Found the gap

Thanks to the tips from Peter (Pingu57), Piet and Henk I’ve found a solution. I prepared a drop plank to the true English system, with a point, and then it suddenly becomes very clear where my problem area is. A distinct gap opens up between the upper part of the drop plank and the plank it’s supposed to lie against. That is exactly the part where the clinker effect arose, because that’s where I kept having to push the strakes into place. Now it’s clear how big that difference is.

The solution is simple: just leave the plank the drop plank lies against a bit wider. Unfortunately that one was already glued, so it had to come off first.

Meanwhile Henk gave another finishing tip: after sanding, go over the hull once more with steel wool, ordinary steel wool from the DIY shop, not the soap-filled kind from the supermarket. I had just bought a whole bale to try later whether I could take some of the black off the guns, as Adrie did on his gunboat. Now it comes in useful sooner.

In the afternoon it worked. With a bit of paper I measured the correct width of the plank and transferred it to the strip. After that everything fitted exactly. You can now see that I no longer need to use force to make the strips meet: the upper strip, on the keel side, is only loosely fixed and already sits snugly. I hadn’t managed that until now.

Directly above this there still has to be another drop plank in any case, otherwise I still won’t come out right. The remaining part of the hull I have now divided into three belts with battens after all, and marked with pencil. Now I should come out right. Incidentally, drop planks alone without tapering doesn’t work for me, and neither does tapering alone. I think the strips are simply too wide for that; half a width remains too much for the first curves. That’s why I combine the two.

Piet remarked that it may be superfluous, given the copper plates that will go over it, but that this way I do learn to plank a hull properly. Before those plates go on I can enjoy it for a long time yet, and I find the puzzling great fun. Who knows, a later builder may get something out of it too.