Practising the margin plank

The balsa still hasn’t arrived, so I’ve made a start on the gun deck instead. It is still lying loose on the hull, because I’m in two minds about how to plank it. I could do it with the deck on the ship, or plank it off the ship and fit it later. In the latter case it would have to be cut down the middle.

I want to plank the deck with a “margin plank” (I only knew the English term at the time, not the Dutch one) and “joggle” the deck planks into it, because I had read that this is the correct way to do it. I didn’t come across the top and butt system in the books, so to keep things simple I’m leaving it out. To practise, I made a paper template of the deck. Straight away the question comes up whether such a margin plank should also run on under the bulwark. If so, it needs to be a good deal wider than if it sits against the bulwark. My deck planks are 4 mm.

The plan is to draw the margin plank on the computer and cut it out with my wife’s cutting plotter. That way I can be sure it comes out crisp. The blade may just as easily snap off of its own accord, but then nobody can say I didn’t try. A strip of tanganyika, 1x100x1000 mm, is on order from England, so that will take a while. Odd, by the way: when I order things in England they are cheaper and the postage is lower too. Go figure.

How wide?

Two days later a trial with the plotter, but on paper. I went with 10 mm, part of which runs under the bulwark. I wasn’t sure that was right, because at the bow in particular it very nearly touches the bulkheads. And the width wasn’t the same everywhere yet either.

Hans Groenenberg advised working back from the scale, and Pingu57 pointed me to Mondfeld and to the drawing on page 49 of the Anatomy of the Ship. In Mondfeld I only found the width of the deck planks: 8 to 14 inches, which is 4 to 5 mm at scale. From the Anatomy drawing I arrive at 4.5 mm for the margin plank. I’m going for 5 mm. Incidentally, on that same drawing I can see that they do use top and butt after all, so I’ll have to give that some more thought. With slightly more careful measuring the notches ought to come out right.