#spiling

[carloravaioli]

Le Palafitte #spiling #stilts #stilthouse #palafitte #artlandscape #venezia (presso Atelier Carlo Ravaioli)

[im-so-maniac-in-me]

Blehhh bluuh blehhhh

[ashleyriverboatworks]

Fitting the Next Planks Using the Router

Fitting the Next Planks Using the Router

The Router Method makes cutting plank edges an efficient process. Last month, I described in detail the process of scribing, cutting, and fitting the first strake of final planking on our Palm Beach 22 mahogany runabout.  If you missed it, I suggest you go back and take a look.  It’s a necessary precursor to the process I’m about to discuss. Laying up each plank and fitting it is a time…

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[wowsailor-blog]

TTP (Trust The Process): Spiling

Our students have been busy getting this boat planked!  Now that we are working on the hull of the boat, students are getting more excited because they can actually see the boat coming together.  All of their hard work is paying off.  And as instructors, it’s great to see our students’ interest grow as another part of the boat is made and installed.  The boat will be flipped before we know it!

To get the shape of each plank, we use a method called spiling.  Spiling is essentially a process to create a pattern of the plank.  In describing the general idea of this patterning technique, we were met with a lot of blank stares.  However, we assured the students to trust the process, and in taking it one step at a time together, it started to make more sense as we went along. 

Below Henry is hot gluing a gusset that will connect pieces of luan to become one long piece that follows that curve of our plank.  This is the foundation of the spiling.  The students were really, really excited to use the hot glue gun. 

Once the luan is in place, students took a pair of dividers to pick up the top and bottom edge of the plank edge at each station mold, and transferred those points to the luan so that they can be referenced later.  

Below we have taken the luan off the boat and laid it out on top of our stock.  Terrill is taking those previously mentioned points from the luan and now transferring them to the plank stock. 

After the points are plotted, students used long wooden battens (like the ones from lofting) to connect the points and make a fair line.  The ice picks helped hold the battens in place. 

Once the lines were drawn, it was time to cut!!

Cutting out the planks was a challenge for some students because they had to make sure the saw was resting flat on the stock, that they weren’t cutting away their pencil line, and that their actual cut line wasn’t all wavy.  However, some students really gravitated to the saw and weren’t nervous about cutting away their line.  Talk about calm, cool, and collected. 

When the planks were cut, there was cleaning up to do with hand planes to make sure the edges had a nice, fair curve.  And once the plank was clamped to the boat we had to do some fine-tune fitting to make sure it sat flush next to the plank before it.  Overall, the fitting was minimal because these students did a great job with their spiling!  TTP!