Bob Cleek

The good Mr. Mastini's book is a good enough primer for beginning builders of boat model kits, but it has its limitations, as do most of the kits on the market, with a few notable exceptions. Mastini's book is a good book for beginning kit builders, but a lot has changed in kits since it was written. At that time, double planked model hulls were quite popular. That is not as much the case with the better kits these days which benefit greatly from laser cutting technology. (And, for openers, planking a double-planked hull requires twice the work!)

One should carefully consider the downside risks of gluing planking seams, whether by application of adhesive to the seams, or by coating the inside of a hull with epoxy resin adhesive which soaks into the seams from inside. As noted correctly, wood moves with changes in the ambient humidity levels of the environment it's in. This movement is primarily across the grain and its amount varies depending upon the wood species and, within the same species, even the location where the wood is grown. This is called tangential movement. Most woods will shrink tangentially six to ten percent when dried and will swell back depending upon the moisture content absorbed. The amount of movement is relatively small, assuming properly dried wood being used to begin with, but can still be considerable if the distance you are dealing with is relatively large. 
 
So, if you are building a model using vertical grain stock, as one should, the tangential (cross grain) side of its planked hull can easily total six inches. That's six inches of grain to shrink tangentially and even at a rate of movement of one percent, you are getting close to a sixteenth of an inch, which would be a quite noticeable crack in a model's topsides. If the planks are not fastened to each other, each will shrink individually and if you have maybe 24 1/4" planks, that shrinkage will only amount to 1/24th of a sixteenth of an inch. (You can do the math to get an exact fraction... a good example of the advantages of metric measurements!) That amount of movement isn't going to be noticeable at all and most coatings will allow for such movement without cracking at the seams. However, if the seams are all glued together, they all move as one, and the "weakest link law" takes over. In that case, a sixteenth of an inch crack along the weakest glued seam... or a crack in the wood itself... is going to occur at the weakest point. Conversely, swelling will push the glued sheet of planking for that sixteenth of an inch against everything it butts up against, again potentially causing a structural failure at the weakest point, or tend to buckle the "planking sheet" outward, breaking the glue bonds... or the wood... at the frames. 
 
Now, with prime wood species which have low movement factors and with relatively stable humidity, you may not run into any problems at all, but theoretically, the potential is there and I've seen its results in more than one model I've restored. More often than not, parts, cap rails, for example, start popping off and nobody knows why.
 
Monocoque wood hull construction is tricky. For my money, I prefer to give the wood as much opportunity to move on its own as possible without concentrating swelling and shrinking stresses within the structure.
 
Others' mileage may vary, of course.
 

Yes, that is a good observation. However, there are many MSW forumites who are greatly lacking in nautical nomenclature fluency. The world of ships and the sea has its own language and it's different for every commonly spoken language in the world. Even when the spoken language is the same, the nautical nomenclature may differ in different areas, just as the words "bonnet" and "hood" refer to the same part of an automobile in Britain and the US respectively, while a "bonnet" and a "hood" don't both refer to the same item of headgear in both Britain and the US.  And this confusion is compounded when one tries to translate "nauticalese" from  an entirely foreign language, often making the understanding of instructions for the building of model kits imported from places where a different language is spoken quite a challenge, even for the fluent "nautical" speaker in his own language, let alone one who is not.
 
As one who had the benefit of growing up with maritime nomenclature "as a first language," being involved as both an amateur and a professional with ships and the sea all my life, having a father who worked in the industry as well, it is often apparent to me when forum posters "do not speak the language." Unfortunately, there's no "google translate" for nautical nomenclature, nor language school that teaches it, as far as I know. It can only be learned by "immersion," an apt metaphor for "sink or swim." I can't imagine the difficulty a new ship model builder from Kansas or Oklahoma who's never seen the ocean must have trying to build a sailing ship model! (Parenthetically, I've seen some highly skilled modelers who are distinguished by their careful research nevertheless make glaring errors in a model, particularly in things like rigging, because they obviously have no experience sailing vessels similar to the one they are modeling.*) To do so with that handicap is quite an accomplishment! I will say that any ship modeler who is contemplating investing in books related to the hobby would do well to make one of their initial library acquisitions a very good maritime dictionary and keep it at hand at all times. (My top recommendation in that regard would be The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea.) The use of such a dictionary will go a long way in making their forum posts more understandable and, thus, encourage more helpful responses.
 
