Plankety Plank - part II

Bloody hell, talk about a long time between drinks.

We have made good progress on the planking, but terrible progress on the blog. In Plankety Plank Part I, I think I left you on tenterhooks as I donned a pair of rubber gloves and mixed a pot of glue to "stiff peaks". I can only presume I explained the process of wetting out the inner hog and the underside of the garboard plank. (Hark at me, talking like a boat builder).

After this, there was some discussion between Chris and I as to whether we should apply the thickened glue to the hog, the plank, or both. We settled on both, and lots of it! Then its just a case of.

• Trying not to cover yourself if glue
• Lining up the forward alignment hole on station 1
• Clamping the plank to the hog
• Trying not to cover yourself in glue
• Working towards the stern and aft from the centre with more clamps
• Starting to get covered in glue
• Trying not to get glue all over the planks
• Screwing the plank to the stem and sternpost when the contours get a bit severe.
• Bollocks, there's glue everywhere now.

We learned a few important lessons during this process, and worked out for ourselves a couple of useful tips. The most important lesson is that you can never have too many clamps. Luckily at the garboard plank, you can use screws into the hog. We were determined to make more clamps.

See the natty ply washers in the foreground

We also learned how to make washers with left over ply - a really useful technique if you don't want to dent your boat. I could write a blog on that alone. But I won't, I promise.

So, the garboard plank, well one of them, is done. Look - there's a picture up there