tlevine

At this point I am going to install the wale, or at least part of it. For ease of bending this will be made up of two laminations of the same thickness as the planking. This technique has the added advantage of using the second layer to disguise any slight gaps between the first layer of the wale and the upper row of hull planking. The wale will be made up of two planks. The first layer will have a butt joint located at the dead flat frame. The location of the wale had already been drawn onto the frames and this was transferred to the tape. I will be putting a scarf joint in the outer layer and its general location is also seen on the tape. The scarf does not need to rest on a frame since it will have a solid piece of wood underneath it. Take a look at the end of the wale. It does not rise above the counter. There is a smooth line connecting the ends of the planks of the upper belt with the end of the wale. Cut out the two pieces of the wale. Save the tape to reuse for the second layer. The wale will be a contrasting color. I have chosen to "paint" the wale with archival marker. The sides of the planks have been painted, even though they will not be seen.

The lower two planking belts have been completed. The next two rows of planking are no different than any of the other recent rows except that the aft ends terminate on the counter. Before going any further, I wanted to finalize the location and shape of the drop plank. As I mentioned earlier, the kit goes through the technique of making a quarter-checked drop plank; this build log will utilize a half-checked. These are always located just below the wale. Using thin strips of tape I have marked out the forward rows of planking, with the drop plank terminating on Frame 5a. After I was happy with the alignment, I drew the planking rows onto the frames. Because of the multiple curves, I used small pieces of tape to determine the shape of the fore plank. Transfer the plank width onto the tape from the marks on the frames. You can see that the width of this plank is wider than those in the middle planking belt. I did not carry the middle belt high enough in front of Frame 2, causing this to occur. If this was a "real" model I would have re-planked the middle belt. But this hull will be joining its four siblings in a closet so I have chosen the lazy-person's way out and left it alone. The curve into the counter is actually very gentle and requires only a little encouragement to fit against the aft bulkheads.

Although they are not the best pictures, there are some photos of the bow and stern in my build log that might be helpful.

I cannot help you with the HTML stuff, sorry. Your pictures are OK. What do you use for photo software? Securing the subdeck will help correct the warp but I would suggest adding some temporary battens along each side as well. They can be removed as you start your first planking layer. On a kit like this, the rabbet will be simply a bevel sanded onto the edges of the keel piece and the backbone. It will help secure that first layer of planking but will have no impact on the veneer layer. It should be easy to do. The carbide drill bits you are using are extremely brittle, which is why they broke so easily. Get some HSS bits instead. Most of us only use the carbide bits in a drill press because they are so brittle. The type of Dremel you are using complicates things because you are holding it with a pistol grip rather than just grabbing it in your hand. This makes holding the Dremel perfectly still difficult. I had one...emphasis on the word had. Since you appear willing to spend a little money, I would suggest that you get a good quality pin vise for those tight spots and a straight moto-tool (either corded or not).

Thank you to all the NRG members who attended the Conference in New Bedford. It was great seeing both old friends and new faces. Work has resumed on the half hull project. There are no complicated planks in the rest of the middle planking belt except for the aft plank in the top row. The pictures show the general sweep of the planking followed by the appearance of the planks at the bow and stern. The aft plank of the fourth row lands on both the counter and the sternpost. If you make a tape template it should not cause too much of a problem. At the Conference several people asked my how I bend my planks. The soft basswood only needs a little water to get it to bend. I will typically clamp it in place, putting a scrap between the clamp and the plank to prevent dimpling. After it has dried (no less than an hour) glue it to the hull. With hardwoods this is more of a problem, sometimes requiring heat and moisture. Never soak a plank in ammonia; it disrupts the wood fibers. The photo shows the curve of the planking without any high or low spots.

Post a build log. We are here to help, not criticize. We are also good cheerleaders and teachers when the journey gets tough (and it will). Your best tool will be patience. Your second best tool will be solvent for your glue! We all started at the beginning. We all make mistakes, no matter how many years we have been building models. On my current project (see below) I ripped out three rows of planking, costing me several days of work. Just remember, this is a hobby... Have fun with it; and if you learn something along the way even better.

Thanks, Paul. I will be back to work on her later this week.

The 2019 Conference is over and I would like to thank all of the speakers and especially the members who joined us in New Bedford. For those who could not join us, you missed a fantastic group of fellow modelers and preeminent speakers. Hopefully we will see you next time.

Don't you mean bulkheads? There are numerous build logs for this kit. Several of them discuss how to fair (sand) the bulkheads. Just type "armed longboat" in the search bar.

