After three days of work, the port topside has been fully planked!
The planks in the bow required many bronze screws to hold the planks in place and spring them into their curved form. Nails were attempted, but the curvature kept pulling the nails out of the first planks. Bronze screws were needed to train the planks to curve to the bow of the dinghy. As the work moved aft, nails were able to be used as the topsides were flat and required no force to keep them sprung in place.
While screws do hold much stronger than nails, screws also take considerably longer to install. The four strakes at the bow took nearly 4 hours of work, while the aft half of the dinghy took only 5 hours. There were 32 strakes in total, and the ones installed with nails were installed much faster.
This came down to two reasons, screws require changing the drill bit to a driver and screws require careful positioning. Nails can be easily banged into place with a hammer while the drill holds the same 1/16" drill bit. The other reason for the speedier installation is that I got efficient at spreading the bedding compound around.
The dinghy now sits with the port topside curing, awaiting me to trim off the excess planks. The planks will be trimmed to the sheer and the chine. After they are trimmed, the starboard side can be planked in the same fashion.
Once all the planks are installed, the nails will be bent over to lock them in place and make the hull much stronger.
