Thank goodness I started this project when I did.

Posted on by David

When I built my Night Heron, I started just before Christmas and completed the final rigging the first week of April. When I opened the box to start the Great Auk in September, I really thought I was getting a head start and would have the boat built by Christmas, finish it out in January, sit back and relax. Clearly I was mistaken.

I modeled the flowing design for the deck after a couple of finished examples I had located on the interweb. I knew that the flow would require some ripping of the planks to flat bend down to the cockpit and then to the stern. But boy did progress grind to a crawl. In terms of area and geometry, the planks are 3/4″ wide so every strip seems to make progress to filling in an area. By ripping the light colored wood planks down the middle, each plank was now 3/8″ wide and but still had to be cut and fit. Since I chose not to use staples to hold the planks in place the ripped strips tended to pull away from the forms causing joint issues. Holding those strips in place was a constant test in patience.

I’m not really explaining this clearly but trust me it became very tedious. I’d do one 3/8″ piece then take a break. Not counting Thanksgiving, it took five weeks to finish the deck. Whew…!

This is the easy part of the deck. Full size planks. Here you can see the two alignment marks. The angle I cut will start at the top of the line on the right and extend down to the bottom of the line on the left
This shows the cut angle to fit the joint.
Not a bad fit. I did have to use some nails to hold the boards in place.
This is an example of the ripped strips. The strips were able to be bent quite a bit to conform to the curves. The hot-glued blocks are used to clamp against the planks to avoid using staples.
The last piece for this side.
Each side at the bow and the stern had a similar “whiskey” piece. If you recall from my other project post, the “whiskey” piece is the last piece in place and is celebrated by the builders with a shot. This boat had so many of these, I could have used a whole fifth.
Not pretty but done.
A little better perspective on the deck.
Now the planing, sanding and fairing begins.

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