This is how I go about making the gains at the bow

This is how I go about making the gains at the bow. I get a straight edge clamped or as I decided later a piece of straight 9mm ply scrap screwed to the panel as I really don't care about holes on these bottom planks because I will fill it with epoxy and paint .

decide on how long you want your gain to be , mine is 14 inch then simply use your rabbet plane ( if you don't have one buy one you will be happy you did (mine was under 100.00 at LEE VALLEY)

What I do is plane to 1/2 thickness of this panel and 1/2 thickness on the inside of the next panel.... I think it is called a ship lap. Use your plane to make a nice smooth transition .

The photo shows the next panel ship lapped on the inside ..When it is together it should make a nice fair gain....

The gain still needs a little work but you get the idea

There was some discussion on John welsfords forum about how to make patterns for your planks so I will humbly show how I do it ...

The first thing I did was make a fid . , a tool I use for tracing a pencil line that marks a line half way down the top stringer .

And when you flip the fid over it marks a line the full thickness of a stringer witch marks where the bottom of the plank will lie

After you have marked these lines you can use them for spilling your planks

I use a strip of door skin and staple it up between where I have marked my lines on the stringers I then use a straight edge and make vertical lines on the door skin on to the stringers ...These line do not have to be 90 degrees or anything just straight and well marked.. I make a line like this every foot or so

A valuable piece of spilling equipment is the dividers make sure they can't be adjusted easily .. choose a random width for your dividers and mark that on your pattern so you can check to make sure the width has not changed accidentally while making marks.

Place one end of the divider on the intersection and press the other end into the door skin ..Make sure to circle your mark with a pencil

This blurry picture shows the circled marks from the dividers ..make marks on all the vertical lines you put on the door skin

after you have made all your marks remove the door skin and put it on your plywood and nail it to the plywood so the pattern can't move .. use a glue gun if this is a panel that will be left bright

carry the lines you drew on the door skin on to the plywood

use your dividers that are still at your chosen width to put marks on the ply wood ,circle them and hammer a nail into the mark. Do this for every mark you made on the pattern

then use a nice baton to run along the nails you have placed in the marks ..Hammer nails on the other side to hold it tight against the nails... trace a pencil mark along the batten and cut it out with a jig saw...

you will end up with a plank that should fit perfectly...you hope!

Use your block plane to get rid of the bumps and dips and fair it out then use it as a pattern for the othersides plank ... just flip it over

I glue all the scarf's with the planks dry fitted on to boat.... when the glue has cured I will take the now on piece plank and use my block plane to make a fair line on the bottom edge that you see..... I will do the same for the top but it really is not that important as it will be covered

A few days later I removed the complete scarfed plank and wished I had saw horses to hold up the ends and I faired my edges with my block plane ...

I guess you can see I do more building then cleaning ... sort of organized chaos .

I faired the plank and worked on the gains a little more and glued it into position. I decided not to worry about the gains in the stern. It's my boat after all!... as you can see I need to cut the ends of the plank at the bow .

I have devised my own method for scarfing using my angle grinder with 36 grit and although sounds a little barbaric ,I think works fine... I made a you tube movie showing my method

almost there . one more plank on the other side

I scarfed and glued the plank in place which was way easier then doing it in one piece . I couldn't tell the difference in the end product so I would go for easy every time... I thought I would finish today but ran out of screws and it is Sunday and nothing is open on Sundays on my small island community .Every thing is cut and ready for placement..........so close so thirsty!!!!!!!! I originaly thought I might make my sheer strake out of solid V.G cedar , but after finding out how much the lumber was going to cost I bought some more plywood....

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