, the rest are much easier.

Mark, Looking good! That exterior planking is harder than it looks, eh?

Once you get that first curve, it becomes easier. My starboard template ended up fitting the port side fairly well once it was soaked and clamped properly, so I should be able to crank that out today. The aft-most plank being shorter, looks easier to form as well. Things should speed up from here.

Progress Continues..... I transferred the upper curve to a piece of boxwood sheet. I measured about 1/8 of an inch over design plank width and cut it out. I didn't get a picture, but you probably don't need one. I will need to plan my layout so as to avoid too much wastage. Once the uber plank is cut out and sanded to the lines, I fit it in place. It was nearly perfect. Soak, clamp in place and let dry. Once dry, dry fit it into place. little touch up here and there and bevel the top inside....fits like a glove. Now I have to come up with the finished width. I had previously marked the plank at the frame locations. With a compass, I now take the plank width measurement from the hull (from the lining off process) at frame 9 at one end of the plank... ...and mark it on the corresponding spot on the plank. I do this at each location all the way to the bow and the 'hood ends' marked on the rabbet. Now connect the dots. It is actually pretty easy. The plank is the same width from frame 9 to frame 14 so I can just run the compass down the plank to that point. After that it widens. I sued a ship's curve to connect those dots. A French curve will work as well. We are not quite ready to glue in place yet. Remember, the bottom curve of the plank is the same as the top curve of the plank below it. Rather than have to do the whole song and dance previously done with the tape and the card stock to get the curve, I just lay the plank on a piece of boxwood sheet and trace the curve. Ta daaaaa!!!!

With the exception of a couple short planks low in the bow/stern, I have completed planking the interior ceiling planking. Length view of the interior. Close up view of the bow where the planks meet. Note missing plank on lower left. This turned out pretty well, but there is room for improvement. It looks alot better in real life and this portion of the planking will be pretty much obscured by the forward gun. Close up view of the stern where the planks meet. This turned out much better, mostly because I found the right and to start off with and miter cut (rather than sanded) the angle on each piece before wetting and clamping. There is still much fine sanding to be done. I want to hold off on that until the exterior planking is done so that any clamp marring can be removed at that time.

Most of this was done a week ago...it just took time to get around to posting. Here is the faux plank/template fitted its entire length. I show the template because I still have not cut the final plank. I plan to do that this weekend. This shows a closeup shot of the bow/forward portion of the plank. Note tight fit. The final width of the plank is marked but I did not cut because I want to use this as a template on the other side as well. Middle portion of the plank. Aft portion of the plank. Here is the plank mounted on one of the 3/4" thick basswood strips. The ruler increments do not show well, so I marked the 1/2", 1" and 1 1/2" points (green) as well as the limits of the plank (red). Once the plank was smoothed, fitted and sitting correctly, the bend was not as severe as originally thought, but much greater than 3/4"...slightly over 1".

Magnificent!!

Will do.

I'll be happy when I can get to the shorter planks.

You are correct...the curve is a bit too severe, by 1/8 inch. Easily fixable. I could edge bend it into place, but that defeats the purpose for which intended. The bottom strake does, indeed, have a butt at frame 9, but checking the planking diagram I see that there are joints also at frames 12 and 15. The only plank close to that same length is the after most plank on W+1 at 10 inches. Checking the planking diagram, I had previously checked to see if maybe a joint was obscured by the anchor (sheet 5). However, if you check sheet 6 you see that it does not. Plank 1 of W+1 IS 13 inches. Pressing on..

Kurt, What am I missing? My planking diagram shows the bow planks to the strake under the wale (W+1) as running from the bow to frame 9. That is over 13 inches long.

Second attempt at spiling the exterior planking. This time I took a relatively fresh file folder and cut off a couple inches. Unfortunately, that puts the hinge somewhere in the middle, since it is over 14 inches long. No worries. I flat mounted the card stock as best I could for the length of the plank. Clamped in place. Next, I rubbed along the lower edge of the plank above so it was properly marked. I rubbed in a little pencil so it would be better visible. The resulting edge is pointed out by the arrows. I cut along that edge and remounted the card stock. It should have been a close fit. What should have been and what was were two different things. Fortunately card stock is cheap and plentiful, so I marked it again, ensuring it was flat, and pressed on. Here is how it turned out. I fitted it against the hull and it fit great. I'm not sure why I didn't get a picture....I thought I had. In theory, it should fit the other side of the hull too. It fit okay, not great, but I can work with it. This picture has it mounted on 3/4" strip stock with the top edge running along the top edge of the strip. This is well wide of the mark. I estimate it would take at least a 1" wide strip to do t this way. I am not sure how to do it with what is provided in the kit. Mount it cockeyed? Edge-bend it? Make it shorter? Kurt, any thoughts? Close up of the overhang Fortunately, Micheal's has 3" x 1/16" stock. I transferred the curve to this stock and measured a working width of more than what is needed. I won't mark the final dimensions until the top of the plank is PERFECTLY fitted. About 1 1/4" More to follow.

I checked out Kurt's article in "Ships in Scale" again to see if he had any insight to this. He refered to the instructions and plate 2. I wasn't too wild about those instructions. They might be good for anything towards the middle of the hull, say frame 3 to 13, but completely misses the mark (in my opinion) for the bow and stern areas due to the extreme curve. Kurt also references a couple good books on the subject. The planking instructions here in MSW are pretty good too.

