jpalmer1970

I haven't made much actual progress with the hull planking over the last few days but I was able to sit down and work out the best way to approach it. This is my first model yacht and so planking hulls previously has involved butting up to a stem post which gives you a fixed target at which the plank needs to finish. With yachts like the Pen Duick though the planks on either side of the hull come together and form a sharp v shape just in advance of the false keel. I have therefore been experimenting with whether it is better to put a bevel on the inside edge of each planks so that they sit together nicely at the required angle or whether the alternate approach of having one plank sit slightly forward of the other so the second plank butts against the side of the other and then trimming that forward plank to follow the keel line is easier. I have decided that this second option is actually easier in practice. Once the whole hull is planked there will be a lot of sanding (and filling !) required during which I can refine the sharp v shape which forms the leading edge of the keel. That may not have made sense in words but hopefully some pictures will help. I have certainly found it easier to have a couple of sacrificial pieces of planking which I use each time to accurately work out the angle that the front parts of the planks need to be to follow the false keel. The angle changes slightly as you more and more rows of planks are added so I just re-trim the ends each time and then use those pieces as templates for the cutting of the actual planks. I also make pencil marks across two rows of planks when adding the next layer as the plank which is currently being fixed needs to be repeated taken off the model for various tasks such as the sanding of the bevel along the edge where it butts against the previous row, determining its length and cutting the right angle into the end of the plank. The marks across the planking layers therefore help me ensure that I am refitting the plank back in exactly the same place each time. The planks are clamped to the frame (but no glues used) each time so that further adjustments to the fit can be made until it is as good as I think I am going to get. Finally the planks is glued and clamped into place with various types of clamps, elastic bands and other paraphernalia as required to ensure the planks lay properly against the frames and along the join with the previous plank layer.

That looks great, very well done!

Some great advice from lots of people here. I would add that I find many uses for a variety of rubber bands in various thicknesses and lengths, especially when planking the hull. And the same goes for clamps, getting a variety of sizes and widths and reach etc is always helpful and you can never have too many!

Many thanks for the kind comments 😃 As mentioned previously I decided to add some of the mahogany planking to the other sub decks and bulkhead under the deck hatches just to make sure that if anything was to be seen through the hatches it would be the darker planking rather than the lighter ply sub decks and bulkhead. This was quickly accomplished and so I was able to move onto to starting the hull planking - the kit instructions actually suggest you add the coaming ledges for the hatches before moving onto the deck planking, but as these stand a little proud of the deck I thought that it might be easy to catch and damage them whilst the hull is upside down during the hull planking. I have therefore omitted this step for the time being but will return to it after the hull is planked. The kit supplied planks are 5mm wide by 2mm thick which I think is a little overkill. The model is only single planked and I realise that you may need some 'meat' in the planking for when it comes to sanding later on but the 2mm thickness of the planks is going to make it difficult to bend and shape the various curves needed for the hull shape. I have therefore replaced these with 5mm wide by 1mm thick limewood planks. As far as the hull planking is concerned kit instructions suggest that the first step with this part of the build is to add the bulwark planks - this is 8mm wide and stands 5mm above the top of deck, leaving only the lower 3mm section to be glued to the deck sides and bulkheads. As @BobG indicated in his build this sounds a little tricky and it would again be easy to damage this whilst the other hull planking is ongoing. I therefore began my hull planking by attaching the first plank which sits immediately below the bulwark plank - ie 3mm down from the top of the deck. This plank, once in place, will also provide a much more stable edge to which the bulwark plank can also be glued when it is finally attached to the hull. I also needed to find some way to securely hold the inverted hull, as I find it easier to do the hull planking on an upside down hull. For previous builds I had made a suitably sized building board with balsa blocks to hold the hull in place but this time around I wondered whether I could utilise my mini workbench from Veritas. This has a multitude of small 17/64" holes in which fixings can be placed to hold the hull securely. As there is a slight sheer curve to the deck I needed to add some thin pieces of wood (lolly sticks 😃) under the centre part of the deck to support it there. As ever when it comes to planking the more clips and clamps, and the more variety of types of clips and clamps, you have is an advantage and so I used a selection of small clips to hold the plank securely to the bulkhead - for the first plank on each side I also used a couple of pins just to make sure it was securely held in place whilst the PVA glue and clamps were attached elsewhere. For the second plank on each side, and the subsequent ones to come, I will only use PVA glue to secure the plank in place. Two planks each side have been attached so far and I was able to bend these to the required shape at the stern just using the clamps - no water or heat was required - and no tapering of the planks was needed either. One point to look out for is that the planks need to meet at a tight v shape at the bow and so sanding a suitable chamfer into the tip of the plank is required. I am not a very quick hull planker so this part of the build will probably take me some time to complete, but I do find it one of the more interesting parts f the build.

