Small Craft Home : Boats : Nutshell Pram : Planking
The Nutshell Pram
It's time to begin getting out my planking. I've laid out the lines as per the drawings, sprung battens to make 'em fair, and used a jigsaw to rough them out. I'll use a block plane to bring things right down to the line. A word of advice for future builders - leave the planks with some extra length at the aft end to allow for fore-aft adjustment to make sure things fit well. The garboards fit okay for me - but only just. An extra 1/2" would've been nice and I should've left that extra material on the ends. I will do so for the rest of the planking. Easy enough to trim it off later.
As I move past the garboards to the rest of the planking I switch to my now-repaired bandsaw for roughing out the planks. Much faster and I find I can cut much closer to the final line this way. Just a point of interest.
Here you'll see the garboards temporarily tacked in place to allow for fine-tuning, drilling of the various screw holes, etc. Another useful tip for future builders - as you temporarily place the planks run a pencil along the inside face where the planks lay across the front knee, the mid-ships frame and the bow and stern transoms, and also along the edge of the bottom (or previously hung plank) bevel. This will guide you when applying the glue on the planks as you prepare to permanently hang them.
And so it goes applying the rest of the planks.
With all of the planks in place I fill the gaps left by the laps (as indicated in the plans) with thickened epoxy. This adds much strength to the laps.
I also take the time now to plane down the garboard lap with the bottom of the boat, leaving a nice smooth surface. As indicated in the instructions I seal the newly exposed layers of the garboards with some epoxy. Time to pop this thing off the molds and flip 'er over!
