Top planks lining up?

[Roger Porter]

Just finished planking my Freedom 17.
All the way up the stem, the planks lined up perfectly on either side of the stems, however, as I moved
into the centre, the long diagonal joints began to not match up. I noticed this after finishing planking one side, then cutting my centre line. As I added the planks on the other side they got further and further out of alignment. The stern was much worse than the bow. The canoe is symetrical along its lines so it should move nicely through the water. It would have been nice to have the planks line up though.

I wondered if I should have ripped a plank down to add a thin piece to make the diagonal joints line up, however, it would have had to be tapered because of the difference in the stern and bow.

I am going to build another canoe and would like to get it right next time.

Any thoughts on how to keep the alignment symetrical?

Roger

[Glen Smith]

Yes, it is sometimes necessary to "fine tune" a strip in order to get both sides to match. I do it with a small hand plane on the bead edge then I reshape the bead, again using the small hand plane.

[BearLeeAlive]

I had that happen a bit as I got to the football with the strips. I did like Glen said, and trimmed a wee bit off of a strip to bring into perfect alignment. I used these round over tools bought at Lee Valley to shave down the bead. They worked great.

[Rabbit]

a good example of the fine tuning is illustrated in the companion dvd to canoe craft. i had the same problem, and it seemed to be more at one end than the other.

[Patricks Dad]

I had a similar problem. I belive my problem was induced when i cut the centerline. It wasn't quite in the center so the mating between the strips was off a bit. As Glen notes, fine tuning the strips solves the problem.

[Chipper1959]

I also had the same problem, bow and stern. Being a 1st-timer, I thought I had messed up somewhere while cutting out my molds. I ended up planing the strips narrower on one side and adding "spacers" on the other to get the ends to line up. I wouldn't have worried about it except that I was adding some walnut accent strips near the football....it really would have looked stupid if they hadn't of lined up
Hearing that this has happened before to other builders makes me feel a bit better.