Still planking

The process may be the same, but fitting a 26-foot plank into place on a big Seine dory like this takes a lot more time than planking a little Handline dory. Plus you can't always get quality boat lumber in these lengths so sometimes planks have to be scarphed or made from two pieces.

You can see how a scarph is fashioned from the picture below. Jay takes the two pieces of wood that will be scarphed together to form a longer plank and planes them on an identical straight taper to feather edges. These faces are then fastened using epoxy with microfibres.

The finished product is just as strong as the natural boards from which the scarph is constructed. Once sanded and painted, it’s hard to even find the splice.

Dory Plug