Author: Oarlock and Sail Wooden Boat Club

The planking of the Gannet has been marching along in the past 2 months – with the 4th pair of planks fastened to the hull, we’ve reached the halfway mark of the planking! The screw-fastening and patterning system has been working quite smoothly, allowing us to make very satisfying progress.

Planks 2 and 3, patterning and scarfing:

Planks 3 and 4, including filling some of the screw holes with epoxy:

Fitting and gluing plank #4:

This past Saturday we also made patterns for the rudder and centerboard. The dimensioned drawings were transferred full-size to some thin plywood, and cut out. Those will be used to cut the plywood for the real thing.

One of our members, Ben, took on the task of improving our plank clamps recently – we had been using blocks of wood with holes in it to tighten the wing-nut on the clamps. Our old “Clamp Champs” had been adequate for the job starting with Button Swan, but now that we know better, the new Clamp Champ Mk II is a HUGE improvement!! Thanks Ben for your 3d printing skills! We tested a couple of prototypes to get the best shape.

A couple of weeks ago on a warm sunny day, a few of us spent some time doing repairs/improvements to some of our boat equipment, under the patient guidance of Bruce. Button Swan got new rope grommets for the jib sheet leads, and Enke got her tiller whipping tightened up.

Last Saturday we got to see one of our members launch the dory he and his wife built – always fun to see the excitement of a dream come to fruition! Congratulations Willis, and we hope you enjoy the boat!

We’ve been enjoying a great turnout of members each Saturday, and it’s a pleasure to see the enthusiasm of everyone working together on our new boat!

Last Saturday we had a lot of fun bevelling the keelson – at one point we had 5 people attacking the board with planes – good times! We got the rough shaping done in short order, and then fine-tuned it and the stem to the proper gently rolling bevel.

After we got the keelson shaped, we took advantage of the gorgeous mid-winter day, and got all 4 boats out to enjoy some fun on the water! The rowboat made a trip to Granville Island for some beer, bread and cheese to welcome the sailors back to the dock – always appreciated!! What a fabulous day!

This week we did a bit more shaping of the stem, then got busy with the pattern for the first planks, the garboard planks.

We tried out the method of patterning where we clamp or nail a thin batten in place where each edge of the plank will land, then hot-gluing short sticks across the gap, effectively creating a lattice truss. We also glued a piece of thin plywood at the stem to get the shape of the hood end. Taking the assembly off the hull, we laid it flat to determine the shape of the plank. Worked like a charm!

Next, we moved on to cutting a blank for the planks, and scarfing and gluing them to create a full-length plank. The boat is 14′-5″ long, and our plywood is 8′ long. We need to join two pieces end-to-end, and the way to do that is a scarf joint, which is an angle cut across the width of the material, and then epoxy-gluing them together. We made a jig to get the proper angle, stacked 4 blanks (2 for each side of the boat) and then used hand-planes to cut the sloped ends.

The layers of the plywood are a great guide to get the angle nice and even – and it looks cool!

We then laid out the planks end-to-end (taking up much of the shop!), applied the epoxy, and clamped them together. The whole process went very smoothly, thanks to several of our members having experience with this type of construction, and it was a great educational experience for the rest of us!

Next week we plan to cut the shape of the first planks, and quite possibly fasten them to the boat!! We’ve had a great turnout of members the last few weeks as the excitement of the new build takes hold – it’s been great fun!!