Jackson7
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Well, at long last misfortune struck. The plank I just put on slightly snapped near the bow. Thankfully, the issue is small enough that no one will be the wiser. At any rate, the speed at which I can put on new planks has much decreased. The sanding and adjustment they require has made things far more difficult.
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After considerable thought, I've figured out I need to add in another shim in the middle of the ship after the next pair of planks. All measurements seem to confirm this fact, and it's clear from looking at my previous work that I had to do the same thing in roughly the same spot. I'm very confident in my ability to do so, however, so matters should be straightforward. I'm very confident about the next bit.
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Progress continues apace on what is arguably the hardest plank on the ship. The first garboard went on badly in the front and well in the back. The second did quite the reverse. Thankfully, I had a solution. I shaved down a tiny section of plank to be thin on one side. Then, I wedged the thin side into the crack between the keel and the garboard along with a judiciously applied bit of glue. When the glue dried, I shaved off the excess, leaving the crack patched. It worked perfectly. At this point, both garboards are done, and I'm ready to put on the next pair of planks. The end of planking is in sight.
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Progress has been slow the last few days. Some of it has been the nature of the work. Cutting and sanding two shims and one garboard has required far more time than normal planks.
Some of it is psychology. If I were just a machine, I could probably go ahead and do whatever I needed to do. But as a man, I understand the nature of the undertaking and sometimes hesitate to begin it before I feel that I have a sufficiently good way forward.
That said, the shims went on perfectly and look beautiful. They successfully brought the stern in line. They also required an absurd amount of sanding.
The garboard on the other hand felt dicey. I ended up doing a patch job where it wasn't flush with the keel at the bow. After sanding and cutting, it looked fairly pristine.
I still need to make it fit the stern more perfectly, which I plan to fix using the other garboard, a lot of glue, and a lot of pressure.
That leaves me with the final problem... Five planks covering 20 mm to fit into 8 mm on the bow and 12 mm on the stern.
If I sand the current plank down to one mm, I will only have to do one more 1 mm plank on the bow, which I think I would much prefer.
It remains an open question whether the middle will be 20 mm exactly or 20 mm and a little gap for which I'll have to whittle a solution.
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I'm only six planks on each side away from finishing the hull. So far, everything has gone mostly according to plan. Filing down the stern has worked to narrow the end of the ship, but I had to go back and sand more of the hull to give the planks a smooth fit. At this point, I'm planning on overlapping each pair of planks in the rear. The tip of the first one forms a right triangle with the hypotenuse flush with the opposite side of the ship. The second covers the first. On the next pair, I'll make the same shape but in reverse. After I'm done, I'll trim the rear into shape and cover my work with some scrap wood at the very back. My original measurements must have been slightly off, because I've had to trim more from the bow planks than I originally thought and seem to need more planks to fully cover the rear. I'm trying to fix both these problems a little at a time. I'm trimming every forward plank to 2 mm, and measuring the distance to the keep each time I check. At this point, I have room for roughly 12 mm of planking on the bow, and 24 mm of planks to attach, so the math should work out. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. I'm not sure what to do with the stern yet. I think the time has come to take drastic action. Due to the deformation of the Greyhound's hull (Thanks Corel!), the planks aren't going on right. There's a large triangular gap, where the stern planking curves upward, then room for about 16 mm of planks. Right now, the plan is to measure and cut two shims from my spare planks to patch the bad angle, then proceed with the next six planks and trimming each enough so the whole form fits together. My hope is to do a little magic trick with the last three planks. First, I'll put on the garboard plank adjacent to the keel. Then, I'll boil and bend the final onto the ship, but won't glue it. This process will make it the correct shape. Finally, I'll put on the next plank adjacent to the garboard. When I put on the final shape, I can hopefully glue it into place without leaving a single nail mark on it. Of course, this little experiment will require some good measuring and estimation, and space is unsettlingly tight. All I can do is hope for the best and go one step at a time.
