First big boo boo

Walking the (wonky) plank!

Well, I've now got 138 individual planks done, but not without a few choice profanities.

Before I go any further, some advice for anyone deciding to do the planking individually like I've done. Don't try and save time by doing chunks of planks in the same area at once. It is much more difficult to ensure that a plank is lying straight when there is nothing to butt the plank against lengthwise. If you look at the following picture:

Everything looks fine, but I didn't check well enough whether the top 8 planks were actually straight or not. I thought they would have enough contact with other planks to stop them 'turning' but as I progressed with the planking this wasn't the case. Some of the centre planks started to turn which resulted in gaps appearing between the planks on one side as in the following picture:
On the other side the planks started to not 'fit' and so needed some tapering, which started to look pretty ugly. Fortunetly I noticed the problem early-ish which meant that I could rectify it to some extent, but now every time I look at the deck all I can see are those mistakes!

I think I'm being a bit harsh on myself, as the picture above shows the worst section and peope keep telling me that is not as bad as I say it is, but I am bit annoyed as I know it would have been simple enough to avoid if I hadn't tried to rush and get lots of planks done at once.

For the record, the way to avoid this would have been for me to lay full runs of planks at a time, like the first run I did. This would mean every plank could be glued flush against it's neighbour and no gaps would appear.

THe main thing to remember is that the majority of this deck will be covered over, and the worst offending areas on mine will be covered.

Anyway, enough feeling sorry for myself, and more pictures of the ship with 138 planks (25 full runs) in place.



Apologies for the quality of the photos, I know it's difficult to see the planking. I have a pretty snazzy camera that I don't really know how to use properly and that has a basic lens so can't capture much!

Fiddly Planks

I've now moved on to cutting and fitting planks right up to the edge of the deck. Obviously this means doing some precision cutting to accomadate the bulkheads. I'll post again soon to show my progress and the simple methods I've used to achieve it.

For those out there who, like me, can't do anything without quantifying it, I have now cut and fitted 150 individual planking pieces. This does include some very small filler bits that I had to fix on with tweezers!

Thanks for reading!

Jonny.

p.s. I took a trip to our local second hand book shop at the weekend and found Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. This is the first in a long series of books (one of which is called HMS Surprise) which feature this lovely ship that I'm trying to build so it seemed fitting that I should start to read them as I'm building.