Is single planking more difficult

[MDB]

I'm ready to start my second boat, my first being the Beagle, a lot of the ships I'm looking at are single planked which is making me pause.

How much more difficult is it ?
I presume this will make tapering the planks a necessity ?

 

[Y.T.]

This does not give you much margin for errors. You must do the planking perfect first time.

 

[AllanKP69]

How much more difficult is it ?

Depends on who you ask. My first two models in the late 1970s were double planked and I was proud of how they looked. Then, like you, I wanted to frame and plank like a real ship. 50 years later and never did a double planking after those first two. I WISH we had the information back then that we have so readily available today, you are lucky.

There are many considerations from spacing of frames or bulkheads, to budget for high quality wood, to patience, to covered bottom (paint or copper) , lack of fear of do-overs and the list goes on. I think most would agree that the bow area is the most difficult. I am anxious to hear from members who have used both single and double planking why they prefer one or the other.

There are a lot of things to consider, but perhaps the easiest thing is to study a couple planking tutorials on lining off the hull and making the individual planks.
If you are going to spile the planks, the tutorial A Primer on Planking by well-known author and ship modeler David Antscherl is great (PDF attached) I have since relied more on the method of hot air edge bending, but both can work if you are diligent.

Edge bending video by Chuck Passaro.

This is part one of four.

Perhaps the easiest single thing to look at to help you decide if you want to give a go at realistic planking is to study planking expansion drawings. There are a lot of drawings on the RMG Collections site available for free download. This will show you the shapes of the planks when they are laying flat. If this complexity does not worry you, go for it. One example follows.

 

[Ted Robinson]

Depends on who you ask. My first two models in the late 1970s were double planked and I was proud of how they looked. Then, like you, I wanted to frame and plank like a real ship. 50 years later and never did a double planking after those first two. I WISH we had the information back then that we have so readily available today, you are lucky.

There are many considerations from spacing of frames or bulkheads, to budget for high quality wood, to patience, to covered bottom (paint or copper) , lack of fear of do-overs and the list goes on. I think most would agree that the bow area is the most difficult. I am anxious to hear from members who have used both single and double planking why they prefer one or the other.

There are a lot of things to consider, but perhaps the easiest thing is to study a couple planking tutorials on lining off the hull and making the individual planks.
If you are going to spile the planks, the tutorial A Primer on Planking by well-known author and ship modeler David Antscherl is great (PDF attached) I have since relied more on the method of hot air edge bending, but both can work if you are diligent.

Edge bending video by Chuck Passaro.

This is part one of four.

Perhaps the easiest single thing to look at to help you decide if you want to give a go at realistic planking is to study planking expansion drawings. There are a lot of drawings on the RMG Collections site available for free download. This will show you the shapes of the planks when they are laying flat. If this complexity does not worry you, go for it. One example follows.

View attachment 583550

It would be nice to see a source for these drawings where they are readable to older codgers like myself. Just thinking

 

[DAWarden-(Jaager)]

To explore this question at the theoretical - as an armchair experiment:

It should not matter whether the hull is single or double planked as far as the layer of planking on display is concerned.
They both should be laid identically.

To guess the situation:
A double planked hull has a barely adequate number of molds. if that.
A substantial thickness of first layer planking is supposed to rectify any deficiency with the molds and produce a fair and smooth surface for the second layer.
To do this job it should not matter how the planking is laid as long as it is smooth and fair. It can even be diagonal. It does not need to be laid in any official pattern. It just needs to be a solid hull layer.
Narrow gaps between the planks do not affect how the second layer lays so any sort of spackle to fill the gaps between planks is rather pointless.
Dips and hollows along the run must be addressed. A serious hollow is probably better repaired with a scab of wood.
If a hash is made of the first layer such that there is not enough stock to do the job, going to a home improvement center and buying a piece of construction Pine - getting it resawn and thickness sanded to the same thickness as the kit supplied first layer stock should fill the need.
Just using this Pine from the start for the whole job would probably be more satisfactory. The planks can be sawn wide enough to allow for spilling, and probably with fewer strakes overall.
If, as seems to be most often done, the bottom is then sheathed with copper, the second layer is redundant under it. Any layer of copper that is thicker than a micro foil is out of scale thick. The veneer second layer can start at the copper and go upside. It will probably be thinner and if not - backside tapering should fake it.
The second layer is often a thin veneer. More often than not it seems to be a species picked for its color alone. It often is open pore and brittle. There is no joy in working it. It is not wide enough to spill. It should probably be twice as wide and twice as much

A single planked planked hull needs to be 50% solid wall support.
The planking needs to be wide enough to spill.

For either method, if any tapering is done on the upper edge of the garboard strake, the job is already ruined.

Let the return barrages roll.