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I will get the ninth pair of planks done today. The work has been simple and quick so far. I did realize one thing that needed fixing before I went further though. The rudder of the Greyhound goes onto the back of the keel. But the pieces that attach the rudder a few steps from now are too thin to go around both the hull planks and the keel. Therefore, I needed to sand and cut away the back bit of plywood planking so I can cover that area with planks from the hull. I got that done yesterday before putting on more planks. Hopefully, it should all attach smoothly and make aft end of the hull trim and effective.
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I've kept going at a fairly swift rate. I'm up to 7 planks down from the gunwhale on the hull. By my measurements from earlier in the process, that means I have 10 planks to go on each side before I finish the hull. My plan is to pad the center's 17 planks with a half-plank somewhere near the widest part. Then, I will trim four planks in the stern to lose 1 mm each, and trim eight planks in the bow to lose 1 mm each. Hopefully, this maneuver will get me enough space to fit all the planks I need on. I trim the planks by cutting them with an Xacto knife and sanding them with a file after gluing them onto the ship. I've already had one slip-up and accidentally cut one bow plank pair to just 2 mm. Thankfully, that's easily remedied. I just need to skip filing down one bow plank somewhere along the line.
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Here's the latest. In the last two days, I've put on four planks. Since I last worked on the ship, I've much simplified my process. I used to sand a plank to the proper bevel, soak it in boiling water, bend it on some nails to the approximate right shape, let it dry overnight, then put it in boiling water again before using glue and tacks to attach it to the ship. Now I just sand it, boil it for a few minutes, and attach it immediately. So far it's worked just as well. No breakage, and I can get stuff done without having an absurdly long build-up time. Unlike last time, I'm going to just put on planks starting at the top and working my way down. I have the measurements fairly well-calculated, and the hull should be done in a month or two if I can do one or two planks a day.
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Yep, I have returned. I had several projects of a more personal nature to which I gave priority. Now at last I can return to the simple satisfaction of shipbuilding.
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Hello all! I set the Greyhound aside for a while for various personal life reasons, but I have at last returned. Although I may not have responded to them all, I'm grateful to all those who gave me advice on the ship. Here is what has happened since.
I decided to strip the wrongly-applied planks near the keel. In the process, I did an excellent job of razor-blading my ring finger, on which I now have a scar. Ah well... I know better now. At any rate, I successfully removed the wood with minimal damage to the ship.
Tonight, I applied the first new plank to the ship in roughly two years. It has gone on smoothy. God willing, I will have some 30 planks to go until I've finished the most difficult part of this ship. Of course, I know in my heart that the most difficult part is always the next part.
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Hello all, It's been several months. I've been very busy, and the prospect of what I might have to do to the Greyhound was depressing enough that I wasn't very much in the mood to start even when I had time. At this point, I have slowly come to the conclusion that the only way to really fix the hull is by stripping the whole bottom portion. If I do that, I risk stripping the likely too-thin layer underneath. That's the worst possible option. But that best possible option has the most risk. After all this time off, I'm also more willing to endure the difficulty of re-doing what I've done already too. So despite my concerns, that option looks more and more attractive. I've decided on a compromise. I'll try to remove the highest plank on the bottom. If it goes wrong, I've only messed up a single place, and can work to fix it, then try to use the less perfect method. If it goes right, it's potential proof of concept for doing the whole thing again. I only have to get this ship done once, so a little more time taken isn't that bad of a prospect.
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Hey all, thanks for the advice. I'll think through it. It's always helpful to take time on these things.
