HMS Pegasus, 1776

[orthofox]

Planking the Gundeck: Rolling hemp and butting joints.



Mr. Allen, Master: [after seeing that the Acheron is closing in on them] My God, what can we do? He has us by the hip.

Capt. Jack Aubrey: Run like smoke and oakum.

So what is oakum and why am I bringing it up here? Because we're about to plank a deck! Well, I'm about to pretend like I know how to plank a deck to be more specific. First, I have to note that I'm really straying from the directions on this part. They are vague at best. For example, the provided illustration shows the false deck to be one entire piece of plywood, not the actual split deck that the kit provides. Next, they suggest dividing the deck into thirds with transverse planks to trifurcate the deck planking. From what I've read, this would never have been done on a real ship.



Lastly, they instruct to plank the false deck before installing it which is just crazy talk, because the end result would be a deck so rigid that I don't think I'd ever be able to fit it between the frame uprights or get it to take on the gentle arc to match the 'beams' of the bulkhead frames.

So, I will be planking the entire length of the false deck in situ.
For another real world ship building lesson, I turned back to the Traditional Maritime Skills website (link) for a tutorial. Ship decks are planked with longitudinal strips of wood. But one edge of each plank has a subtle bevel cut into it which creates what is called a seam.


These seams are not full thickness.


The seams are caulked which serves two purposes. First, they make the deck water proof. But secondly, they provide tremendous structural support to the deck by inhibiting the planks from sliding back and forth on one another in a pitching sea. Thus, good caulking provides stiffness to the overall deck and a waterproof barrier to the decks below. There are many ways to caulk a wooden deck, but what would have been typical in the 18th century is to apply oakum and pitch. So what is oakum? It is a complex array of fibers made from strands of hemp, jute or other materials used for making rope (even from old ship's ropes) that is then soaked in tar or oil to make it waterproof.

If you visit the aforementioned site, you can watch shipwright and all around bad-a$$ Chris Rees caulk the deck planks.

First step, twisting the oakum into a cord.


Then using a mallet (never a hammer) and a making iron (kind of like a wedge) to seat the oakum into the seam.


Then tapping it even further in with a caulking mallet and hardening iron to firm it up.


(I want one of those. I have no idea what I'd use it for, but I want one. Anyway...)

After the seam has been caulked with oakum, it would be coated with pitch or tar, probably twice in a large ship. The excess would be scraped free from the deck.

The reason I mention all of this, is that there is very definitely a resulting striped pattern to the resulting deck planks and dark caulk that I'll want to try to replicate.

The next thing to mention is that there are various patterns of deck planking which stagger the joints to maximize the structural integrity. I couldn't find a reference that specified which pattern the Pegasus would have had, but from what I read, most ships of that time would have had either a 3 or 4 butt shifting pattern. I decided to go with the 4 butt and drew this out in my build notebook to make sure I understood it before I started.


As you can see, it's just a repeating pattern of where the butt joints fall. I used the frame bulkheads to determine where to place each joint and numbered them accordingly.

The deck planking provided in this kit is 0.5 X 3 mm tanganyika.


When I placed some planks next to one another I noticed they are so precisely milled, that no seam was apparent between them. Again, I wanted to highlight the presence of a black-pitched caulked seam. From various threads online I learned that many ship modelers will do this either by lying black thread between the planks or somehow marking up the plank edges with charcoal, crayon or ink. After some experimentation, I settled on marking the plank edges with the chisel tip end of a dark charcoal grey Copic marker.


You can see the effect here between marked and unmarked.


In using this technique, i noticed that each plank has a rough-sawn side and planed side. The rough-sawn side wicked the ink from the pen more and had a tendency to bleed. So I just needed to make sure the planed side was face up.

Then, the planking commenced. I had two options regarding how to start. Option 1 would be to place something called a kingplank, or single line of planks (also called a strake) right on the midline of the deck from bow to stern. This would establish the line of all subsequent planks. But because my false deck was already bifurcated by the kit designers, I decided to go with option 2: place two strakes, one either side of that bifurcation, each following that straight edge precisely. There are many holes and openings in the false deck that will accommodate various deck features, and the planking had to be cut and carved around each. From there, strake after strake was applied working from midline outward following the 4-butt shift.


I had read that deck planking can get very tedious and boring, but I found it rather meditative. BTW, my wife says I'm really weird, so take everything with a grain of salt.


I just plugged away at it for 1-2 hours a night while listening to a podcast or some music and as the end of the week approached nearly had the whole thing complete.


You will note, that entire deck is NOT complete, however. And that is because the uprights of frames #5, 6 and 7 will actually be removed down to the false deck after the gun port bulwarks are attached. Those cut members then need to be planked over. So I need to leave this segment of the deck unfinished for now. (Remember I said you have to read 5 steps ahead before you do anything...)

Lastly, I wanted to depict how the planks would have been attached to the frames. Conventionally this would have been done with something called treenails (also referred to as trunnel or trennals) which were essentially wooden pegs that may or may not have a wedge in one end to expand the treenail in place. When the end grain of a treenail got wet, it would swell and expand and they would tighten within the hole. I'm not sure the treenails would be seen at 1:64 scale, but I decided to mark some on each each frame with a 0.3mm pencil lead.



Once again, I'm going to be straying from the directions for the next step and jumping straight to the gun port / bulwarks. This will require my first exposure to needing to bend wooden elements in hot water and / or steam. I have zero experience doing this so am a bit nervous. All of this is to say there may be some major Schadenfreude potential in the forthcoming posts. Stay tuned.

