Planking! "the Wormhole"

I'm trying to figure out the pictures and captioning, please bear with me. Last nights fiasco turned awry. I just left it. Whatevers...
I'm a day behind my Facebook (Wissinoming Brewing) posts.
The first step: Gluing the individual planks together forming the Deck. First the battens (wood strips) are laid overtop the planks setting on the rocker table (strongback it's called in boatbuilding). At alternate stations on the rocker table (look like the rungs on a ladder) the battens are laid across and lightly clamped and the ends. These hold the planks down while the bar clamps are pulling the planks close. All the seems get masking taped so glue doesn't fall out AND to hold the planks together while you are gluing. Not sure if I got pics of that step. I did on my last project if you scroll to March of 2007.


The planks are flipped over, tape side down, brought to the edge of the rocker table and each individual gap is glued. Then it is laid flat once again, battens laid down at stations, and bar clamps squeeze them together. I have 9 or ten bar clamps on this baby with about 12 battens. At this stage I was pressing the planks that floated out of place a little and it didn't work great. On the hull my Dad showed me to hit them in place with a hammer and a block of wood which worked much better indeed!

Plank Selection for the hull. Really nice grains in that Walnut!








Clamping and gluing the keel of the inner frame together.