 
 
*Example:
 
This Model Shipways 18th Century Longboat kit is built in complete conformance with the kit's instructions and, I have it on good authority, is an exact "model of a contemporary model" in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England.
 
Who can spot what's wrong with it first? 
 
(Hint: It's something that should be immediately obvious to any sailor.)
 
     

The first is a staysail schooner with a boomed foresail, flying a fisherman topsail.
 
The second is a brigantine.
 
The third photograph isn't sufficiently clear to determine what we're looking at.  Unlike the other three photos, which are indisputable, this one's identity depends upon what's happening where the odd, long-sparred jib-headed sail meets the mast. Is it attached to the mast with gaff jaws, or is it crossing the mast as would a lateen antenna.  In the case of the former, it might be called gaff schooner with a weirdly long foresail gaff boom, and in the latter instance, a lateen-rigged ketch with a gaff-rigged mizzen. In the case of a lateen rig, it appears that the picture was taken while the foot of the mainsail antenna was being tacked from one side of the mast to the other. If the long boom is connected to the mast, it may have been a rig adaptation, similar to the arrangement seen on the Thames barges, which accommodated local fishing or cargo handling requirements.
 
The fourth is another staysail schooner.
 
The rest of you guys... That was pathetic. Go to your rooms!!!     
 
Thames barge:
 
 

The first is a staysail schooner with a boomed foresail, flying a fisherman topsail.
 
The second is a brigantine.
 
The third photograph isn't sufficiently clear to determine what we're looking at.  Unlike the other three photos, which are indisputable, this one's identity depends upon what's happening where the odd, long-sparred jib-headed sail meets the mast. Is it attached to the mast with gaff jaws, or is it crossing the mast as would a lateen antenna.  In the case of the former, it might be called gaff schooner with a weirdly long foresail gaff boom, and in the latter instance, a lateen-rigged ketch with a gaff-rigged mizzen. In the case of a lateen rig, it appears that the picture was taken while the foot of the mainsail antenna was being tacked from one side of the mast to the other. If the long boom is connected to the mast, it may have been a rig adaptation, similar to the arrangement seen on the Thames barges, which accommodated local fishing or cargo handling requirements.
 
The fourth is another staysail schooner.
 
The rest of you guys... That was pathetic. Go to your rooms!!!     
 
Thames barge:
 
 

Excellent point! It addresses a shortcoming of internet forums: Everybody has a soapbox, but some have a lot more to say than others do.  Forums are like good restaurants: Once they are discovered, they often tend to begin to decline in quality. The reason there are so many highly accomplished and experienced modelers on this forum, aside from its association with the Nautical Research Guild, is because they seek out each other and the rest of us are lucky to be able to look over their shoulders. They are here and make MSW what it is because this is where they can continue to learn from those who are playing the game at their level.  When a forum becomes inundated with "newbies," the "level of play" naturally drops and the "high achievers" find it increasingly less worth their while and drift off.
 
Learning is an exercise best done with the eyes open and the mouth closed, (although in my case clearly more so of the former than the latter.) The most useful learning tool of all it the search engine. Notwithstanding that most of the forum platform software packaged search engines are disappointing in the performance when compared with stand-alone search engines such as Google and Bing, they still remain the best way to look up something specific within a given forum. Given the size and age of MSW forum, there is a very high likelihood that most any question one might encounter in the course of building a ship model, excepting really esoteric historical minutia, will have been addressed, often at length, before. It's poor internet forum manners to ask others to answer a question before having exhausted your own efforts to find the answer on your own. Don't expect others to become your "information codependents." Everybody soon tires of a forum that requires hours of wasted time "separating the fly poop from the pepper" (like that other ship modeling forum we all know.) The very basic questions "newbies" ask over and over again have all been asked before. While I encourage and welcome beginners, I must confess that I rarely am moved to devote my time to answering a question they could have found themselves using the search engine.
 
