Is the planking finished? Well all the planks are now on, so I suppose you could say yes. Just the small matter of fairing and caulking to be done. As expected the shutter planks were slow to fit as they had to be tight which meant getting them in and out for final fitting was a bit of a palaver as there’s no real way to clamp them. I had to resort to a few judiciously placed bolts to get them to pull into shape.

Once all the planks were on I was dying to get the inside primed and undercoated to see how she looked. After many hours of tedious preparation sanding and cleaning I was able to finally paint the inside. This made the whole boat look much better.

Mind you if I thought the sanding of the inside was tedious it was child’s play compared to fairing the planking. To be fair the planking was fairly fair all over, it did of course require shaping at each of the seams where the sharp edges of the new planking met the older already rounded older planking and at the turn of the bilge where the planking was extra thick to allow for shaping of the tighter radius here. I’m not finished the fairing yet. It’s pretty hard work working a hand plane on your knees as all the power has to come from your shoulders as opposed to your whole body when using a plane standing up. I must be getting old. I’ve also given the stem it’s final profile so it doesn’t look like a battering ram on an ancient galley.

That’s all for now, if you would like to have your own boat restored, repaired or built don’t hesitate to contact me, Tiernan Roe, you can call me at +353 86 1586937 or by email or use  the contact page.

Roeboats, Ballydehob, Co. Cork, t:+353 (0)28 38973 m: +353 (0)86 158 69 37 e:tiernan@roeboats.com

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