Small Boat, Big Problem - Part 1- Repair a badly damaged lapstrake garboard plank

Howdy, I'm Mark Ruden. Welcome back to Nomad Boat Building. In our last video, we used some Dutchmen to repair some cracks in the port side garboard of this dinghy. Today, we're going to tackle the starboard side, which is in much worse shape. We've got fractures all along the whole fastening line, plus some cracks in the middle of the plank. That's going to take a completely different approach to the repair. So, let's look at our options. Okay, so here's the worst part. Plank is fully split and opened up a good solid eighth of an inch. We got checks running the full length like all the way. It's one nail without a check on it in it. A split running down the middle of it, but it does pant a little bit. Does have some movement in it. This thing's probably got pretty good cup, I'll bet. Oh, it's actually a little flatter than I expect. Bit of cut there. Yeah, some cut there. Check running through here. Another fine one on the side. Now, we did have a check up here. This was here before. And I did like a traditional fix on that. We drilled a hole at the very tail end of it to stop it from checking more. We put a very small strand of cotton into it. And then we put some um I think bedding compound in there. I mean, it hasn't gotten any worse than it was. Now, in a perfect world, we would repair this boat by just replacing the whole plank, but that is much more challenging to do than is immediately obvious. For one thing, just trying to get the fit on the full length of a garboard plank that has the maximum amount of twist and fitting required of all the planks in this boat is challenging on its own, just when you're fitting the plank to start with without the other planks in the way. fitting it after the fact is a magnitude of 10 of difficulty. And it's not just the problem of trying to fit the plank. It's the problem of trying to fit the plank underneath the adjacent plank. We need to try and remove the fastenings between the two without damaging those planks. We need to try and remove the fastenings of the adjacent plank at the hood ends that hold it to the stem and transom in order to fit our new plank underneath as well. Here's one thing I do know about these boats is they have the hood ends bedded in 5200 and often the plank laps as well. For that reason, I'm really reluctant to try and replace a whole plank because getting the old one off with all the ribs in place without messing up the plank that's in place is really challenging. And of course, you have to weigh the effort required to do the repair against the overall intrinsic value of the boat, what kind of condition it's in, and whether or not the customer is willing to pay for those kinds of repairs. So, in this case, our customer has a limited budget, and so I need to try and get this repair done within that budget if at all possible. Now, I think we can do it. I think the budget will allow it, but it's not going to allow me to do it and replace the whole plank on its own. So, let's look at how we can repair this plank. Kind of inclined to cut back that whole edge and lay in a new piece of wood. Almost feel like it should be like a shiplap just so that there's something to align the orientation of the piece that I put in. Well, maybe we just go with splines. Do a spline there. We go spline there. Right. This one will try weeping epoxy in some you can't even tell if you're just looking at a crack in the paint or crack in the plank. right there. Don't like that looks. Maybe it's a crack in the plank. Maybe it's a crack in the paint. Oh, there really should be a plank comes out. So difficult. Plank comes out. Turns this into like a week-l long project to get it back in properly because it's not just that plank, right? plank comes out means I've got to get this plank popping out too, which means getting all those fasteners out. They're nails. Can't get those out easily. And same thing back here. And this is getting old and brittle, so pulling stuff out gets more and more destructive, harder and harder to do anything. You run the risk of starting a crack in this plank as well when you do this. I don't think I can do an effective plank replacement without it being super invasive and time consuming and there's no budget for that. Okay, I'm really struggling with what to do here. I think given we got a crack down here and we got a crack down there and we got a cracks all the way along here. I'm thinking my best bet is to try and replace not the whole plank cuz that gets super invasive but like 3/4 of it like from here back to about here. And so I'm thinking maybe I make a like a shiplap joint so that the two halves can register together. That's my thought. So, what I'm going to try I'm just going to start with just trying to make a pattern and see what kind of shape this comes out at. So, now I just want to follow like this one crack right here. That's going to be like my my start. See? I go like that. I'm just trying to mimic what this shape looks like here. One thing I routinely do when I'm repairing boats is to create door skin patterns of parts before I start removing the parts that they're related to. I wanted to get that close enough that I could just scribe for the shape. So, if I can bring this there. Making a door skin pattern now is a little bit easier because I have the garboard that I'm about to remove still in place. And that gives me a solid foundation upon which to work. Creating this pattern not only gives me a preview of the finished shape, but it also gives me something that I can use to select the best possible stock for reproducing this garboard later on. So now I'm just laying out how big I need my replacement plank to be. So, I'm using that crack that was in the existing garbard as a a benchmark. And then I want to make sure that I'm encompassing the rest of the length of that crack into the finished replacement part. That is making sure it lands within the bounds of the part I'm going to replace. So, I'll just make up this pattern in several pieces. I got a sharp piece for the bow, which has got a twist into place. And then we got a longer piece in the middle, which is nominally straight, but not exactly. You would think it would be straight along its whole edge, but it will require scribing because there's actually a slight crown to it because the way the keel interacts with it. And now over to the band saw to cut the central portion of this pattern out. And now we'll just refine the edge and bring it