To the original poster who bemoaned the lack of responses to his build log, and to the management of the forum which encourages "build logging" and "newbies" to the hobby (and we all should,) I express my sympathy. On the one hand, build logs are a valuable feature of the forum, if not its heart and soul, but on the other hand, the "build logger" has to understand that he is competing with all the other build logs for attention and it's a jungle out there. If you are new to the hobby and are posting the seventeenth active build log of a popular kit model, your build log isn't going to generate the same amount of interest as the scratch-built masterpiece of one of the published "Superstars of Ship Modeling." I'm not knocking kits by a long shot, but they are ship modeling's "gateway drug." There is an inevitable progression, at rates varying as to the individual, from building kits to "The Dark Side" of scratch-building. No two ways about it, there is far more to learn from following the scratch-build of a never-before- modeled prototype. Don't feel discouraged starting out. Learning to crawl is just as much an accomplishment as learning to walk. 

"Channel surfing" last night, I stumbled upon a gold mine of professionally produced instructional videos on a wide range of topics including woodworking and jewelry making. These are being offered on an apparently new "craft network" called Bluprint TV. Because of the Covid-19 "lockdowns," my cable provider (Comcast Xfinity X1) and probably others, are offering free premium pay channels for a limited time (at present, at least until 40-9-20. )(I found Bluprint by saying "free to me" into my voice-controlled remote control.)
 
On Bluprint, I found a "jewelry" subsection and in there I found two really good streaming video series on soldering jewelry. They are directly applicable to soldering ship model parts, of course. One, Solder Smarter: Strategies for Better Results featuring a jewelry maker named Joanna Gollberg, runs perhaps two hours (I didn't keep track) and begins with an complete instruction on the use of the Smith Little Torch and all the basic techniques of soldering. I'd considered myself a fairly competent solderer after doing it for well over fifty years, but I found myself continuously learning one new thing after another in this online course. 
 
These Bluprint instructional courses are head and shoulders above anything on YouTube, as far as "how-to-do-it" videos go. These are real professional level courses with competent teachers and high production values. Bluprint also has other more advanced courses on soldering, jewelers' metalworking, and even on the proper uses of flex-shaft tools.  I figure I'll be spending the next few evenings going through them while I "shelter in place."
 
They are also currently available free as streaming videos at https://shop.mybluprint.com/jewelry/classes/solder-smarter-strategies-for-better-results/40550 .
 
https://shop.mybluprint.com/jewelry/classes/soldering-success-in-every-scenario/58346
 
https://shop.mybluprint.com/jewelry/classes/metalsmithing-at-home/35434
 
https://shop.mybluprint.com/jewelry/classes/getting-started-with-the-flex-shaft/40629
 

Let's call a spade a spade. The search engine feature of the MSW forum platform is inadequate to address the complexity of the forum's content as well as one would expect based on experience with much more sophisticated search engines like Google, etc. (The development of these "AI-heavy" search engines is driven by their great profitability as "data mining" platforms.) This is true of most every forum search engine I've ever used.
 
There is a "hack" for this problem, however. The trick is to search the MSW forum using a more powerful search engine than the MSW one.
 
The problem:
 
For example, "drifter steam capstan," using the quotations marks to indicate the full phrase, entered in the MSW search engine yields "There were no results for your search."  Entering drifter steam capstan as separate words in the MSW search engine gets you the same "no results" response. Entering "steam capstan" will get you a fair number of results for the use of the term in the forum. Entering steam capstan as separate words rather than a phrase yields three pages of results for steam, steamer, steamboat, and capstan.
 
The hack:
 
Go to a search engine like Google and enter a search for your terms occurring in the MSW forum in the following manner:
 
"drifter steam capstan" + Modelshipworld
 
Google will tell you that there's no result found for the phrase drifter steam capstan in MSW, but it will alternately provide you with "results for drifter steam capstan + Modelshiipworld" (no quotation marks.) You can review those results and, by reading their website sources, see a much more focused set of results than the MSW forum search engine provides. 
 