Ignore them. They were designed to give the builder and idea where the planking belts run. But each time I made the hull, the locations were just a little bit different. The lower two marks are fore the garboard and broad strake. The top two marks are the upper and lower borders of the wale. The vertical line next to the "A" is the thickness of the backbone assembly.

This kit is designed as a teaching aid. IMHO, the best teaching aid also teaches the teacher. And this one reminded me that photographs will often find errors that the eye will not. So even if you have no intention of posting your pictures, they can be very helpful modeling aids. Look at the above picture. You can just barely see that there is a concavity in the planking at Frame 5. This was a lot more obvious in the picture than in real life. Looking more carefully, the problem is not that Frame 5 was sanded down too much. Instead, I did not sand Frame 5a enough. My only option was to remove the involved planking and reshape Frame 5a. The smudged ink is because I used a lot of isopropanol to dissolve the glue. When you find it necessary to remove planks, do not even attempt to reuse them. It will never look right. The result was worth it. The build log is caught up to my construction progress. The NRG conference is next weekend in New Bedford Mass. I will be hosting (hostessing just sounds stupid) a round table on hull planking. Hope to see some of you there. Construction will continue upon my return home.

The lower three rows of the middle planking belt are straight forward; there are no other stealers and the dropped plank is located in the upper belt. The aft plank in the top row is complicated by the need to terminate on both the sternpost and the counter. The photo below shows the plank above the stealer installed. I used small pieces of tape to form the template for some of the planks with an extreme curve. This will give a much more accurate template in these areas.

This shows how the planks change shape. The strips of tape are the templates for the middle and fore planks of row 3 of the lower planking belt.In order to continue the appearance of the run of the planks paralleling the wale, the stealer will be placed between the lower and middle planking belts. The forward location of the stealer will be, in part, determined by the location of the neighboring plank butts. The photo below shows the area in question. The previous row has a plank butt on Frame F and the planks two row either side have butts on Frame D. You can still see the pencil lines for the quarter-checked (on the filler piece) and the half-checked stealers. The first step is to make the aft plank which will be stolen from. Don't waste too much time finalizing the width of the plank aft of Frame F because of the stealer. The yellow tape in the next two photos shows the shape and location of both a half-checked and quarter-checked stealer. You can see that the width of the stealer at the sternpost is the same as the width of the other planks and how the upward sweep of the stealer more closely parallels the wale. Make and install the aft plank. I find it easier to cut the stealer into a plank that has already been glued to the hull. I will be installing a half-checked stealer. The kit takes one through installing a quarter-checked stealer. In the picture below you can see that the location for a quarter-checked stealer is not correct. Although the forward extent of the stealer is correct, I would have needed to steepen the angle of the stealer (compare with the photo above). Lay the template for the stealer over the plank, starting on Frame E and ending at the sternpost. Draw the outline of the stealer onto the plank and cut the plank with a straight edge razor. I do not like a #11 blade for this; a razor pressed into the plank will result in a straight line without the need to sand. And here is the final result. Note the smooth transition between the stealer and the plank at Frame E. Here is the lower belt completed with the stealer.

The second row of this planking belt is developed just like the first row. You can see in the picture below how much curvature is developing in the fore plank. Aft, the run of planking continues to parallel the wale.

It is time to start planking the belts. There is more than one way to determine the shape of the bottom of the next plank. An alternate approach would be to put a length of tape (or a strip of paper secured with tape) above the broad strake and take a compass to draw the shape onto the tape or paper. Do not forget to locate the frame positions on the tape. Cut off the excess tape and finesse the shape against the broad strake. For my convenience, I have drawn a wide line on the dead flat strake. Using the tic strips mark the upper edge of the plank onto the tape and connect the marks with a ship's curve. Leave the tape wide to prevent distortion and then put it on the planking sheet. Cut out the plank, leaving a little excess on both the top and bottom. Trial fit the plank to the hull. When happy, add the caulking lines and glue in place. Do this for all three of the planks in this row. The result is a smooth curve when seen from both the side and below. Take note of the height of the strake as it enters the bow rabbet: no smiley-face.

What about a band saw? There would be less waste cutting billets down to usable thickness than with a table saw.

Same problem. However, simply typing pinnace, the first item is a 28 ft. pinnace and by typing longboat, a 20 ft. longboat is halfway down the page.

And if you are interested in learning how to plank correctly, consider this:

Brian, it is not up on the website yet. Please either call or email the office (both are found here: https://www.thenrg.org/contact-us.php).