down to my pencil line of the block plane. I find with thin floppy pieces of material, it's easier to work freehand than on a bench sometimes. And I'll often use this technique where I'll just clamp it between my legs and bend the part and that stiffens it up. And I find it relatively easy to follow the line that I've got drawn on there. I don't have to be super accurate here. I'm just trying to get it nominally fair. We'll worry about finessing the finished part later on. I'm producing this pattern in three separate pieces just to make it easier. Then we'll use a hot glue gun to stick it all together. That takes care of the edge adjacent to the keel. Now I want to establish what the width of my finished part is going to be. So, I'm just taking a few measurements, making sure that the damaged areas of the plank are going to land within the scope of this replacement part. After I've identified exactly how wide this needs to be at its various points, we'll lay it on the bench and we'll see what kind of line is required to encompass all of those points. After a little juggling, I decide I like the line that I want and I'm going to mark it down onto my pattern. This time I'm going to use the table saw to cut to this line because I can create a very nice fair curve on the table saw. something that's more challenging on the band saw. Freehand cutting on the table saw is something that's a little on the dangerous side, so I certainly don't recommend it. Even though you see me doing it, I'm extremely careful while doing this. And this is only something I do in very specific materials. I wouldn't do this with a heavy piece of hardwood, for instance. A table saw cut like this usually gets me to within 132nd to 1/16th of an inch of my finished line. And so, just a few strokes with the block plane to sweeten it up. That'll tuck up in there. So, the part of the plan I haven't worked out is how to cut this and cut a shiplap joint. kind of feel like maybe I should cut put a bat along here and use my router with that same bit and that'll cut me a half inch wide halfway deep notch and I could theoretically just use a handsaw to cut the inside of it to release the plank. I kind of like that idea. Then that'll be the width of my shiplap. I'm using a hot glue gun to attach a flexible batton to the surface of the garbard. And I'm going to use that to guide a router which is going to cut a dado into the surface. And that dado is going to form the shiplap joint that I want to use to connect the new portion of planking to the existing portion. I've never tried using a hot glue gun for this particular operation before. So, this is something that's a bit experimental. where the garboard plank takes a hard twist. I'm having trouble getting that batten to stay down. So, I'm going to use this pin nailer with some 28 gauge pins to help hold it in place. I find a pin nailer really useful for temporarily attaching things in boat repair because the holes are so small you can almost ignore them. Pop this out. Hopefully, I can glue it in too badly. Don't want it to come apart. Good, good, good, good, good, good. All right, that we'll use to make our blank replacement. Little nervous about this popping off. There's one ring now that looks like it's going to get in the way of my router. So, I want to try and get that out of my way. It's bronze, so it won't really destroy the router bit, but it's a new router bit. I'd like to not beat it up if I can avoid it. If you've never tried pulling ring nails out, they can be a bear to deal with. There's no good way to do it. Exactly. Nothing's easy about trying to pop out ring nails. They hold really well, and that's what's good about them. Almost too well for boat repair. Sometimes all you can do is cut them. But I don't want to chew up my damn router bit with that thing. It's a new bit. Well, that does it. Okay. Where's my router? I've got my router set up with this little patterning bit. The bed itself is maybe only quarter of an inch long. It's intended for like doing hinges. So, it's just for shallow mortises and it's exactly perfect for what we want for this particular application. I'm also going to add a little block onto the router that it's going to match the thickness of that batton that I've attached to the hull. And this is to carry the outboard side of the router so that I'm not trying to balance it on the bat alone. It's a pretty good little trick. It works quite well. Just use a couple stir sticks and some CA glue to hold it on there temporarily. If you're liking these videos, you can support me by giving me a thumbs up, throw me a couple of bucks through super thanks, subscribing to the channel, turning on notifications, and of course, you can join me over on Patreon. Find links in the corner or down in the description. One more ring nail to get out of our way back here at the transom. Oh man. Okay, that was a bad idea. Now, I didn't quite like the depth of that dado, so I decided to try and tune it up using this plow plane. Now that the dado is cut, I can cut away the rest of the old plank. So, I'm going to use this as a beaky saw to do that job. This is a specialized type of saw that is often used by boat builders or people who do flooring, for instance, might use something like this. It's really just got a curved blade, so you can start cutting in the middle of a plank. I find it quite useful for a lot of repair activities. Screwed up my plan. All right. Well, I totally messed that up. I made my little step way too thin with all that screwing around with the cleaning. Uh, so I have a plan B, I think, which maybe is we put a scarf joint along the whole edge of the plank. I don't know what else to do. Don't know what else to do. Since I've got a pattern already, I don't need this existing plank for any sort of patterning purposes. So, I'm just going to rip it out as quickly as possible. I can be pretty brutal with this. I'm not going to worry about the fastenings cuz I'm going to take those out afterwards. when pulling out nails, it's always a great idea to put something steel or hard behind your nippers so that you don't damage the surfaces that lie down below that. My preference are these little pry bars. These are actually referred to as glaziers tools. Beekeepers will recognize them as something referred to as a hive tool. In fact, the beekeepers have often utilized the Glazers tool for working with their beehives. And the company that makes these tools also makes one that is specifically for beekeeping. It's got a different