Steve’s Boat Building An amateur’s attempt to build a strip plank dinghy


A basic explanation of strip-plank boat construction


Strip planking is the art of bending flexible, narrow and thin strips of wood around a set of formers which are aligned to create a mould the same shape as the boat. The strips are machined with a convex curve on one edge, and a matching concave curve on the opposite edge. In theory (because I have not yet got this far in my construction) it should be fairly straightforward to staple, or nail successive strips around the mould, using a marine glue or epoxy to bond the strips together. The curved edges help in three ways. Firstly, the adjacent strips can rotate about each other without leaving the gaps that would appear if the edges were square to the faces. Secondly, the concave curve can act as a reservoir for the glue, ensuring that any small gaps are filled. Finally, forcing the convex edge into the concave edge should align the faces of the strips .


A couple of sketches may help, as I am not the best of authors.