The first result is:
The next is:
From all indications, these two results are as close as one can get and quickly accessible without wading through useless results
 
 

Excellent point! It addresses a shortcoming of internet forums: Everybody has a soapbox, but some have a lot more to say than others do.  Forums are like good restaurants: Once they are discovered, they often tend to begin to decline in quality. The reason there are so many highly accomplished and experienced modelers on this forum, aside from its association with the Nautical Research Guild, is because they seek out each other and the rest of us are lucky to be able to look over their shoulders. They are here and make MSW what it is because this is where they can continue to learn from those who are playing the game at their level.  When a forum becomes inundated with "newbies," the "level of play" naturally drops and the "high achievers" find it increasingly less worth their while and drift off.
 
Learning is an exercise best done with the eyes open and the mouth closed, (although in my case clearly more so of the former than the latter.) The most useful learning tool of all it the search engine. Notwithstanding that most of the forum platform software packaged search engines are disappointing in the performance when compared with stand-alone search engines such as Google and Bing, they still remain the best way to look up something specific within a given forum. Given the size and age of MSW forum, there is a very high likelihood that most any question one might encounter in the course of building a ship model, excepting really esoteric historical minutia, will have been addressed, often at length, before. It's poor internet forum manners to ask others to answer a question before having exhausted your own efforts to find the answer on your own. Don't expect others to become your "information codependents." Everybody soon tires of a forum that requires hours of wasted time "separating the fly poop from the pepper" (like that other ship modeling forum we all know.) The very basic questions "newbies" ask over and over again have all been asked before. While I encourage and welcome beginners, I must confess that I rarely am moved to devote my time to answering a question they could have found themselves using the search engine.
 
To the original poster who bemoaned the lack of responses to his build log, and to the management of the forum which encourages "build logging" and "newbies" to the hobby (and we all should,) I express my sympathy. On the one hand, build logs are a valuable feature of the forum, if not its heart and soul, but on the other hand, the "build logger" has to understand that he is competing with all the other build logs for attention and it's a jungle out there. If you are new to the hobby and are posting the seventeenth active build log of a popular kit model, your build log isn't going to generate the same amount of interest as the scratch-built masterpiece of one of the published "Superstars of Ship Modeling." I'm not knocking kits by a long shot, but they are ship modeling's "gateway drug." There is an inevitable progression, at rates varying as to the individual, from building kits to "The Dark Side" of scratch-building. No two ways about it, there is far more to learn from following the scratch-build of a never-before- modeled prototype. Don't feel discouraged starting out. Learning to crawl is just as much an accomplishment as learning to walk. 

One more thing for the newer members I have said before.  This is a world wide forum with people of all skill levels.  We literally have some of the best modelers in the world post regularly here.  People who literally wrote the books on our subjects.  Sort of a basketball forum with Lebron posting daily or a swimming forum where Phelps is all over the place.  Sometimes this is pretty intimidating.  Us mere mortals must always remember everyone starts somewhere and we all want to improve.  Some of those "pros" are the nicest and most helpful people here.  The tone and encouragement from everyone here on the forum makes this the best place to be

Hello John, others have given you a lot of good advice about your concerns and it's easy to see just how helpful the forum members are here on MSW. I read the forum for several years before I finally took the plunge and actually began participating and, even then, it took some coaxing from others before I finally opened a build log on my Medway Longboat half way through the build.
 
 It was a great experience to not only share what I was doing, mistakes and all, but also to get lots of positive feedback which kept me motivated. I had never done any rigging before and I was hesitant to start it since it seemed so complicated. I received a lot of good advice and encouragement and it ended up being my favorite part of the build.
 
