Hi Andy,
Time taken from starting with a blank plank in the rough to the finished plank on the hull is difficult to gauge at the moment as I've only cut and dry fitted the guard boards which I've yet to permanently fit in place but it took about 2 hours of messing about getting the first one to fit and then using it as a pattern for its opposite took about 20 minutes.
But once I get a routine going I'm looking at about 4 hours per pair of planks from rough plank to glued and pinned to the hull.
but its a guesstimate at the mo
Planing a plank in the plank track, thats less of a guess, the shoulder the plane run on are set at 4.3mm off the base (not 4.2mm in post #167 [typo]). I'm aiming at a finished planed plank thickness of about 4.2mm to give me room to scrape and sand the finished hull to 4mm plank thickness.
The procedure is to set the plane fine and take enough off one side to remove tool marks left by the circular saw. This will be the inside of the plank (but this may change), the plank is flipped over and again planed to get rid of tool marks and then I'll inspect both faces and choose which will be the outside face of finished plank.
I'm looking for tearout and other defects which won't matter too much on the inside of the hull as I plan to seal it with fibre glass resin or maybe epoxy at a later date. A complete plank is formed from 1 1/2 plank blanks (three total for a pair of planks). I then plane the best side down to 4.2mm.
One plank blank takes about 5 minutes to plane up to 4.2mm which then goes on the pile to be sorted. Planks near the keel and the sheer are fairly straight while those on the bilge are curved and lazy 'S' shapes. In other words enough material to form one pair of planks takes 15 minutes or so.
Incidentally doing more research, planks were cuts straight it seems and then edge set to get them to fit the frames after steaming them to death in a steam box on the original ship so I'm going to try the same with my hull
I've taken some time to try and get both sides of the hull and frames symmetrical so that I can cut one plank and fit it to one side and in theory this can be flipped and it will fit the same spot on the other side of the hull. I'll then use this as a pattern to cut the 2nd of the pair. Obviously this is the real world and there are small differences but if they are way out I go back and investigate why and correct the issue.
I cut the 2nd plank a tad wide of the marks to allow for fettling while fitting.
This is why in the beginning I went to great lengths to set out the building board and cut each frame from one half pattern to ensure symmetry as much as possible.
My aim when fitting planks is to fit their seams closely, I do this by using something like blackboard chalk the coat the edge of the last laid plank, then by offering up it's new neighbour, chalk will be transferred highlighting high spots.
The effect I'm aiming at while planking will look like this.
And this
It will take an hour or two to get one plank to fit this close but it looks beautiful when done and worth the effort in my book
The inside seam of adjoining planks will be a close fit and the outside will show the caulking groove. I'm currently pondering on the best way to tackle creating this bevel on the plank edge but I've spotted these micro hand planes on e-bay which might just do the job
It is 3" long and 3/4" wide
The bevel will extend to half the plank thickness and its open face is determined by 1/16" of gap for every 1" of plank thickness so on the real ship this would have been 2 1/2 x 1/16 = 5/32" converting to 1/16th scale is and into metric money is 0.25mm which happens to be the width of a junior hacksaw blade.
What I intend to do is roughly cut the bevel on the new plank edge and when it is fitted in place next to it's fixed neighbour run a device (of shape yet to be determined) made from said junior hacksaw blade along the seam to even it up along the length of the planks.
That 0.25mm plank seam will (hopefully) fill up nicely with the paint system I intend to use on the outside of the hull leaving an impression of nice even caulked seams.
As I'm using oak for planks which is classed a durable I intend to give the outside of the hull a couple of coats of thinned varnish plus a coat or two of eggshell finish black paint to represent the tar coating used on the original ship plus the underwater areas will be painted with a reddy orange paint to represent the red lead antifouling used on the original ship.
Again this will depend on how much the plank seams are filled up with the paint finish - I want the plank seams showing so the eventual finish will be governed by this. I'm not looking for a glass smooth finish
I don't think it wise (for my sanity's sake) to try and caulk seams this small but I dare say it is feasible. You have to draw the line somewhere between a miniature built ship that is going to spend its life in a glass case, and a well presented scale model you intend to throw on the water and sail from the pond side.
I'm aiming for the latter