Thanks Steve. Just think how much mo better it will be when I actually get it right?

Come to think of it, I don't do MANY cuts under 1/8". I look forward to hearing more.

Now I have to make/shape the plank. The desired result will be a plank that fits flat to each frame for the entire length of the plank AND fits snug to the plank above it, without gaps, for the entire length of the plank. Here I am running a batten along the hull at the points marked on the frames. Using my finely calibrated laser beam eyes, I fine tune the batten so it runs smoothly. It is glued in place with little dabs of glue. It will eventually be removed. I then mark the frames and any support pieces indicating the bottom of the first run of planking. If I make the plank correctly, it should fit snugly in between the wale and the batten. Any wagers? Here I am running a length of tape over where the plank will run in order to find its true shape. It is critical that this runs exactly flat and straight. Unfortunately tape bends easily and stretches. I would prefer to use paper, but this plank is over 11 inches long. Perhaps I should get some legal length paper. I purposely left the batten in place in order to see if I could get good plank width from it. Normally, you get the curve of the upper side of the plank, then use your measurements from the hull-line-off to get the width at various points (each frame). Use a French curve or ships curve to connect the dots. You can see by the stretching that the plank will be wider than needed, The tape 'plank' is taped to a section of 3/4" strip stock. I will eventually use boxwood, but I did it this way to: (1) See if I can fit it on the provided stock and (2) Make a decent template before going full boxwood. Ideally, the upper left hand corner would start along the top edge of the strip, running with the top as long as possible before it dips down. Doing it that way requires more than 3/4" width. I compromised by setting it sideways. Batten removed and plank soaked/clamped in place. It is slightly off and there is a slight gap, but sanding should fix that. The red line is the lower limit of the planks as defined by the batten. Oooops. Wait a minute. Closer inspection reveals the plank is not sitting flat to the frames at it approaches the curve. Let's see what happens when I flatted it out. POOP! That forces the bow end to bend further upward so that the red line (bottom of the plank) is almost at the point where the top of the plank should be. This attempt was unsatisfactory. It is not a failure, however, unless I do not learn something from it. Back to the drawing board.

Things have been slow and I wanted to try my hand at/demonstrate spiling of the exterior planking. After the interior planking and top few planks of the exterior, one potentially gets spoiled and somewhat mistaken about how easy planking can be. This is far from true. As we see with the remainder of the planking, the planks are NOT the same width throughout their length (requiring tapering) and they are not straight. Some people (including me) make the mistake of trying to edge bend them into shape. The planks themselves need to be shaped, or spiled. PHILADELPHIA is a good place to learn this. There are few planks and some of the work is already done for us. The problem I am having is that the size (length) of some of the planks causes problems. The first thing to be done is to 'line off the hull'. This is a process where we determine the number of planks required ad the proportional width of the plank thru its entire length. On a complicated model, this is done in sections, or bands. In REAL complicated models you have to account for cheater planks, etc. This is far too complicated to be covered here. There are many books on planking and some good articles on planking here at MSW. Fortunately for us, the lining off has already been done for us. The frames are already marked. The kit comes with a template to mark the appropriate spacing on the stem and stern pieces. Here I mark inside the rabbet based on the template.

Generally, deck planks are not trunn'led. They were bolted in place in a counter sunk hole with a wooden plug over top. Wooden trunn'l/wooden plug? What's the diff? Plugs are side grain and tree nails are end grain. At smaller scales it matters not. At larger scales it might.

Mike, The Micro-Jig looks interesting but appears it is not useful for anything under 1/8" wide cut.

Thanks Kurt. Good luck on a successful conference. I am off to San Antonio, so no building for me for awhile.

Slow but sure progress. Starboard side ceiling planking complete. Close-up. Planks are in place but alot of sanding yet to be done. Kit deck planking set in place just for look see. Another look.

For some of us it is not history...we just happened to know somebody that was on it.

I agree with Kurt. When you look at the drama they went thru to get even carpenters to be on site, it was not a surprise that they didn't have many real ship builders. The over riding plan was to build alot of hulls, get them into the water NOW, don't care what they look like, don't care how long they last as long as they float for a few months, we'll worry about the rest later.

The critical part is to get the upper curve so it matches the bottom of the plank above it. There are various ways of doing this. I like the tape method. Some use the card stock method. Then using measurements from the lining off process you mark the lower edge. Sand, fit, apply. Sounds easy. Not so easy in practice. Many people transfer their upper curve to card stock (file folder, etc) then measure off the widths at each frame, resulting in a complete plank in card stock. This is then test fitted to the hull. Adjust/trim as necessary. Once you get it the way you want, trace that onto your piece of wood. (You can also determine if this template also works on the other side). Cut wide of the line and gently sand to the line. This should avoid the wavy factor.

Steve, There are a couple tutorials in the "planking" section which helps explain spiling. I will be taking off on a road trip next week before I get to the exterior, so it will be awhile before i get to the exterior planking. I plan to post a pic or two of what a spiled plank would look like, although not necessarily how you would get to that point, before I leave.