Of course, most of the interactions I had at that time were with other Medway Longboat builders but I also posted questions about rigging and various techniques etc in other forum areas specific to certain topics. I got lots of good advice that way also. I'm always appreciative of the advice and complements I get and I enjoy letting others know how appreciative I am. Like Chuck has mentioned, it's a back and forth thing and, before you know it, you've made friends while learning a lot and being complimentary in the process.
 
My problem now is that I seem to spend more time reading and posting than I do working on my current build! 
 
Good luck on your build and remember to take it slow and enjoy the journey...

All,
I really appreciate the advice. 
 I get it, although it is somewhat intimidating to insert my humble opinions into topics when I have so little experience.  I guess I was somewhat spoiled since when I posted on some issues outside of my build log, e.g.
Edge of Deck Plank Layout: Spirketting, Waterway, Margin Plank
  I got responses fairly quickly.  And in fact, after I updated my build log, I saw another LN build log.  The last post in there, by Shickluna Searcher was reaching out for help and I posted the following:
Posted October 10 Searcher,
 
I'm in the same (no pun intended) boat, the Lady Nelson.  And I had the same issues you had with the first planking.  I was pointed to the definitive site videos  here: https://modelshipworld.com/forum/98-planking-downloads-and-tutorials-and-videos/ .  The key one is the 3rd I think, where Chuck shows how to edge-bend the planks.  It puts a curve into the plank that when bent in the normal sense, it lays right on top of the forward bulkheads.  Yeah, I also followed Leon, but after 5 x planks, I reached for help from the wizards around here.  They convinced me to start over, which I did.  I left the 1st plank on and edge-bent the rest of them.  And we will likely need to do the same for the 2nd planking.
 
I would also recommend that you go through Chuck's build of the Cheerful, which is close to the LN.  You can find that here: https://syrenshipmodelcompany.com/revenue-cutter-cheerful-1806.php.  There is a PDF for each chapter.
 
I'm just a little bit ahead of you in the build and you can check out my log.  I would recommend that you create your own log so you can post your own questions and not be lumped in with whadozer's log.
 
Good luck...John
 
(Still haven't figured out how to copy between topics.)
 
Believe me Glenn, your log is the go-to log for me when I hit a snag.
 
I probably spend several hours everyday scouring different areas of this forum and others and usually I see things that click.
 
Again, thank you all for the advice.  I'm trying to be a good community person; will just try to be better.  And now to review the comments I got on my last log post.  Thanks Glenn.
 
John

T bought a Harbor Freight one drum tumbler some time ago.  With the $20 off coupon it was economical.  Still in its box and stored on a shelf.  I have it in mind to find a way to add a dowel thru the central axis and that does not turn and has four flaps of sand paper.  It would be fixed flappers and moving perimeter,  My usual armchair experiment mode has me wondering just vertical or near vertical flappers should be the thing.  The end sections would need trauma to fit the dowel.  I wonder if something like an empty can of Dole's not from concentrate Pineapple juice would fit as a drum?  (The from concentrate stuff is vile.) 

No matter the model, one of the best pieces of advice given above is study the planking tutorials.  There are many ways to incorrectly plank the model, but only a few ways that will yield excellent  results.  You will see that there is no need for pins or nails at all.  At a scale of 1:64, the treenails (best if made of bamboo or some other wood, not metal) would only be about 0.015 to 0.017" diameter thus very difficult to make and to see no matter the material.   
 
Looking forward to stopping in on your build log!
 
Allan

If so, they'r'e taking a big chance, since the headstay is the most important, and most highly stressed, piece of standing rigging on the boat. The last place you want to screw in an eyebolt is the end-grain of the stem! It's a real invitation to rot in the fastener hole and the threads have little holding power in end-grain. One of the interesting features of these rather primitive, or should we say "basic," boats is how simply they are built and rigged. Their owners didn't have much to work with, but they found ways to do what needed to be done with simple elegance. 

