Spiling for lapstrake planking can be accomplished in many ways. The simplest involves simply wrapping a pre-thicknessed plank around the hull and tracing off the the edge of your lap and marking off your plank widths relative to that. This is the method often employed in plywood lapstrake construction.

We are working with 1” thick planking stock and re-sawing our planks so we need to use a different method. The technique I use here, cutting small doorskin tabs to the exact plank width take a little extra time over other methods but I feel it is well worth it.

Once you are transferring your lines down there is no doubting the information you have to work with. The reason I like to keep my spiling intact until the plank is done just in case there are issues that cannot be overcome and a new plank has to be fabricated. This is an extremely rare occasion but is must have happened to me at some point because I generally learn things the hard way.