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Hey @allanyed, it's no problem. I appreciate all the help I can get. As the Bible says, "wounds from a friend are worth more than kisses from an enemy." I haven't responded yet because it's a busy week, and I have made little progress on the ship. I'm open to fixing the ship in the way you describe, but I doubt at this point whether it's even physically possible. The planks I'd have to cut through are a ton thinner than the earlier drastic repair I made, and they seem to be at least modestly well-aligned as it is. You've see that on the beginning of this hull, I didn't build very well and compensated for several errors by doing a lot of sanding. There are places where the bottom layer is not even half a millimeter thick. I use a strong glue for all my stuff, and I'm not sure if I can take back what I've done already without causing more damage than I would have averted. Do you think it would fix the bad alignment if I sanded the outer layer of planks down until they formed a straighter line? Also, the longboat in this link seemed to work with the planking structure Dirk used: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/1465-18th-century-longboat-by-bobf-finished-model-shipways-148-tri-club/page/2/ Does that mean it'll work on my ship if I'm careful, or is there some element at play that I failed to grasp?
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This step marks the halfway point on the hull! Finished applying the third plank from the top on both sides. It's pretty much identical, so one side does the photo fairly well. After a few careful measurements, I've discovered that I have about eight and a half planks left in the middle. In the bow, the ship is about seven planks wide, so I need to file away one millimeter per plank on four planks. On the stern, I need to lose about two millimeters. If I can do that, everything should fit in well. The real magic trick will be finding a way to put the last plank on without nail marks, but I do have a cunning plan... I'll explain later.
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After long consideration, I've decided to continue with the current planking of the hull without changing my plans. I appreciate the advice, but I've elected not to follow it. Here are my reasons: 1: The first layer of the hull went on relatively badly, and I sanded it to an extreme thinness in some places to remedy those errors. I don't trust that these planks will survive if I attempt to separate what I've already glued in place. I also don't want to drive tacks through the hull into the supporting wood a third time. There has to be a limit somewhere on how much it can bear, and I'd prefer not to discover it by snapping something irreplaceable. 2: I've just ordered another shipment of appropriately-sized walnut planks. They look right online. If they don't work, I might consider using a gentle stain to fix the color. 3: If anything proves truly unfixable with the present challenges, I can measure and sand problem planks until they fit together well. At any rate, 'a doomed voyage' has a certain appeal all its own. At this point, I have four more planks done, with about twenty to go.
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http://modelshipworldforum.com/resources/Framing_and_Planking/plankingprojectbeginners.pdf Your answer leaves me wondering about several things I've previously evaluated. You're probably right that if I truly had the will, I could actually remove what I've done so far. My current planking technique comes from these two posts. The first one says that curving the planks onto the hull in my current way keeps the hull from becoming 'clinker built,' and the longboat is a build where this technique seems to have worked out decently. Is there something different about building a large ship that I missed? What exactly is wrong with the technique I'm using?
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Hello @allanyed, thanks for your comment. I'm glad to get your advice. Unfortunately, it probably got to me about three months too late. As matters stand, I'm afraid I'll have to work with the planking strategy I have. "I am in blood wood/ Stepped in so far that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”—Macbeth
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I'm at the 1/3 done mark. Six planks on each side. Sanding one side of each plank to an angle along the whole length has worked like a charm. These ones are a far cleaner fit than the other planks. Looking from the inside of the ship, I can't see a single mote of light through the lowest part of the ship. After I sand 1mm off the current two planks, I'll have dropped one plank width off the stern and two plank widths from the side. This change leaves me with about 17.5 planks in the center, and about 17 at either end. I can sand out that difference by eye once I have only a few planks left. With my current tools--and the difficulty of measuring a curved surface--I trust that method more than I trust my ability to get that clean of a measurement. There's only one piece of bad news. I'm now sure I'm seven planks short of actually completing the ship. Five are missing, and two in the kit are somewhat deformed. What's the best store to order 1x4mm walnut strips in the USA?
