Thursday, June 22, 2017

Planking the Hull

Time has slipped by plus I had a computer glitch that kept me from posting. The hull is almost completely planked now. I will throw up some photos here with captions.

We made a huge push at the start of this project, propelled by our teacher's insistence we couldn't finish this boat before mid-August (our return flights are the end of July!). Its been long days, six days a week, but we've almost planked the hull. Here you see our second strake nailed on. The cormorant boats have transoms bow and stern.

A section of the third strake, propped in place ready for scribing. We rough cut with a circular saw, then prop the plank in place and run a series of saws through the seam in order to make it fit with the adjacent plank. This is a technique central to Japanese boatbuilding.

Hard to see, but I am making the final pass at the transom with the saw running through the seam. I will try to create a blog post that illustrates that more clearly.

Another shot of the third strake fitted. Then come the edge nails, fastening the plank to the one below. Nailing consumes a huge proportion of our time.

Three strakes on, and this view shows the stone weights our teacher uses to help hold the structure in place, along with four stout props overhead.

Final strake going on...

...and you get an idea of its true shape. These extended planks support decks bow and stern.

The three planks that form each of our top strakes uses a slightly different (and more difficult) scarf joint. The vertical plugs you see fill the mortises of our edge nails.

Now that we are getting closer to doing final finish work on the boat Nasu san took us to Seki City to see their fleet of cormorant boats. He wanted us to see the final product and get a feel for these details.


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