Paul, welcome to MSW. This project is designed in such a way that a true novice should not have much problem. The only power tool I used was a Dremel, and even that is not necessary. The following was stolen from Kurt's announcement in the Nautical Research Guild announcement section. We can now take orders for the Half Hull Planking Kit The kit is not yet listed at the NRG Store, and when it is, we will update this, but we can now take orders through the NRG Office. Call the office directly or send an email. See the NRG web site for the phone and email. (Not listed here to thwart robots/spammers) The price is $65.00 for non-NRG members. NRG members get the member’s 20% discount price of $52.00. Prices are plus shipping. US shipping is $15.00. Canada shipping is $20.00. Other non-US shipping is $26.00. Expected shipping is the week of 10-22-19. And if you are lucky, Mary will convince you to join the Guild as well!

In order to keep the planks from becoming to wide aft, a stealer will be required. This extra plank "steals" some wood from one or two adjacent planks, hence the name. There are two types of stealers: half-checked and quarter-checked. With a half-checked stealer a notch one-half the width of the plank is made in the plank below the stealer; in a quarter-checked stealer a notch is made one-quarter the width of the planks above and below the stealer. I hope the drawings clarify this. A big question is where to put the stealer. As a rule, a stealer would be placed where the arc of the run of planking no longer parallels the wale. The fore end of the stealer extends as far as necessary to maintain a smooth run of planking. Look at the picture below. This nothing more than a piece of thread with a knot tied in it and secured to a random frame. The lower leg is along the border between the lower and middle planking belts. The upper leg is paralleling the arc of the wale. On the deadwood, in pencil, are evenly spaced marks for the ends of the planks of the lower and middle belts (four planks in the lower belt and five in the middle because of the stealer). Play around with the fore end of the string (lengthwise and vertically) to decide where the stealer should be located. Now look at the surrounding plank butts and make sure that the tip of the stealer is at least one row away from a plank butt. You will probably find that the tip of your stealer will land between frames. I glued a spacer between Frames F and G for this reason. The following pictures show a quarter-checked stealer drawn onto the spacer with and without the string. My other models were made with a quarter-checked stealer; this one will be made with a half-checked stealer. No reason other than to do it differently. The quarter-checked stealer is actually more difficult to make and the description of making it can be found in the kit manual.

Now that the garboard and broad strakes are completed, it is time to develop the planking belts. I have chosen three belts of four planks each. One could also do two belts of six planks. I simply find the narrower belts easier to work with. The midships area is easy...divide the frame by three. But fore and aft, the relative width of the belts will change. There will be a stealer aft and a dropped plank fore to compensate for this. What is needed now is an aesthetic series of lines for the belts. Play with it until you are happy; again, try and avoid the smiley-face look at the bow. Mark the location of the belts on the frames. On the frames are a series of hash marks on the side of the frames. You can see some of them in the photo above. These represent the locations for the top of the garboard and broad strakes and belt lines on my first build of the kit (this is number 5!). They are a good starting point but I discovered that each build was a little different, depending on the fairing and the actual width of the wider planks. Make a tic strip for each frames. Mark the planking belts and the bottom of the wale on them. Frames C through 2 were identical which is why there are no strips on several of the frames. Remove the tic strips from the frames and divide the lower belt into four equal divisions. Either eyeball it or use a caliper. It is time to figure out the planking scheme. Initially, I spent over an hour to figure this out. Ships were planked in either three-butt shifts or four-butt shifts. This ship will be planked with a four-butt shift. The rules for a four butt shift are as follows: at least three rows of planking between butts on the same frame, a minimum of four feet between butts with one unbroken plank between them and at least five feet between butts on adjacent planks. The distance between frame centers (except at the bow and stern) on this kit is four feet. Take a sheet of paper and line out the frames and twelve rows of planking. Play around with the butt locations. It gets more complicated aft because of the stealer. Eventually, I came up with three possible sequences for the planking. On this ship the butt sequence will be BF3, D1, A4F and C2. As mentioned in the previous post, I realized that the broad strake planking sequence should have been D1 rather than C2. But I did not notice this until the first belt had been completed. And, mea culpa, I decided to leave it alone rather than completely strip the hull except for the garboard strake. Mark the lower belt and the aft part of the middle belt with the butt sequence. I did this in red ink.