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I haven't given many updates because most of these pieces have been pretty similar, but i'm now up to eight planks. Only one real disaster happened. I broke one of the planks while putting it on, and it's now too short to go onto any part of the lower hull. The experience only confirmed my intuition that I need to buy more 1x4mm walnut wood. But for now, I'll just take it one step at a time. It's probably a good time here to talk about my long-term plan for the whole hull. According to measurements I made early in the process, the center of the ship is about 17.5 planks from keel to gunwale. The stern is 16 planks, and the bow is 15. At the bow, I effectively make it 16 planks too by trimming the garboard plank to a point. That leaves me about 1 plank to lose plus whatever measuring inaccuracies I inevitably perpetrate. That still leaves me one plank and change short of the center. To solve that problem, I plan to take one millimeter off the end of four planks on each side. So far, I've given two planks this treatment, and they look good. I'll compensate the remaining two millimeters with the last couple planks where it'll be less difficult to measure an irregular curved surface. I'm very dependent on eyeballing. Of course, the fun part of the last two will be discovering how to fit planks to the hull without leaving nail marks. My working theory is to use boiling and bending to get planks to the most perfect shape I can manage, then use weights, fingers, tape, or a combination of all of the above. If there's a better technique, I'll hope to discover it before then.
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Merry Christmas and happy New Year to you all. I visited with family and left the ship at home. Since I last posted, I've added three more planks. Everything is coming together smoothly. The nice think is that I've learned from the first layer of hull on how to fit the rest together well. The only setback was accidentally stabbing my finger while putting in one of the tacks. Blood, sweat and tears is the name of the game on these things.
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Since last update, I put the two garboard planks on. They glued on well, and there's now no bare space between the hull and the keel. I've just glued on the second hull plank, and am shaping the third. So far, everything is going beautifully.
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Christmas is near! The angels sing, the bells ring, and the planks once more resume the march along the hull of my frigate. To make the garboard plank, I used office clamps to hold two plans together, then sanded them until they made a good curve. Because I sanded them together, they are now exactly alike. and will be perfectly symmetrical on both sides Then, I began to bend the next plank, using their curve as a model. I traced the curve of the garboard planks onto my wooden anvil, then boiled the plank I needed bent for twenty minutes. When the curve wasn't enough, I boiled it again, then added more bend. When it was as perfect as I could get it, I did a little sanding on the inside of the curve. By the end, the two pieces fit together perfectly. When this step was done, I sanded the top edge of the first garboard plank to an angle so it would fit cleanly onto the ship. It feels good to be making progress again.
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I'm sure you're all in a terrible amount of suspense. Did I wreck the ship at some point in the last forty-eight hours? I was thinking the same thing. But my internet went down last night and I couldn't get the result back until now. Here's what happened. First, I drew a line in pencil on both sides about where I wanted the keel, and I used tacks to secure a plank to the side for reference. Next, I cut using an x-Acto knife, trying to keep away from both the keel and the pencil line. The process was long and nerve-wracking, but easier than expected. Plywood is weak, and at some points the walnut wood keel naturally separated from it without much trouble. I could easily scrape off the remaining flakes of plywood on it without any trouble. I used sandpaper wrapped around a straight board to grind down the rough edge of the keel. To my surprise and joy, it came out so straight and smooth that it looked like I had never cut it at all. After extensive measurements to make sure I wouldn't have to repeat the whole miserable procedure, I wiped off the sawdust and got to gluing. I used the time-honored "Gulliver's Travels Technique" to provide pressure over the whole structure. It worked, although the wood was a tiny bit curved and was also now slightly shorter than the hull. It appears the keel got narrower as it went down. To correct the curve, I sanded away the worst bits. By the end, the warping was hardly noticeable. The stern of the ship was too long anyway according to the diagrams, so I felt no concern whatsoever about taking the sandpaper to that too. At present, everything lines up wonderfully, and looks straight and flat. Thanks for the advice, @harlequin and @Snug Harbor Johnny! I couldn't have done it without y'all.
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Thanks for the advice on how to do it. I don't have a plane, so I'll use the Xacto method. I look forward to telling you how it goes.
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