vaddoc

Dear all It has been 2 months since my last post, I have not had the time to work on the boat or even to catch up with your logs. I will try to though, in the meantime I do hope that you are doing well! Today though I did visit the shipyard and did some work-and had a nasty surprise. I am still not certain how I will secure the planks, whether I ll use threaded brass wire, treenails or bras pins. I experimented with 0.55 mm brass pins, nailed against a steel surface. The tips bend exactly as they should and hold the planks very securely. I think however the pin heads are out of scale. I finished the starboard garboard, the planks are secured with brass pins 0.6 mm through 0,5 mm pilot holes. The scarf is glued for now but some form of reinforcement nailing or screwing will go on. As I am not sure what I will use to fasten the planks to the ribs, I just cut the pins leaving a length so I can pull them out later as these are the temporary frames. Then I started work on the port side. Disaster... A few days ago, I needed a small piece of wood so I just broke a segment from a scrap piece I found on the bench. yep, that was the plank! I used the broken pieces to recreate the plank and thankfully, with a bit of sanding it came out fine. Then, I secured it in place The ends at the bow will need to be trimmed, I think I ve put the nails very close to the trimming line-we ll see. Till next time vaddoc

Get well soon Michael, all the best. Very good to hear all went well Vaddoc

Very nice Bill! Seems you had fun and learnt a lot. Good luck with your next project.

System 3 brushes. Fantastic results with acrylic and enamel.

Elmers colour changing filler is very good, my preferred filler. I tried osmo filler as well-very good, more liquid, dries much faster and comes in various colours.

All done Mark! But the lines are on the other side of the boat. The final fairing will be done while cutting the actual planks Today I nipped over to the shipyard, just for a few minutes. I put the planks to the steamer and then straight on the boat. Beech responds great to steaming, the planks immediately twisted to shape. Actually, the garboards look reasonable The problem with planking without a complete stem is that it is difficult to get the planks to end up at the same level on both sides. The excess wood at the plank edges will be trimmed away when the false stem is installed. The scarf joint needs a bit of tinkering. Or maybe I just need to push the half a bit forward. Best wishes to all Vaddoc

Many thanks to all for your comments and likes! Bedford, that was great. Unfortunately I do not own a quality plane that can reliably do the job. However, your suggestions were very helpful and I think I did find a solution. Also, I decided that the planking will be carvel. I will in the future make a large scale lapstrake boat but I will choose an easier boat. It will be lots of fun but needs to wait. I first made the port garboard in two halves. It took very many tries, I kept getting it wrong but finally I got it right. The planks are sanded to shape so the edges are much smoother compared to the Launch, which were cut with a knife. This is the overlap for the scarf joint The twist in the garboard is significant, almost 90 degrees. Planks will easily take a bend but will resist a lot to be twisted. Note the gap between plank and keel-it disappears with the plank in place. Another area that needed attention was the stem. The edges have to be trimmed to accept the plank ends. After planking, the excess plank material will be trimmed off so that the false stem will sit flush. Or so is the plan... Next, I tackled the scarfing. After a bid of thinking and testing, taking on board Bedford's suggestions, I find a solution. Since the planks are 2 mm thick, I went for a 25 mm scarf joint. Basically, I just used the belt sander bellow to create the bevels. This worked fine with no dramas. The edges will stand a bit proud but nothing a bit of sanding will not fix. I ll probably try and thin the edges a bit more. Now, much more care has gone into this boat, compared to the Launch. The CAD drawings are much more accurate, the frames were cut with much greater care and generally, it was put together better. With this in mind, I decided to make a set of identical garboard halves for the starboard side. Test fitting: They fit! So now I have both garboards. They need to be steamed and secured into place, this will also make the whole structure much more rigid. Another issue that needs to be dealt with is how to secure the planks to the frames. I was thinking of using threaded brass wire but now I am not so sure. This was the plan for the lapstrake. With carvel planking, sanding of the hull will be needed and the brass will complicate things. Maybe tree nails will be a better choice. Regards Vaddoc

I very much like the Humbrol spray primer. Goes on thin, sandable, dries quickly, does not smell. Comes in white, red and grey (most versatile). It will cover everything and solves adhesion issues.

Dear friends Due to increasing life commitments it's been almost a month since my last post. Unfortunately, I also did not have any time and more importantly peace of mind to visit the various very interesting logs I 've been following - I will try and catch up. However, I found some scraps of time to visit the shipyard and made a bit of progress. In the last post, I had divided the hull to three zones. Excluding the very curved bow, this hull seems to be much easier to plan that the Launch. I simply used the planking fan diagram to divide the zones into plank widths at every station. I used a baten to figure out the plan ends at the bow and stern. I have decided to scarf the planks so I do not care how much spilling will be needed and how curved they 'll end up to be. The final fairing of the planks will be done during the actual planking but I hope my lines are not far off. It is very difficult to capture the run of the planks right side up, due to the size of the boat but they look ok But now it is clear that this boat will be very difficult to do lapstrake. I am concerned that this curved bow will cost me my sanity. I wonder whether it would be better to do a carvel planking and leave the lapstrake for a future boat with a more friendly bow. Decisions-decisions... For now, I started making the first template, for the garboard plank. Initially I thought to do it in 3 pieces but then realised it makes no sense to have so many scarfs - one is plenty, giving a length of 3 to 3.5 m per plank. The last photo shows the pieces for the aft segment of the garboard-they still need to be connected. I have the feeling that the garboard should be a bit wider but I am not going back, it will be fine. Also, I need to figure out a way to scarf the planks. It needs to be reproducible and reasonably easy. Also, for this boat I will sand the planks to shape, and will put more effort to have minimal gaps. Regards Vaddoc

Personally, I try to avoid fruit woods for planking. They are a bit too hard to work with and a bit reluctant to bend, especially along the axis of the plank. I find maple and beech much nicer. Beech is much harder than maple and has a huge distinctive grain, both hold an edge very well. Walnut is terrible. Maple hull, later painted. The stains were caused by aliphatic glue that I did not bother cleaning... Beech hull, fate yet unknown.

Congratulations Mark! The stainless steel really worked very well.

Dear all Many thanks for your likes, comments and encouragement! I have not worked on either boat for the last 3 weeks, since my last post on the Yawl log. I now work pretty much 7 days a week and life has gone into hyperdrive-it is what it is and we must do what we need to do! The little spare time I have I ve decided to invest in working out to get back into shape. Today though I popped to the garage to do a bit of testing with stains. I made a grove in a piece of beech, filled it with filler and sanded to 120 grit. I ordered a number of stains, different colours and compositions-some "wax stains", "some oil stains" and some "something else". The next photo shows 5, supposingly completely different colour stains. They came out almost identical! The one on the right is walnut, the middle one is pine. There is however a bit of difference in the blotchiness, I think the middle one is a bit better. The pear wood is very dark because it was not sanded, it looks much lighter and uniform in sanded pieces. The small piece has clear sealer on the left, Tung oil on the right I expected much bigger differences in colour and better coverage of the filler. Maybe when the piece dries, the colours might change. As it is though, I quite like the middle one. But I have a few more stains to try. A word about stains: I now know why they are called "stains". The mess they created was unbelievable-pretty much everything got stained! Vaddoc

Congratulations GL, fantastic work. This last plank on the starboard side, this was no easy task. It is much easier to fit planks as you go with no limitation on the one edge rather than making a plank to fit a gap. Very well done!

Thanks Hakan, that was indeed the question Now I ve never thought about it but I think you are right, unless the plank is perfectly cut, with time it will warp back and no rivet will hold it. Much more difficult to perfectly cut a very long plank than a short one.