That looks great !👍

I have had a short break from the shipyard to have a little holiday but I am now back and was able to continue with the decking of the Pen Duick. I'm pleased to say that things continued well with cutting the joggles in the king plank and I was able to complete the decking earlier today. Of course, it didn't all turn out to be exactly symmetrical, as just a fraction of a millimetre difference in the plank widths or the positioning of the king plank can cause quite a cumulative error when transferred across the number of planks needed to cross the deck. I found that in the last section I worked on, in the midships forward of the main hatch, the gaps for the last planks either side of the king plank was slightly different on each side. The difference was only perhaps less than half a millimetre but when the planks are only 2mm wide it is a significant proportion of the full plank width. However, once those planks had been added I don't think it will be too noticeable, especially once all the deck furniture etc is added. I still have to scrape the deck clean and finish cutting the six holes near the stern for the tabs for the cockpit coamings but I think I will leave both of those tasks until after the hull planking has been done. Although the instructions don't call for it I think my next job will be to put some mahogany planking on the sub decks of the hatches to match what I did with the cockpit floor. I'm sure you probably can't see the ply subdecks once the hatch covers go on but it is an easy job just to plank them now why they are still a bit more accessible.

This looks great!

Hello and welcome!

Congratulations - you have a great model there. I look forward to watching your future builds.

Great work!

Thanks for the comments Harry - coamings is indeed the word I wasn't able to think of. To be honest I haven't really looked at the deck fittings yet so I yet to see how closely I stick to the instructions or not. Thanks also for the video - amazing how much it is able to heel over, even just for what appears to be a leisurely cruise around the harbour!

Planking the deck of the Pen Duick continues….. I have found that the key to making the cuts for the joggles is just to go very very slowly taking a small piece out at a time until you have removed the right amount of material. So far the mahogany king plank has been nice and co-operative with no wayward splits or shards breaking off. I did manage to scratch a couple of the planks near the bow with the point of the scalpel but I believe this will be able to be rectified when time comes to sand/scrape the deck once it has all been planked. There is one thing that I am now doing differently compared to when I began. Initially I was marking the entire edge of each plank with the pencil to simulate the caulking prior to it being glued and fixed to the deck. However, it soon became apparent that this method led to a few dirty graphite fingerprints on the nice deck and so I quicky changed to only adding the pencil marks to the edges of the planks after they had been glued to the deck – ie immediately before the next plank was just about to be stuck down. Running a pencil along the edge of each plank just gives a very thin pencil line right on the top edge of the plank which is ideal for the appearance of the caulking. There is then far less graphite to smudge and make a mess with, especially if I have been a bit too enthusiastic with the amount of glue used. So far I have only very roughly cut out the six deck slots near the stern into which the cockpit deck beams (not quite sure what those parts are actually called?) are fixed. I think it will be easier to get these to the required dimensions when that part of the cockpit framing is being installed. A few more sessions should hopefully see the deck completed.

I started on the deck planking this week. I began with a quick trial of the 2mm wide planks with the caulking effect using a dark pencil. I put together a little bunch of planks and gave them a quick coating with some wipe on poly. I think the pencil mark comes through enough to be effective and is how I am going to proceed. The black paper would be overkill I think as it would be too thick at this scale - it is basically thin card and I couldn't find anywhere selling thin paper, or even tissue paper in small enough quantities. One side of some of the planks is a little darker than the other and so I'll make sure I sort them to try to get as consistent a colour as possible. A few also need a bit of a sand to tidy up the sides slightly. I also had to work out the butt shift pattern in the deck planking. Using the picture of the deck i included earlier in the log I was able to work out the pattern and replicate it in a small drawing to use as a planking guide. I think this is a 4 butt shift pattern (?) but it doesn't seem to be the usual one where the butt joints of adjacent planks move up (or down) the deck by one length each time. It was also difficult to see exactly how long the individuals planks are on the real deck so I had to estimate this somewhat. I decided on a length of of 4.5cm between butt shifts giving a full plank length of 22.5cm or about 21ft at full scale. One of the key things to get right with a deck like this is making sure everything is a symmetrical as possible on each side of the deck. I am using a small length of tape to mark where the perpendicular cuts need to be made in the king plank to form the front of the joggles - by making sure this is square and the same distance from the bow along each side of the hull I should be able to keep things as square as possible. So far I have installed three planks on each side of the deck - a small army of clamps helping with this immensely!

I'm interested to follow your progress on this - it is on my list of 'maybe the next build' ......

It all comes together nicely at this stage and starts looking like a 'proper' ship. You have a great model there - well done!

You may already be aware of this video but there is a great animation of the assembly of this model here.

Hello and welcome!

Thanks for this Reg, it is an interesting video to watch and he clearly explains the steps needed. Hopefully I can make it look that easy at a much smaller scale! I have been watching Leo from Sampson Boat Co. build/restore his yacht for the last few years - the videos are on youtube here and it is fascinating to see the work involved in making a full size ship.