The next row of planking, the broad strake, has essentially the same width as the garboard. However...it is no longer a straight line because the width of the garboard changed fore and aft of midships. Mark the frames and deadwood at the sternpost just as you did with the garboard strake, 12" midships and 14" at the sternpost. Run a piece of string or tape to determine the run of planking. The fore plank will end approximately halfway between Frames 5 and 5a and 0.06" below the first waterline. The plank butts on this model landed on Frames C and 2. In retrospect, Frames D and 1 are a better option, as you will see in the next sequence. Take a piece of tape and place it over the garboard, extending onto the frames. Again, mark the location of the sternpost and frames. Take a soft pencil and rub it along the edge of the garboard strake from the sternpost to Frame C. Mark the height of the broad strake on the tape, put it on the planking sheet and cut it out. When cutting out the planks, leave a little meat on the bone for final fitting to the previous row of planking. Sanding blocks and sticks are the best tool I have found for fine-tuning the fit between planks. Gaps are easily seen by holding the hull up to a light. It will be necessary to sand a bevel into the side of the plank to ensure a tight fit. The angle of this bevel will change based on the curvature of the hull... a relatively flat area like over the deadwood will have minimal bevel and sharply curved areas like the turn of the bilge will have significantly more. Hull planks are caulked for water tightness. This is simulated by rubbing a soft pencil lead along one long and one short edge of the plank. Rubbing all four sides will result in a darker line; if that is the effect you are after, fine. I prefer the more subtle look. Repeat for the other two planks.

Some builders like to install the wale before the lower hull planking. I prefer to install it after the lower planking belts have been installed. Either approach will give the same results. Before any planking can be installed, the “median plank width” must be determined. This number represents the typical plank width measured at the dead-flat frame. This width varies by size and type of vessel, as well as by where and when it was built. This mid-18th century American schooner would have had a median plank width between 4-12” depending on the availability of materials. I have chosen a median plank width of 9”. The bottom two rows of planks are wider than the other planks and are the garboard and first broad strakes. These planks have a median plank width 1/3 greater than the other planks, in our case 12”. The length of planking was also determined by the availability of lumber. In this era, a length of 20-25’ would be appropriate. At our scale of 1:48, the median plank width will be 0.18"; the garboard and broad strakes will have a median plank width of 0.25". Going forward, all widths cited will be full-size unless otherwise stated. To get to the kit size, divide by 48. Take a strip of paper (tic strip) and mark off the median width of 12". Put the end of the strip into the depth of the rabbet in the midships area (Frames D through 3) and mark this location on the frames. All planks taper as they approach the bow and widen towards the stern. The garboard and broad strakes are no exception. In this little ship, the garboard widens to 14" at the sternpost and narrows to 6" at the bow. Place a mark on the deadwood at the sternpost 14" above the bottom of the rabbet. Remember that the rabbet transitions to a mortise by Frame F. One of the biggest problems builders have is locating the fore end of the garboard too high up the stem. This gives the planking a "smiley-face" look and makes the fore ends of the regular planks too narrow. Take a look at the photo below. The garboard does not extend beyond the fore end of Frame 5 and has minimal rise. On the plan there are green lines spaced 0.33" apart. This is 15" full-size. These are called waterlines and would be numbered from bottom to top; the numbering was not added to keep the plan less cluttered. The fore end of the garboard on this model ends 0.24" below the first water line. Using tape or a thread, connect the midships with the fore and aft locations of the garboard. When happy with the run of planking, mark the frames and remove the tape. There are several ways to determine the shape of planks. During the project I will show two approaches that work for me. Both approaches utilize templates to determine plank shape. I arbitrarily decided that the garboard will be made up from two planks and the broad strake from three. The planks will end on Frame 3. The garboard is the only strake with a straight edge. Place a piece of tape from Frame A to the stern post and another from Frame A to the stem. I always leave extra tape fore and aft so these two pieces will overlap each other at Frame A. Mark the location of the frames onto the tape; then mark the run of the garboard. Using semi-transparent tape makes this process a lot easier. You can see that I have also marked the rabbet/mortise transition in front of Frame F and the run of the plank at the bow and stern. The aft plank template has been placed on the planking material. The kit provides 1/32" basswood sheets. This material was chosen because it is inexpensive, easily cut with a #11 blade or single-edged razor blade, and readily available at craft and hardware stores if you run out. I have exaggerated the notch by Frame F for purposes of the picture. Remember, this is the transition between the rabbet and the mortise. The wood will dive into the rabbet but will lay flat in the mortise. Make a tiny cut at this spot to allow the wood to bend into the mortise. The notch will be sanded to its final width as the plank is given to the hull. This is how it will look when the garboard planks have been installed.

In order to determine the planking belts, we must first find the top and the bottom of the regular hull planking: the bottom of the wale and the top of the broad strake. The wale is a thicker run of planking that adds strength to the hull. It will be located on the plans of whatever ship you are building. It is marked on this plan with two blue lines. Use a square to locate the top of the wale on the frames. Make sure the line looks fair. Then mark the bottom of the wale on the frames, extending the line to the intersection of Frame H and the counter.