configuration on the other end. While this one has a little pry bar on one end, the hive tool has got a little hook for lifting frames out of a beehive. While these small pry bars are extremely useful for a lot of repair jobs, you could just use a stiff putty knife to protect the surfaces that you're working on from the nippers. Getting into undoing my own work. That's cotton cocking that I put in. Bunch of these ring nails that have been chopped down. I put those in. This isn't the first time I've had experience with this specific dinghy. It was into my shop a couple years ago getting some other cracked planks fixed. At that time, this garbard was perfectly fine, but it did need some reccocking. So, I did that at that time. All this damage we're fixing here is the result of this dinghy being stored in a hot, sunny area and left to dry out for far too long. Since my plan has now changed, I'm going to cut away the rest of this dado here. the portion that was going to form my shiplap joint. And so we're going to replace this with a scarf joint later on. I think it's worth doing a quick little review of where we're at. So, I've cut away the garboard where it's all busted up. And uh plan A did not go as planned, which was to leave a little step in here or what we call a rabbit. So that I was going to create a shiplap joint between the two planks. Um the reason that went south is because I was using this batten that was attached to here to guide the router. But that batten wasn't able to lay fully flat against this plank throughout its whole run. it sort of was kind of rising up off the surface and so the depth of the router bit was inconsistent and I wanted a consistent depth through that shiplap to create a good joint. So I tried to make it more consistent using a router plane but I I just I couldn't pull it off effectively and um I ended up basically kind of burning through the the thickness of the plank. It's a little thinner than I had anticipated it to be. So that means I need to come up with a new plan. And this is really common in repair work where you have a plan A that for any number of reasons doesn't doesn't pan out. And it's always good to have in the back of your mind what a plan B might be. So I do have a plan B and there is a plan C as well. A plan C would be to just get this plank out entirely and fit an entire new plank in here. I really don't want to do that because of the way this boat's put together. It's they they've used a flexible polyurethane in here. I think it was sick flex they've used judging by the elasticity of it. Um could have been 3M5200 as well. They both make a like a mahoganyish colored compound. So that means that these hood ends are all glued in with that and they kind of it's very hard to get them out and especially if I got to try and lift a plank out or try and open it up enough to squeeze a new one in there. Well, that forget it. That's not going to happen gracefully. And these planks are nailed in. The other way you could do it, you cut you cut back the whole hood end of the adjacent plank in order to fit the new plank in. and then you scarf in a new end onto it. That's that would be the ideal way to sort of fit a whole new plank. That's a whole bunch of extra work that they we don't really have in the budget. So, I'm sticking with this plan. What I'm going to do is create just a beveled edge on this so that we're basically going to have like a scarf joint that runs the whole length. So, we'll cut back like half an inch, bevel that off. And then the new plank will also have a a matching bevel. And we'll glue those down together. I could try and do a butt joint in here, but I think it's going to be hard to fit this and get a butt joint fitted. I could probably do it. I'd have to curve the joint and then this whole plank would shift down just a hair in order to facilitate getting that joint closed. Um, because we're going to be using a flexible polyurethane to [ __ ] the back end of it anyway, it's not super important that I'm uptight against the keel. So, I I have that bit of wiggle room in there if I want. The thing that stops me from wanting to try that is I think I might have a hard time getting the two planks to be co-planer because there's there's nothing to bear against. These things are all floating off the frames at this point. And so, from that perspective, I think I'm better off with a a beveled joint. I don't even know how I'm going to tack it together. Maybe I might have to use pin nails or something to just sort of pin it along the way and then pull the nails out afterwards. But at the very least, even if I had to shore down, at least I'd have one plank shoring down, pressing against the next one to help close up that joint. So that's the plan I'm going to follow. It means the pattern that I made before, which matches this line here, is just going to have to get a little bit bigger. It's going to have to get a/ inch wider roughly in order to facilitate that beveling, but that's easy to do. And I think that's my best bet. So, what I want to do now is I got to clean up this whole surface here. There's lots of bedding compound or polyurethane stuck to the face here. I think I'm going to get my Multim Master out with like a just a a straight blade on it. Not a not a tooththed blade, but an unto blade, like a knife edge. It works really well. bullet taking off this rubbery stuff. And it's also here on the keelsen was between the under the plank as well. So I want to get that all cleaned off really nicely. I'll probably do something to fill all the nail holes in the keels. Just put little wooden plugs in there. I've got to clean up the edge of this plank as well. So just square it up. I think I might focus on getting the other plank together. Start to get it fitted and we'll worry about the bevel last. Although I should probably bevel it while it's still flat. Yeah, that'd be the best thing to do. It'll do a rough fit. Make sure it fits well, then bevel it and bevel this one. And then we'll focus on steaming this into place and uh tweaking the bevel to get it to fit. All right, folks. We're going to wrap this up for today, but we're going to pick up where we left off in the next video. I want to thank you all for watching, and I especially want to thank all those on Patreon who help support these videos. If you can help support me over on Patreon, I really appreciate that. You can find links in the corner or down in the description. All right, folks. We'll see you next time when we finish up this repair. Ciao for now.