Planking and Bowsprit

It was only about September or October that I began to think of making a raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at my service again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling. I had never done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent day after day in experimental chopping and binding among the trees. I had no ropes, and could hit on nothing wherewith to make ropes; none of the abundant creepers seemed limber or strong enough, and with all my litter of scientific education I could not devise any way of making them so. I spent more than a fortnight grubbing among the black ruins of the enclosure and on the beach where the boats had been burnt, looking for nails and other stray pieces of metal that might prove of service. H. G. Wells - The Island of Doctor Moreau

When I began planking I started at the line of the upper deck. First I had to wait until the planks were finished by the mill. I'd requested them to be planed to a thickness of three quarters of an inch (1.9 cm), only to find that when I went to pick them up they were only planed on one side. How the instructions got lost I had no idea, and I couldn't imagine how the guy who planed them thought I'd be moulding rough-cut planks to the ribs, but I needed them re-planed. I told them about the mistake, and they said they'd redo them, which meant that I lost another eighth of an inch (.31 cm). Once I'd guessed at the flexibility of the wood by what I'd been using, I figured that the mistake was in my favour. The thinner planks were easier to steam and bend.

I rabbeted the stem by running the circular saw over it along the line I'd drawn, and then finished the fine work with a chisel. I was impatient to get to the planking, so I could easily have done a better job on the rabbet. It was perhaps 3/8 of an inch (.95 cm) deep and more or less on the desired angle, but in retrospect it would have been better to have spent more time cutting the rabbet so that it would more easily match the planks.

Rather than lose timber by scarfing the joins, I butt-blocked two planks together with glue and deck screws. That gave me over twenty feet (6.09 metres) of planking that would easily reach from stem to stern. I steamed the first plank by boiling water in an electric kettle and then pouring that over t-shirts I wrapped around the plank. When the plank was thoroughly steamed-at least as much as I needed and could do without a steam box-I clamped it to the central ribs, and then worked from amidships aft and forward. When I was fitting the plank to the stem I needed multiple tries to get it into place, each time clamping it nearly into place and then trimming it with the electric planer. When I finally had it clamped to the outside of the transom and connected on an angle to where it would meet the stem properly, I used the industrial polyurethane glue and clamped and then deck-screwed it into place. It was a procedure which took a few hours, and when I finally had it seated, I scraped away the glue and began to work on the next plank.

I'm sure that someone working from professional plans would have done a much better job. They would have known the exact angles and dimensions which would mate the planks to the ribs, but I had no such advantages. In all my research for boat plans, I saw none that matched what I wanted. I had no choice but draw up my own plans, and for every hour I gained by avoiding the calculations which would lead to more detailed plans, I spent my time trimming and measuring and cutting and sanding.

Once the top plank was in place, I decided to work on the garboard, the one nestled in beside the keel. Although I wouldn't advise it now that I know better, I decided to cut a two-inch (5 cm) plank and then install it by gluing it to the keel, screwing it in place through the body of the thin plank and by screwing and gluing to the ribs. This meant the ribs were more securely held in place, and the garboard operated as part of the structure holding the ribs to the keel. Normally a wooden boat would have the plank along the keel cut on a long curve to a point, and it would be connected to the next plank in a way that the middle of each would make up the difference between the middle planks and the bottom ones.

Unfortunately, the way I did it-running a narrow plank along the keel and up towards both the transom and the stem-also left me with awkward ends of the plank. The forward end needed to be cut on a long angle to fit the next plank as it walked up the stem, and the ribs needed to be cut on an angle to hold the angled plank. That meant using the planer to insert a slope that would have been better to have cut into the ribs originally. I trimmed it into place, although I wasn't happy with its fit, and then went back to the upper plank to fit the next one down.

I spent many days on the planking, even though Joshua Slocum had glossed over the matter in one line: "The planks for the new vessel, which I soon came to put on, were of Georgia pine an inch and a half thick. The operation of putting them on was tedious, but, when on, the calking was easy."

The next glue-up was more demanding, but after I got the hang of the amounts I needed to trim away to fit the plank to the stem, and let it overhang the transom so I could trim it later, it became much easier. The bend at the prow was abrupt, but the steaming proved to be sufficient to pull the plank into place since I was using both large c-clamps and deck screws to hold it. Once the glue fastened the second plank to the first one, with clamps squeezing them together, I was ready to let the glue set.

In many ways those were the easiest planks to fasten, for they had little curve or twist, and the transom was nearly perpendicular to the floor at the upper end. I continued adding planks to the bottom of the hull by cutting them on an angle to admit the next plank, and then edge-gluing them in place. By May 13th I had several of the lower planks on both sides and the same two at the gunwale. I would hold one plank alongside another by using a block of wood under the clamp, and for others I fastened them by glue to the ribs and the plank next to it, as well as long deck screws. It was far more robust that it needed to be.

One disturbing problem I was beginning to notice was the keel was nowhere near as deep as I'd planned on. Because some of the upper keel was embedded in the ribs, and almost an inch (2.54 cm) of it was covered by the planking, the original nine inch (22.8 cm) keel was down to six (15.24 cm) or seven inches (17.78 cm). Although that meant I would need to deepen the keel if it was going to act as a lateral force against the water while I was sailing, I figured I could save that problem for another time.

The next issue was the cabin superstructure. I started with the companionway by timbering either side of what would be the main hatch, and then closing in the bulkhead with quarter inch (.635 cm) plywood. It was mainly needed to close off the space, and only part of it was meant to be structural, but I still glued it to the timbers as well as used drywall screws to hold it in place.

The next few weeks as the month of May drew to a close were busy ones. I spent a generous amount of each day installing planks, reshaping and fitting them to bond with the plank beside them as well as the ribs and stem, all the while butt-blocking their joins. After three hours or so of fitting a rib and making it ready to glue, I would begin the next one on the other side. Setting one plank per side meant I could brace the plank with boards between it and the next, and then partially clamp it by wedging cut off pieces from the rest of the timber into the gaps.

That still left me with a few hours free every day, so I began to work on the forward deck. It was meant to be a solid piece of 1/4 inch (.63 cm) plywood, and, like the cabin roof, to flex both sideways and forward and aft for added strength. I also needed to allow the Sampson post to protrude through the centre and the deck needed to be notched for the stem. It was finicky making sure the centre cutting worked, but once I had it in place, I left the sides rough-cut because I knew I could trim them later with the planer.

The last part of the prow which I settled into place was the bowsprit. It had been made earlier from a thick 3 x 5 x five foot (7.62 cm x 12.7 cm x 1.54 metres) piece of clear Douglas fir. I had cut it into a long triangular shape, notched the end so that it would fit around the Sampson post, and settled the centre of it over the stem. Pins held it in place over both timbers, but it was not otherwise fastened. I wanted it to be removable in case I needed to trailer the boat. The timber was much thicker forward than it was aft, for its strength went into two planes depending on what was needed. Forward, the bowsprit extended two feet (60.9 cm) over the stem, and back along the decking for another twenty inches (50.8 cm). It needed to be sturdy to hold the standing rigging-although I intended to support it with a water stay so that the forestay wouldn't force it up or the jib break it when I was under sail.

Once the bowsprit was fitted to the hull, I carried on with the planking. The hull was gradually being closed up, and the only issues I had besides the hard work was the litany of negativity coming from my sister's neighbours when she brought them to see the monkey show. They would never enter the garage using the door, but would instead stand while my sister threw open the main door. Even if I said hello, they never addressed me, so I just carried on with my work and addressed their complaints as they made them.

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