Somewhere in the various build logs was someone’s advice that the hull planking should be carried out before continuing with the great cabin. It didn’t take very long attempting to clamp planks to hull to see that that was good advice.
The suggested pattern was a three butt shift. I could choose my own starting point, so I opted to begin with the plank immediately above the channels. That plank starts at the forward edge of the cabin windows and runs to the front of the model.
I didn’t glue the top plank in place so that I could trim the tops of the frames at a later stage. Instead, I glued the next two rows in place. The planks below these are dry fitted in the following picture:
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Clamping the two rows of planks below the channels was relatively easy but required the largest spring clamps that I have. The ‘F’ clamp through the window was very useful for holding down the planks at the stern.
I can’t remember but, looking at the picture, it would appear that the forward sections of planking have already been glued in place.
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There’s one more row of hull planking still to go, and that’s as far as my clamps can reach.
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That’s as far as I could go clamping from the top, so the hull was inverted to fit the wales. At first my small spring clamps wouldn’t fit between the frames because of width of the orange jaws. These are held in place with steel pins. You can spring the jaws off without removing the pins, but you need to remove them later to replace the jaws, so you might as well remove them to start with.
The next picture shows the fitting of the starboard mid wale. As you can see, clamping methods have become much more creative.
The lower mid wale (the top one in the picture) is dry fitted.
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There are several minor differences in this next picture, but the significant one is the darker colour of the lower (top) mid wale. That’s because it’s now soaking wet and hopefully drying to the required shape at the aft end.
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Here’s the (almost) completed starboard planking. The 1st plank has been left off for the moment so that the frame tops can be trimmed if necessary.
The channels are dry fitted and the window openings have been opened out. I’m considering veneering the sides of these.
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And here’s the port side:
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And finally, here’s how the stern turned out:
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Although they’re not required at the moment, there are some pieces needed to fill the gaps in the planking in line with the channels. These are the hull mouldings. At this stage they were strips of wood without the moulding!
Mike S. had used some dedicated scrapers to cut grooves running the full length of these pieces. I opted to try and create the same pattern.
I stuck a piece of Mike’s masking tape on the side of one of the pieces and clamped it in the vice on my mini pillar drill. The other piece could be slotted into the vice above it and moved side to side because the masking tape slightly increased the clearance.
The pillar drill had been modified in the past with the addition of a screw on the ‘Z’ axis. That allowed me to set the depth of cut, and pushing the top piece of wood from side to side machined a groove along the centre of the piece.
I repeated this with the groove offset to one side. Turning the top piece of wood around created a groove on the other side.
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And this was the result:
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