This week, we’ve had several people stop by the yard to see Mahdee as work progresses. Lots of praise. That goes a long way! We’ve been thrilled with the progress of the frames, floors, countertimber, transom, etc. But that was all structural and didn’t seem to be something quite as impressive to so many people as the planking has been. Now that the planks are being hung, everyone is heaping the praise upon David and John as they work. Planking started in early April and is about 80% complete right now.
The biggest “good” comments relate to how quickly David and John are hanging the planks. We tried to get estimates of how long it would take to plank Mahdee before starting. Several folks told us all kinds of things: the boatyard we’re in doesn’t do time estimates for their work (but early on gave us a price for planking the entire boat that would equate to more than two man years and said it would take about 18 months time…at that point we decided to only plank where we “must” and salvage as much of the old planking as possible) and other experienced plankers said we should expect to do one and a half to two planks a day at best. It was sort of funny because several folks said “doesn’t matter how long the planks are 10 feet or 30 feet, its just one and a half or two a day.”
We’ve been thrilled that David and John together are getting two and a half or three planks a day done. Sometimes its only one plank–but sometimes we have a 4 plank day! Most planks are over 20 feet, many are 25 to 27 feet. They’re nicely hollowed out, fitted, they really are looking great. The guys have been cautious about making sure the inboard edges of the planks are tight to each other with no light showing when they’re hung. However, the entire seam is sometimes a little tight. Accordingly, the biggest “concern” comments from knowledgeable plankers who’ve stopped by and looked at Mahdee, have been regarding how tight we’re getting the caulking seams. We all suspect that we’ll be spending some time reefing out some of the seams to make them just a bit wider. For our 1 3/8″ thick planks we should have 5/64″ seam. We’re “shooting for something a little bigger” about 3/32″ total width seam, but in many places, we have closer to 1/16″ seam. In the picture above you can see that the 6th and 7th seams up from the bottom are a bit narrow.
All in all, the compliments come in saying “Mahdee looks great” and “we’ve never seen such quick, good work” so, that’s really nice!
You won’t be “reefing” those tight seams. What you will be doing is using a particular corking iron to widen or open up the seams.
The angle of the seam butting one against the other is called ‘the outgage’.
Plank should abutt each other for about 1/3 rd the plank thickness. This is not graven in stone as plank thickness varies from vessel to vessel.
Thanks, Dave, for the info. We’d heard that the process for opening up the seam was different for hardwood than for a softwood planking. That is, the iron that opens up the seam (in softwood) does it by crushing the wood fibers whereas in hardwood you use a different tool (sharpened variation on reefing iron) to actually cut thin slivers of wood out of the seam. Have you ever seen this?
No Brenda, I have not had any experience with re-dressing corking seams.
In my time they were either cut on the shaper after spiling the plank/s or planed onto the plank edge.
A making or dumb iron would be used if as it happenes, the outgage closes up as the plank is fitted to the hull.
Usually this happens where there is severe twist at the turn of the stern.
Will try to drop by on Monday,the 4th AND I will make it before lunch time.
We’ll look forward to seeing you, Dave! Thanks!