Posted by John Nichols on April 24, 2005 at 23:55:51 from 165.91.196.74 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: Cat posted by John on April 24, 2005 at 23:17:07:
Well I got the second bottom plank - starboard side on the old girl set yesterday. The plank placement took all day. I was reading a web site on wooden boat building recently. The site's writer claimed that a good planker could plank a small boat in 10 days - by themselves.
I can only say - no way.
There are simply to many tasks to putting a plank into a hull for a plank to be done in one day by one person. The alternative view is of course that I am just slow. I will put the pictures of yesterdays marathon session on my web site tomorrow. I can not put the building pictures on the web site without going to work and the idea of trooping into the office is not a nice one after such a great day yesterday.
Friday at work I took the plank that I have been trying to saw in half into the woodshop. Chuck and I tried to saw the plank on the big bandsaw. The bandsaw just stopped after about 10 mm. Chuck's comment was - "This is very hard wood - where did you get it from?"
So I took the hardwood and put it through the planner. There is no way I could saw that little baby of a plank in half longwise and not be still doing it at Christmas. I tried but I failed. The industrial sized planner is designed to take 12 mm cuts in one pass. On this timber I could do less than 1 mm cuts at a time on the planner. If I tried for 1 mm the planner seized up on the timber and just stopped rolling. Chuck kept saying - it is the machine and resetting it a lot. Me I just knew that you cranked it back a notch on the cut depth and it started rolling again. The timber is very very hard.
So Fridays plank is down to 9mm or about 3/8th of an inch. I have now put that plank to one side to concentrate on getting the port bottom plank into the boat. I had hoped to do that today but my hand has a large blister from putting in the silicon bronze screws - #8 by 1.5 inches yesterday.
JMN