I will be following your gléoiteog build with interest. I have a Galway Hooker on deck for my next build, a larger gleoiteog or a smaller leathbhad, if i ever can get my shop reorganized. I've done the research and, compared to other types, there's precious little available on the hookers, really, and some of the sail plans published aren't accurate at all. I can count the number of reliably accurate published plans drawings on one hand. (Notably, Chapelle's "Boston Hooker's" sail plan is nothing like the distinctive rig of the hookers and, contrary to his description in American Small Sailing Craft, there was no difference between the Galway Hookers and the Boston Hookers, the latter being built at Boston by a transplanted hooker builder from Galway.) If you can afford the astounding prices they're asking for a used copy (as much as $675 for the out-of-print 160 page paperback, but it can be found for much less if you search for it) Galway Hookers: Working Sailboats of Galway Bay, by Richard J. Scott, will be found invaluable. It is the only authoritative source detailing the methods employed for building these boats, for which no plans were ever used. They are built "basket style," by setting up four molds: a midship mold and one forward and aft of midships, a transom mold and the stem. These molds were made from patterns handed down through the generations, perhaps as far back as the mid-Eighteenth Century, by the handful of boatbuilders on the coast of County Galway and enlarged or reduced to suit the size of  the vessel to be built. Scott's book gives all the other proportional scantlings and measurements which were dictated by oral tradition, all being derived from the length of the vessel. (e.g. "the mast is as long as the boat is long; The bowsprit is half the length of the boat," sort of thing.)
 
With the backbone laid down, the patterns were set up and battens run from stem to transom and the frames were then built to fit inside the "basket" formed by the battens which, together with the patterns, The framing method of single futtocks alternately lapped was unique to our experience until the recent archaeological find of a Sixteenth Century Basque fishing boat, which more strongly evidences that the evolutionary genetics of the Galway Hooker may have been Iberian than was previously known.
 
Traditional Boats of Ireland, History, Forklore, and Construction is another great book, but it only briefly covers the hookers, giving them equal space along with all the other Irish working watercraft, of which there are many. While the hookers have enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in recent decades, they remain something of a local phenomenon. The best connection is probably the Galway Hooker's Association: https://www.galwayhookers.ie/  Padraig O'Sabhain's 304 page thesis The centrality of the Galway hooker to dwelling in the island and coastal communities of south west Conamara is linked on the Association's home page and, while I haven't had time to read it all, looks to be a something fun to curl up with on a rainy night.
 
One catch about researching the Irish hookers is that everything about them, from the names of their variants to the parts of the vessels are expressed in Irish Gaelic which uses Roman letters, but does not have the same phonetics as English. While I grew up in a home where Irish was spoken, we never learned it as children because it was the language my grandmother and mother spoke as "code" when they didn't want the kids to know what they were saying! That was only natural for my grandmother from "around the corner" from Galway in County Cork. When she was growing up, the British did all they could to stamp out the language. Children were forbidden to speak it in school. In today's Irish Republic, Irish is taught in all the schools and far more widely spoken than during the British Colonial period. Who'd have ever thought I'd have had any need to learn it later in life!
 
(I figure you know this stuff, but others who may have an interest in modeling the hooker might not.)
 
I plan to build a static model to a larger scale, perhaps 1:24, to permit depiction of all the classic details. 
 
Good luck with your build!
 
 

I realize reading these kind of topics on tools that buying a good tool is not so easy. Experience is needed to build a model ship, experience is also needed to buy tool. Is it wasting money to buy cheap tool which will not last for years? Of course, the answer is yes, but the answer can also be yes for someone at his first model who does not know if he will like this hobby or not. There are a lot of difference between a good tool and a cheap tool, and price is not only the difference.

Considering that in 1775 the beer ration was one gallon a day or eight pints, I find it hard to see how the admiral could say the half pint tot of spirits could be any worse!  Then again, perhaps the beer was weak. The sailors would "prove" that their rum wasn't watered down by pouring a bit on some gunpowder and seeing if the gunpowder would still burn, which confirmed it was at least 57 percent alcohol, or, in other words, "114 Proof," which is pretty stiff stuff. They couldn't do that with beer.
 
