Planking continued

I am on the 3rd plank now and I am sold on the idea of the clamping batten.

There are a number of different ways to produce glued-lapstrake boats.  On my last boat, internal stringers were fitted where the planks were lapped.  These make it easier to get a fair curve in the laps, but the stringers are a lot of work and they become a permanent part of the boat, making the interior very complicated to sand and paint.

Another tactic is to use plywood clamps.  Basically, the clamps are pieces of plywood with a v-shape cut out of them that wedges the two planks together.  I haven't tried that approach.  The benefit would be that it leaves a very clean interior and a completely untouched (no holes) hull.  

The clamping batten that John Brooks suggests is basically an external, temporary stringer that pulls the lap into a very nice fair curve and at the same time, clamps the length of the lap pretty evenly.  It pretty much has the same effect as using the internal stringer, but it doesn't become an unpleasant, permanent fixture in the boat.  The only drawback is that it leaves some screw holes in the hull.  Filling these with epoxy is much easier than dealing with the internal stringers.  With regard to using the plywood clamps, I'm not sure how they would help pull the lap joint into a nice fair curve unless there are a large number of them.

In any case, nice boats have been made with all of these methods and many more.  For now, I really like glued laps with the clamping battens.