Category Archives: Planking

Mahdee has moved.

Posted on by under misc, Planking

Mahdee made the move to her new boatyard “home” on the 13th and 14th of June. Here’s a picture of her on the truck. This is the first time we’ve actually seen Mahdee’s planking as she has been inside tight quarters in a shed with only about 18″ on each side of her widest beam. We were very excited! to finally see the planking. We could also see the little bumps and warbles in the planking once she was “out in the light”…quickly John and David were talking about how soon would it be that they could “cover her back up!” so people wouldn’t see her hull until they were finished with her planking.

Mahdee on the Road

More Planking

Posted on by under Planking

Here are a couple pictures taken in the last couple weeks. Yes, that’s a really, really long plank that John is putting on the boat. And yes, it’s really twisted to sit properly on the frames. It is the garboard strake and it’s about 27′ long.

one pic of planking

David is making white oak butt blocks. Here he’s got a stack of 3 in front of him and looks like he’s having way too much fun. He’s done 40 of these so far. Each one has to be fitted between the frames and hollowed to match the inside of the hull. They’re all slightly different because of that. He replaced the old ones and of course all the new planking require them too.

butt blocks

Planking comments

Posted on by under Planking

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!

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