Good advice there Stevie_o.

Hi Dave,
I agree with Stevie's post 161 this is the way that I planked my Victory, it can be a nerve racking experience at first but the more you do the better you are at it.

Also what I found, if you soak your wood and pin it around curves (as the Bow) and leave it over night to dry it will be less difficult to fit and will look good with no gaps because it has shrunk back to is original size also get ready to start tapering and read as much as you can about planking as I do.

Build On

Trev.

Planking is a black art but the more you do the better it gets well done on the planking Dave keep up the good work

Rgd Martyn

Cheers guys, back late Friday

Thanks Nightwisher, This is how the planking is covered in the instructions.

I believe it does start to stagger shortly as it comes up the hull

Thanks Alan, I did think about planking with staggered joints after reading lots of material on planking but in the end went with the instructions, as you say I cant go too wrong that way

More progress has been made today, I am basically now up to the top of the bulwarks with the planking, with the exception of a plank and a half at the stern.

Wedges added to fill the gaps, there was only 6 in total going up the hull. You will also see that it looks a lot like a pin cushion at the moment these will be pulled out tomorrow giving the glue plenty of time to set.

Gunports to be cut out then once I will finish the bottom of the hull I will get the filler out, Im sure I read that P38 car body filler is a good one to use.

The lines are looking good to my eye

Looking good Dave cracking job

Rgd Martyn

Nice planking Dave, I think it will end up a lovely shape I've only just noticed how many gun ports there are wow.

I have had some time to lay a few more planks today.

Firstly I made a plank bender as previsouly posted on here, one thing to note is to make sure it is cleaned out properly, in my case SHWMBO thought I was cooking tomatos when she brought my cup of tea

Then on to the planks themselves, I found the heated plank bender worked much better than soaking in water

So far my planks are still falling in line with how they are done in the instructions.

Thanks for your comments Alan

Just plodding along when I can at the moment between lots of early nights as I've gone from 12 hour night shifts to 12 hour day shifts at work. We are now in the final week of the 7 week track lowering project so things are getting a little intense days at the moment

Anyway here are the pictures, gaps are starting to form now as I continue to follow the instructions, they will be pretty straight forward to fill though.

The stern to me looked like it would be the most difficult part of the hull planking, it looks as if I am getting it pretty symetrical on each side by my eye I have had to do some fairing tweaking as I go but as well.

Over half way trough the first layer of planking

I was given a tip to taper the edges of the planks so they butt up against each other, some of them I did some others I forgot, dont think its look too bad so far