Idea from the cooper's art

[mrgl]

One of the things that bothers me is the necessity of using fill planks at the keel or gunwales. I was thinking about this and wondered if it would be possible to shape the planks such that it comes out even. Like the way wooden barrels are made.

To try this out: I created a hull with my CAD program, sliced it up every 6", let the program give me the arc length of each slice, then entered the results in a spreadsheet, and calculated the arc length/the number of planks at each slice. To each I added in the thickness of the plank material to allow for milling the bead and cove.

The resulting plank has a width varying from 1.396" at the widest and 0.372" at the narrowest. I should be able to start at the keel and work my way to the gunwales and end up without having to trim or fill.

Anybody ever done this?

[PAR]

The first issue that comes to mind, as I try to picture this are the dimensions you've proposed for your strips, (I'm assuming you're referring to strip planking) a fat 1 3/8" to a short 3/8". This means for every inch of height up the stem or stern post you'll need three strips. This seems like a lot of energy to spend on each inch of freeboard. Second, is the shape and how will you pick it up? You could run off some full sized drawings for the strip shapes, but there are a lot of strips on even the smallest of boats and that's a lot of cutting that wouldn't normally be needed using typical strip planking construction techniques. Third is the differing widths effecting the twist and the way the strips lay on the molds. Being fatter in the middle and narrow in the ends the centers of these strips will not roll and twist as the ends will, though you could force the issue in material this light.

The whole point to strip planking is to allow planking to be placed quickly and easily, without the splling and cussing normally in tune with fitting planks in more traditional construction methods. With steps of equal size and shape, they can be dropped in and move on to the next, once they are out of the shaper. Your method adds several layers of work, not necessary for strip planking, but surly can be done and would yield a better looking planking if kept bright.