Building the TotalBoat Sport Dory Episode 11: Garboard Pattern and Plank

We hope you’ll be thankful that Lou is back this week – and a few days early – so you’re not pacing around the turkey table waiting for the Thursday night upload. In episode 11, Lou is working on the garboard plank and shows us a helpful tip about how to transfer the pattern of the curvature of the plank onto his board. Using Lou’s clever technique of making impressions of nail heads into the wood, he gets a perfect result and is able to nicely shape and tune the edges with his block plane.Lou gives us a walk-through of how the different layers of cedar bottom planking and carbon fiber and kevlar will overlap and work together to give the bottom extreme strength with little weight and nothing in your way on the bottom of the boat.

Using an adaptation of an earlier patterning technique Lou shows us how he lifts the size and shape of the plank off the mold. He then works that plank down to the proper size before scarfing it onto another piece to complete the first garboard plank on the boat.

As another treat, Lou introduces us to Willow, his silver lab and new best friend and co-worker at the Opendoor Boatshop. Enjoy episode 11 and have a very happy Thanksgiving from Lou, the Tips crew and everyone at TotalBoat.

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