Harry Speight concluded his two-part series on strip planking on Wednesday, 24 November by describing the construction of his own folding trimaran, a 27' Farrier F82A. The "A" (for "Amateur") indicates it is planked in timber, Western Red Cedar (WRC) in Harry's case; there's an F82R ("R" for "Racing") which is meant to be built in foam.

But enough of the strips; how about the building jig? This was to be a female mould, that is, the frames fitted the outside of the hull, not the inside, and of course the strips are laid up inside them as mentioned last issue. Additionally the hulls (there are three, remember) are made up in port and starboard halves, including the deck in each case. Each half is planked on its side with the gun'l down and the centreline up. Eventually the two halves of each hull are glued together and the decks are already done. When each half is finished the temporary frames which were used can be reassembled to make a jig for the opposite side saving some material. Harry even built in little ledges on the mould frames just near the hull to hold a strip vertical while applying glue to the edge. It has to be remembered that Harry's built this entire project single-handed so little ideas that create second pairs of hands are very valuable. All edges of the mould frames were, of course, sheathed with plastic packaging tape so the hull wasn't accidentally glued to them.

He started on the outrigger hulls (the amahs) first and these are small enough not to allow for any crew accommodation so are totally enclosed apart from a couple of hatches. They needed a couple of permanent internal bulkheads however and these in turn needed temporary guide battens to make sure the two bulkhead halves lined up, out of sight, when the whole shebang was glued together. Did Harry leave the temporary guides in place to add unnecessary weight? Not a bit of it. He made sure the temporary bits were within reach of the hatches when they were cut in, and removed them. Initially the finger joins in the planking were glued together off the hull and this soon lead to a further bit of assembly-line process, gluing up several planks at a time. But even the amahs must be 20' long resulting in planks not much stiffer than rope to handle. So the FJs were glued up off the hull for the two amahs but then Harry decided that for the main hull he could glue the FJs on the job, so that is what he did. I imagine this would be a lot quicker and less stressful because each joint could be made by aligning against the adjacent plank, instead of a line on the floor or a straight edge.

When it came to joining the two halves together the first half was lowered down from the roof over the second. To avoid gluing the hoist straps in place, about four scissor-type car jacks were sat in the lower half in strategic places and the upper half was lowered onto them, held a few inches high, and the straps removed. After some jiggling to get the alignment right and applying epoxy to all gluing edges the jacks were lowered down bit by bit until contact was complete and the epoxy could set.

So far the fibreglass sheathing has been rather glossed over, but it was not without its moments. Air bubbles formed under many areas and Harry eventually assumed they were associated with staple holes in the timber. He'd used an electric staple gun to fasten down difficult planks in many places. Indeed he had photos of two such guns, a cheapie and good one, and they both looked like large lumps of epoxy – there was so much of the stuff flying about. After removal of the staples with a blunt chisel the remaining hole was capable of discharging air due to atmospheric temperature changes.

Harry eventually bought all his WRC from Queensland, ready machined, after being left less than satisfied with local dealer responses. All this was back in about 1999, dealing with Cedar Sales, PO Box 558, Archerfield, Q. He was able to specify the exact section he wanted and ended up agreeing on 25mm x 9mm bead and cove section with radiuses at the ends of 5mm. This left a slightly sharp, but not impossible, edge each side of the hollow (cove) end of the section. This occasionally broke off in places, but not too often, necessitating the use of filler. Somehow Harry calculated that he'd purchased 2.5km of very floppy WRC in total. I'm not sure how long the pieces were, but they were less than the boat of course so hundreds of joins would be necessary. Given the other options of butt joins and scarf joins, he decided to take out a second mortgage and purchase a finger jointer head for his router which sits in a Triton Work Bench. It's a very large cutter with radially three rows of five cutter blades each around the shaft. Harry had to set the router to a slow speed because of the large radius of the cutter blades. It's difficult to describe only in print but he held each strip vertically and at right angles to the Triton fence and moved it across the moving cutter blades. Since one end of the join was slightly different from its partner he would do a whole heap of one kind before adjusting the cutter and doing the other kind.

Back in 2000 epoxy, suitably thickened, was the glue of choice for strip planking and that's what Harry used throughout, and still prefers today, especially where much twist is involved. However, today, Botecote "Purbond", a single-pot polyurethane, would at least be easier to use. To dispense the epoxy a suitable sized zipper-lock plastic lunch bag with a small corner cut off to create a squeeze spout was used. Frequent replacing of the lunch bag was necessary.

The main hull was quite difficult to plank because it's a very exotic shape. It's narrow and conventional up to the waterline but then flares out dramatically further up to provide internal accommodation, before rolling over into a turtle-deck and then reflexing again into a cabin top. The strips are started along the line of the upper chine or bilge line and built up from each side of that but after a while they cease to be at all parallel to the keel. Eventually it was necessary to cut off an appropriate number of strips at an angle closer to the keel line before continuing the planking. The sharp edges of the cove edge of planks broke off from time to time, and many of the planks were cross-grained and broke under twist. At this stage I'd have been wishing I'd built the foam version! Still, Harry laboured on, applying filler over breaks and misaligned planks so that he'd have a lean surface on which to glue the inner furniture, after ‘glassing, of course.

After completing the first hull-half internally, and still working on his own, he rolled the structure over 180 degrees using slings, removed the temporary frames and hauled the structure into the roof. Then directly below that he set up the frames the other way around to allow construction of the second half. The hull skin is symmetrical about the centreline so that proceeded as before, followed by internal ‘glassing, but the furniture is not the same, so some variety crept in there.

Since peel ply was being used to get a good surface, air couldn't very well escape through it and these areas frequently had to be cut out and re-‘glassed later.

So much for the hulls and the strip planking. Harry's also finished the outrigger arms and hinges and fastened the arms to the amahs and these have been taken down to Legend Boat Builders for professional fairing. Pretty soon the main hull will follow. Wire rigging has been spliced up at Boating Hardware and Harry is now negotiating for someone else to make up his synthetic main shrouds (Spectra?) which will allow easy folding of the mast when rigging.

And so work goes on. Harry must surely be getting close now. It's been a saga, but he's going to have an immaculate, super-fast yacht very soon. Many thanks for the insights, mate.