Hi Thukydides, the drill and press came from Amazon. You can see the details here. It wasn't cheap but I was lucky enough to get it as a Christmas present 😀 There are two different drill options and either can come with or without the press stand. I really like it because the rpm is so slow - only 550rpm compared to my Dremel lite of 5,000 rpm +. I find it much easier to drill accurate holes with the slower speed drill, which can be used either in the press or by hand. The drill is USB chargeable and the set comes with 10 drill bits from 0.5mm to 2.3mm. The shank size is 2.35mm (or 3/32") so it is easy to buy further bits if necessary but I haven't had any problems with the kit supplied ones so far. The footprint of the press stand is pretty small, only 10cm x 9cm so it is ideal for us in our small workspaces, and I think it is unlikely I would ever need to use it with anything too large to adequately fit in the stand 👍

Thanks Harry - it is good to know it is possible. I was thinking that my small drill bits won't be long enough to go through the whole length of material but as you say I only need to start off with a small hole a centimetre or two deep to set the angle for the larger, longer drill bits to follow. I'll revisit this before I start hull planking and decide how to proceed from there.

I bought the Proxxon lathe for my Alert build as well - it certainly makes mast and spar shaping much easier. Looking forward to seeing your future Vanguard builds!

After a little more sanding of the frames and keel I think I have got as far as I can with the fairing until I start on the planking of the hull. The kit instructions actually indicate the next step in the build is to move on and start the deck planking rather than undertaking the hull planking now and so I have decided to follow this process. The deck planking is a pretty simple affair according to the instructions, just 3mm planks butting up to the three forward hatch frames and the king plank and then the frame of the cockpit hatch is set atop the deck planks. The real Pen Duick deck planking is of course a slightly more intricate affair - all four hatch frames are level with the deck planking and the much thinner deck planks are all joggled into the king plank and the hatch frames. It is my intention to copy the real deck planking as much as possible. I began by installing the 10mm wide mahogany king plank and making the frames for the four deck hatches. The hatch frames are 5mm wide mahogany. What seems like a fairly simple task actually took quite a while to execute well. Getting all the frames and the king plank to sit square, equal and parallel where required, and symmetrical along the centre line took a fair amount of fettling, and in one or two cases removing and re-doing! The deck isn't particularly wide, even at its widest point, so being even a fraction of a millimetre off in the placement any of the frames makes things look off - and with only 2mm wide deck planks to be used being a millimetre out to one side will mean that the planking would certainly not look even. One of the sections of the the king planks needs a 6mm diameter hole cutting for the mast - I used my mini drill press to cut this hole starting with a 1mm drill bit and working up in sizes until I was able to fit a semi-circular file into the hole. I didn't want to use large and large drill bits up to 6mm as I feared the mahogany might be too brittle. With the file i was then able to enlarge the hole to the 6mm size required - I think it came out nicely in the end. There is also a slanted 3mm hole for the rudder arm which needs to be drilled through the deck, false keel and keel stiffeners. I am really not sure how to accomplish this as getting the angle right is going to be very tricky and I'm not sure I have long enough drill bits in small enough sizes and so I am wondering whether to cheat and just have a false piece coming out of the deck to the tiller and not have it connected to the rudder at all. The model will be put in a display case so no-one is going to be using the tiller to see if the rudder actually works 😃 For the time being I have simply drilled a 2mm hole squarely in the section of the king plank where the slanted 3mm hole is situated so that later on in the build I have a marker for the correct location. After installing the king plank and frame hatches and the thicker stern piece I then set about adding a margin plank on each side of the deck from some 3mm mahogany. This needs to be joggled into the king plank near the bow and my mini Veritas chisels were ideal for this job. I think I have been fortunate with the 10mm piece of mahogany included in the kit as the king plank as this seems to be far less brittle than the other pieces of supplied mahogany. Therefore it was fairly easy to cut the required joggles using the chisels and a new #11 blade. Hopefully the rest of the joggles will be equally as easy - there are going to be a lot of them to do! I had to experiment a little on the best way to support the model at this stage. The Amati keel clamp which I had been using prior to the fairing work simply wasn't suitable anymore given the bottom of the keel is now an angled section, and after looking at various options, including building a suitable sized cradle, I eventually hit on the solution of using two adjustable workbench vices with soft rubber jaw covers to hold the model. The model can be held securely with one vice in the centre but working at either of the extreme ends of the model did make things a bit tippy - using both vices got around this problem. Whoever said you always need more vices, clamps, grips and other means of holding things was certainly right!

Hello and welcome!

Fantastic work. Congratulations!!

I know this isn't contemporary at all but can you use some of the images from the Vanguard online manuals as a template to form a basis for your own version of the design. There are images in the Alert manual of course but I am also thinking of the ones in the Duchess of Kingston manual as the design there is a bit more intricate?