Planking the Hull

I have looked at this long enough now, I have to make a decision on how to plank this. The planes and photos in the instruction look as if they started at the bottom of the bulwark and worked down. They put 5 or 6 planks down, not tapering any of them. Working down the ship, I don't think I will do that.

I will start by sorting the planks, by width, and shade of the mahogany, you can see the different shades, I like to match them up, as I don't want dark, light, dark etc,

I decided to put one strip, running down the bottom of the bulwarks, fitting the one above it to be flush with the forward deck.

So the bottom plank was installed while I positioned the upper plank flush to the deck, I didn't want half a plank to run over the forward deck.

Now just gluing and nailing the planks down the ship.

I did the exact same thing on the other side, I didn't think we needed photos of that's, just remember that what you do to one side you do the same thing to the other.

Now I didn't follow the instruction for the next steps, they want you to work down, I went up. These plywood bulwarks seem fragile to me, and I know I will have to man handle this ship to plank the bottom section. I want to cover them before I break them.

First two done......

You have to leave the heads of the nails exposed, you need to cut them off and sand with a file.

A few cut off, still needs filed. This is new to me, cutting them off. Generally they are made of brass, and soft enough to sand down with sand paper. I guess they tried to save some money by giving you metal nails instead of brass..... Can't believe it made that much difference, but whatever.

This is where we stand with the build at this point, I like the way the two lighter shades of mahogany look against the darker ones, remember the other side looks just like this side.

Will keep planking and report back, this takes sometime, so might not have any posts until I start the bottom half.