23-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Beaver". Part VII.
Then carefully remove this thin pattern (the rule staff) and lay it out flat on the wide, clear cedar board you have selected to make your garboard of, and proceed to set these distances back with the dividers still set to the same distance between their points. Draw a line through these spots with the aid of a thin batten, tacked outside of the spots, so the brad holes will not puncture the part you are going to use, and saw out the shape of the lower edge and plane it up smooth. The upper edge can be snapped with a chalk line perfectly straight, and cut out that way. If the boat is perfectly true on each side, this same pattern would fit both sides — you might try the garboard on the other side and see if it fits. If it does not, take another "spilling"; that is, repeat the measuring off process for the other. With screw clamps try these planks on, and mark any imperfections in fit, and cut until they fit perfectly all along the rabbet line. When perfect, you can fasten them on. For this you want two braces and bitts or twist drills, one with a bitt to cut for a countersink so as to let the nail head go in about 3/16-inch, so a wooden plug can be fitted, and be sure the bitt bores a hole the size' of your plugs and not a sixteenth too large or too small, and another bitt that will bore a snug hole for your nails. The nails that go into the stem and deadwood should be galvanized iron nails, about 1 3/4 inches long, and those that go through the frames where you can get at them to rivet them up should be 3/16-inch copper nails 2 1/2 inches long. Bore with a Dutch gimlet bitt for the fastenings into the ends, or you may buckle the nail over in the hard oak, and so split and spoil your plank. Above all, don't try to hurry the work — go carefully, and you'll get ahead faster in the end.
You can get out another plank or two to go above the garboard, making it a good wide plank, for when you get up around the turn of the bilge you cannot use them so wide. Then with these two or three on the bottom put on what is called the "sheer strake," the one at the deck edge. With your thin pattern boards as a spile staff, find what shape the top edge of this board will make by measuring off at intervals with the dividers as before. Then make the plank about 6 inches wide in the middle, 4 inches at the bow, and 3 inches at the stern, sweeping in a fair line with a batten. Where the deck clamp comes in your way so you cannot rivet the fastenings, use the galvanized iron boat nails instead.
Now you have to stop and do some figuring to see how many planks it will take to fill in the remaining space, so that you will not have a patchwork job. Take a batten and bend it down around the outside of a frame amidships. This distance, we will say, conies to 5 feet, and if you decide 4 inches is as wide as you want the planking to be there, it will require 15 planks. Don't make the common error of wanting to do the job quickly, and try to use planks a foot wide. Remember such a plank will shrink and swell nearly twice as much as one 6 inches wide,' and not look well either; in fact, when you come to the turn Of the bilge you may have to reduce them to 3 inches, putting in four planks 3 inches wide, instead of three of them 4 inches wide.
Now bend the batten around the second frame from the bow. Here you only have 3 3/4 feet, or 45 inches. Fifteen planks in a space of 45 inches gives you a width of 3 inches for each plank at that end, and the widths aft are found in the same way. In the same manner you could divide the distance at each frame and find out how wide the planks should be at every frame, but this is not necessary. It is not always possible to get planks to run full length from end to end, and it is not necessary that they should, although most amateurs with their first smattering of knowledge on the subject imagine a well-built boat -should have no butts at all. As a matter of fact, a well-made butt is the strongest part of the plank. Amateurs sometimes try to cut the planks so that the two ends both land on a frame with only a width of about 1 1/2 inches. This is dead wrong. You can't toe-nail them both to the same frame and expect them to hold. Cut them so that they butt midway between the frames, and then fit a "butt block," as it is called — a piece of 1-inch or 1 1/4-inch oak plank, so it jams snug between the frames, and about 1/2-inch wider on each side than the planking, this gives a little ledge to extend up behind the planks above and below it, so as to steady it.
Plan of 23-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Beaver".
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