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When balsa planking was done I attached the keel to the rest of the construction with two components resin glue from UHU.

Also to be on the safe side I marked and cut out gun ports. Balsa is so soft that I only had to use the knife to achieve this.

And in the end I started to plank. The moment I have been waiting for a while.
I begun with the stern as I think many would do so. Just before planking I built interiors of stern gun ports from pear wood; its reddish colour will nicely look without future need to paint.
I planked the stern with walnut 5x1 mm stripes. I will use the same wood for above water line part of the hull. The wales (so far only one) are made of the same african walnut but 5x3 mm this time. To bend it around the stem area… heavy, but possible. I boiled the planks for 10 minutes and then simple force them to the hull and let them dry.

One more thing, all my planks will be 14 cm long. This is based on Wolfram zu Mondfeld who mentions in his Historic Ship Models that planks were originally 20-24 feet long. That is 6-7 metres. So in my scale (1:50) this should 121-146 mm. He also speaks about widths of planks and apparently until the end of 17^th century widths of planks varied between 18 and 13 inches i.e. 9 and 6 mm. Since wales on my plans look more like 5 mm, I compromised a bit and went for planks 14 cm long and 5 mm wide. Normal planking will be 2 mm thick, wales willl be 3 mm thick and some exceptions of course.

Underwater planking in progress. Stripes are birch wood 7 x 2 x 140 mm. It would be a waste later to paint so much walnut.

Birch

American Cherry