 

Considering that in 1775 the beer ration was one gallon a day or eight pints, I find it hard to see how the admiral could say the half pint tot of spirits could be any worse!  Then again, perhaps the beer was weak. The sailors would "prove" that their rum wasn't watered down by pouring a bit on some gunpowder and seeing if the gunpowder would still burn, which confirmed it was at least 57 percent alcohol, or, in other words, "114 Proof," which is pretty stiff stuff. They couldn't do that with beer.
 
 

I think you mean basswood.  Boxwood is not widely available nor would you want to use it as the first layer of planking under walnut...or anything.

You should use a tight grained hardwood that will withstand shaping and sanding while still maintaining a crisp edge.  Assuming that you are not using Castillo, aka boxwood, and want to limit yourself to readily available commercial materials, a good, straight grained maple would be a good choice.
 
Basswood, also readily available is a poor choice; too soft and fuzzy.
 
All of this depends on you having woodworking equipment to rip wood into needed sizes.
 
I believe that Syren still sells Castillo in sheets.  Check with them.

Considering that in 1775 the beer ration was one gallon a day or eight pints, I find it hard to see how the admiral could say the half pint tot of spirits could be any worse!  Then again, perhaps the beer was weak. The sailors would "prove" that their rum wasn't watered down by pouring a bit on some gunpowder and seeing if the gunpowder would still burn, which confirmed it was at least 57 percent alcohol, or, in other words, "114 Proof," which is pretty stiff stuff. They couldn't do that with beer.
 
 

Wipe on polyurethane is simply thinned polyurethane varnish or "clear coating," if you will. It's marketed for folks who don't want to go to the trouble of mixing their own and for that convenience they pay the price of polyurethane varnish for a can half full of far less expensive thinner.   The same result can be achieved using a mixture of half boiled linseed oil and half turpentine. Either way, the "preferred technique" is getting it on the wood however works for you, and then wiping off the excess before it starts to dry. It's really no different than any other oiled wood finish, save for the chemical components of the coating itself. As the man says, "Follow the directions on the can."
 
How many coats to apply and whether you feel the need to sand or not are matters of personal taste. As with all finish and wood species combinations with which the user is not completely familiar,  one should always test the application on a piece of scrap wood of the same species (and preferably the same color, if colors vary in the species) to ensure the result desired. Nothing's worse than ruining a work piece with a botched finish!
 
 
 

Thanks for the tip! I'll pass on the premixed hide glue.
 
Strongly agree on the drawbacks of PVA adhesives acidity, as does the National Park Service in their conservation standards. (See: https://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/18-02.pdf )  I've repaired "lead bloom" issues by providing case ventilation and it seems to have worked, for the last 20 years or so, at least. At present, short of real hide glue, PVA adhesive seems to be a necessary evil. I expect minimizing PVA to small amounts used in model construction serves to minimize the problem. For that reason, I use clear shellac for stiffening lines and sail material, not thinned PVA adhesive. Case ventilation is essential and not just for lead oxidation prevention. The acid from whatever source slowly deteriorates everything, particularly fiber rigging and sail material.
 
While on the subject of acidic outgassing and display cases,  based on the professional literature, I only use UV-sheilding picture frame glass for display cases and avoid all plastics in case construction at all costs due to their potential acidic outgassing characteristics. High quality plastic glazing materials (e.g. Perspex, Plexiglas, Lucite) are reportedly inert, but I'm not taking any chances that what I'm getting is "the good stuff." (Besides, as a matter of taste, I prefer the more traditional look of a wooden or metal framed glass case.) (See: https://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/08-05.pdf ; See also: https://ccaha.org/resources/selecting-materials-storage-and-display )

For those members who have never perused the Database section of MSW, here are the links to the planking tutorials by Antscherl and Passaro.  
 
http://modelshipworldforum.com/resources/Framing_and_Planking/Planking primer.pdf
 
http://modelshipworldforum.com/resources/Framing_and_Planking/Lining Off your hull for planking.pdf
 
http://modelshipworldforum.com/resources/Framing_and_Planking/NailPatternJig.pdf
 
http://modelshipworldforum.com/resources/Framing_and_Planking/plankingfan.pdf