Starting the planking

I have finished the hull body and now we have to start putting the base layer of planking on.

Here is the hull body ready to start.

Here you can see part of the side of the hull.

The vertical frames are there to both strengthen the hull and to have something to glue and pin the strakes to.

In the picture you see the important tools for this part, a sanding block, a few pins and the magic item, the pin pusher!!

The sanding block has been used to sand where necessary to line the vertical frames to the lower hull and to round off the front of the frame.  They come in several different grit sizes for removing to smoothing wood.

You can use a fast contact adhesive or cyanoacrylate to fix the strakers, in fact I did use cyanoacrylate for the first join to lessen movement during the pinning.

The narrow tube you see projecting from the handle if the pin pusher is spring loaded and has a solid stop inside that stays stationary as the outer tube is pushed in.  The pin is put inside the tube, the tube placed over exactly where you want the pin and then the whole thing is pushed down towards the wood, the the tube pushing back and the stop forcing the pin into the wood in a very precise way.

A very useful piece of kit.

Now we have a couple of the strakes pinned and glued in position.

These strakes are 8mm x 2mm so not very big and care must be taken not to break them.

To make the strakes mow malleable they have been soaked for a while so that they can take the shape of the bow more easily.

You can see the pins holding the strakes in place.  They have been pushed slightly below the surface of the wood so as to leave a smooth surface for the decorative veneer finish.At both the bow and stern the strakes have been left a bit over length so they can be cut accurately once they are solidly in place.

Here we have the finished side being left for the glue to thoroughly go off so it can be cut and sanded to shape.

As you can see the finish is not absolutely perfect as it is very difficult to get a straight bit of wood to bend round something that is bending in several directions.

I could have probably made it a bit smoother but remember this is not the finished surface and filler can be used to make the surface perfect to take the very thin veneer strips that make up the top layer.

No doubt a top line modeller would have smashed their computer/tablet/phone in rage at seeing short cuts like this, but in my mind it is the finish that has to be perfect and the first layer can be made perfect by cheating a bit.

The new tool you see in this photo is a modellers saw, a very important piece of equipment as it is fine enough to be able to cut the very delicate wood without splintering.

What is left to do now is put the strakers on the other side, leave it to dry thoroughly, cut and sand, then smooth off with a fine wood filler where necessary leaving it shaped and smooth to accept the 0.6mm thick veneer strips.