The deck planking continues to be both fun and a challenge. At times its slow going almost tedious.
It really covering the deck 3/4″ at a time. A good comparison might be mowing an acre-sized lawn with a small push mower. You’re making headway each row that you finish but after you complete the row it hardly looks any different. It’s only towards the end that you finally feel that your getting things done. THEN it really slows down.
Early on I made the decision not to use the staple method of planking. It avoids tiny holes in the planks. I built my Heron using that technique and it looks fine. Nobody sees the little holes where the staples held the planks to the forms allowing the glue to dry, nobody but me that is. That technique allows you to keep working after you finish a row and can really speed up the planking.
The deck forms I cut were not the best. I did them mostly using other old forms and by “eye”. As the planking started I was glad I was not using staples. I found myself constantly adjusting the curves and the angles and sometime the planks had a small gap to the planks to keep the deck “fair”.
One of the main drawbacks to this technique is that you uses a lot of tape and hot glue to temporarily hold. Since it takes at least an hour or two to dry, I can only do one plank course at a time.
This has also given me practice for next time I build a higher level boat. I will most likely not use staples.
Note: I did use nails to hold the first row to the hull. But just those few holes will not be obvious. A little cheating but who’s going to know.
The post picture shows the bow. I used some of the left over t/g western red cedar I had in my basement. The wood came from my Heron kit and it is top-grade wood. It’s also not cheap but I thought it would be a nice touch at the bow. We’ll see.