planking

[saltytheseadog]

I have a 1950 carvel planked 26ft sailboat.the planking (african mahogony) above the waterline has been wedge seamed with cedar splines.Most of the topsides is o.k. but in the summertime enough of those seams open up to make it downright dangerous to sail.I tried to refit a few of the worst ones (using cedar and sikaflex for an adhesive) to no avail. I'm looking for suggestions on solving this problem as the boat is coming out of water soon.Anybody been there ,done that?

[TimothyB]

Lots of ways to deal with this, all of them involve lots of work and have been suggested here before.

1) Traditional makeover. Get a good router and route out the splines, weighting the router towards the lower plank. Glue in splines that have a caulking bevel pre cut in them, and are the same kind of wood as the planking. The wedge should only be glued to the lower plank. Caulk the seam traditionally.

2) Conventional. for a really clean job, route out the old wedges, re glue&wedge them tight and cover over with Dynel and epoxy. Alternatively, you could make up epoxy filler that you trowel into the gaps and then cover with cloth as above.

Both of these methods aren't new. I've read about both of them in two separate books on boat repair. IF you decide to cover her with glass/Dynel and epoxy, I would suggest that you find a book on the subject before beginning.

[ 09-08-2005, 12:15 PM: Message edited by: TimothyB ]