Plank length

[Don Case]

Is there a maximum normal length for planks? On a model you can go from stem to stern with one plank but in real life I doubt if you'd find that many 100' planks.

[Jaager]

This is a bit of data that does not seem to rate being written down, back in the day.

 

One solid number is from the Warren and Falmouth contract in HASN.  The decks were to be Southern Yellow Pine and 40 feet long by 10" max wide.

This is not just any sort of Pine.  It is now near extinct and certainly nowhere near the size then. It was hard enough to turn nails.  I suspect that it was a species with a short term availability resource that steam powered saws getting to GA and SC made practical.  So 40' for decking = the outside upper limit and probably a lot shorter for most other times and other places.

 

For hull planking,  I use 20-25 feet for length.  That seems to be a sort of consensus here.  I can provide no reference and I did not originate it.

Now, if the choice is a short section near the bow or stern ..or middle to complete a strake, or fudge the length and go a bit longer, I vote cheat on the length.

[Don Case]

20-25" is just what I was looking for. A good ballpark figure. So a 1:96 plank will be about 3-4" long? A 1:48, twice that?

[Bob Cleek]

The simple answer is "as long as possible, without unnecessarily wasting wood," which is why you won't see it written down anywhere. The narrower the planks, the higher the quality of the build, so maximum width will sometimes be specified in the scantlings. Deck planks, being straight, tend to be longer. Hull planks, less so, because, depending upon their shapes, they can require wider stock proportionate to the width of a given plank. Other limitations are the species of wood, i.e. what stock can be gotten out of a tree in the first place, and how difficult it is to transport from the tree to the shipyard. The shipwright picks each piece carefully to achieve economy in the use of what's available. As Jaager notes, a plank much longer than around 25' would be somewhat unusual. 

Edited January 19, 2021 by Bob Cleek

[mtaylor]

One caveat here... In US, many times the planks were a lot longer as the wood supply was closer to the yards.  In France, the wood was moved to the yard by river so again.. many times the planks are longer than the English.

[Don Case]

Thanks for all the answers. A follow-up. What about the shortest? Three frames?