Next up: Hold Fast!

 

[korben44]

awesomeness!

 

[Analyzer]

As fascinating to read about as it is to see the build itself!

 

[SmilingOtter]

I'm thoroughly enjoying watching this progress. To be honest, the complexity of the hull would have dissuaded me from trying this, and the hull looks like child's play compared to the rigging...

 

[orthofox]

Gun Ports, Sweep Ports and Bulwarks

The first of these terms will be familiar to everyone: the gun ports. These are the openings in the side of the ship through which the cannons will be positioned.



Sweep ports were smaller openings in the side of the ship that accommodated very long oars, called sweeps. Should your ship be crippled in battle, you could limp away by passing the sweep oars through these ports and having the crew row the boat to safety. Both gun ports and sweet ports were fashioned in the bulwark portion of the ship, or the high walls of the waist above decks that kept the water from washing over the decks. In a conventionally built period ship, the framing of the gun ports, sweep ports and bulwarks would all be incorporated into the upper portions of each individual frame. Refer back to this computer graphic of the framing of the Pegasus.


As can be seen, each port was framed almost like a window is framed in conventional stud-built modern homes with a sill on the bottom and a lintle across the top. As previously discussed, this kit doesn't include full frames like this, so we have to fashion the bulwarks with enclosed gun and sweep ports from precut plywood pieces.


Each bulwark is divided into two pieces, one fore and one aft, which are joined with a dovetail. Each component will have to be carefully contoured around the model's frames and fillers - and this contouring will be significant.


This will be my first real challenge in contouring wood into complex shapes for this build. The downsides of not doing this properly are numerous and obvious: I could crack the ply bulwarks if I try to bend them too much, or if they are not pliable enough, they'll look funky and all the planking that will be added to them later won't look right. Plus, they need to be symmetrical or the ship will look lopsided. In other words, problems at this point will just compound themselves and screw this whole thing up. So after much reading, a little bit of fretting, and a full pint of Fat Tire, I dove in.
Step one, I clamped two pine blocks to the stem, one millimeter off the bow fillers. These will hopefully help "capture" the aft ends of the bulwarks and pinch them tight to the frame.


Next, I soaked the two aft bulwark segments in my home-built hot water soaker (more on that in the next installment) for an hour and half. When they emerged from the bath, I tested them to make sure they were sufficiently pliable by bending them around the frame. When I thought they were subjectively ready to go, I started at the bow and pinched them between the clamped blocks and the frame and bull dog clamped them to one another. Important to note that at this stage, I used no glue. This was all a dry fit.


I then worked my way aft, contouring the bulwarks to the upper extensions of the frames and holding them in place with one-handed spring clamps at the tops, and map pins placed through the ply and into the frames at the bottoms. (By the way - if you are about to embark on this insanity, buy yourself a butt-ton of these clamps. I don't see how you could build this without them.)


I had to make sure that the top edge of each bulwark pattern was flush with the tops of the frames on each side in a symmetrical fashion. If the bulwarks get placed too high or two low, then the gun ports won't match up with the deck at the correct height and the cannons (not yet assembled) won't poke out through the ports appropriately. And that would most definitely not be cool.

After much fussing and doing and re-doing each side a couple of times, I finally got what I figured was the best job I could do. In my real life profession, there is a saying we use. "Better is the enemy of good." And I figured that I had it pretty good and needed to quit farting around with it. So I left it over night. The next morning, I removed all the clamps and pins et voila.


So, being reasonably happy with this, I marked the frames where the bulwark patterns would overlie them, covered them with some PVA glue and reapplied the bulwarks with clamps and pins like the night before.


I checked the symmetry with a level to ensure I had the height of the bulwarks as even and symmetrical as possible.


And after about four hours, the clamps and pins were removed.


As I was busy patting myself on the back for not breaking either pattern and getting each one reasonably positioned on the framework, I noted that the little dovetail joint that is meant to connect the fore and aft segments didn't fall directly on a bulkhead frame. I'm not sure it was supposed to, but if I was designing this thing, I sure would have been shooting for that, to give some support to that joint. This makes me think that I probably didn't get them on correctly. Not only that, but I never even thought about checking for that beforehand (and not surprisingly, the instructions make absolutely no mentions of this). Perfect. So, needing to improvise, I cut some backstops from the 1mm ply cutoffs and applied backers to both sides at the dovetail joints.


I'm not sure of all the potential ramifications of having the bulwark patterns shifted too far aft at the moment, but I don't imagine they can be good. But there was absolutely nothing I could do to rectify this at that point. So onward we go with the aft patterns which were soaked for an hour and half, prefit and then glued in place like the fore segments.


Have I mentioned you need a LOT of one-handed spring clamps?


And after four hours of set time, the clamps and pins were removed.











I immediately noticed all the errors. First, each bulwark pattern seems to be a bit "scalloped" between where they were pinned and clamped to the bulkheads. In other words, they are subtly wavy from stem to stern. Secondly, they are not symmetrical, the port side runs further aft than the starboard by a couple millimeters, thus the gun ports don't line up perfectly symmetrically between sides. Thus, in this fashion, this stage of the build is matching every other phase in being an exercise in knowing how much imperfection is acceptable and then deciding to fix it, cover it up in the next step or just live with it. Deeming that I don't think these errors will be game changers and realizing I cannot easily fix anything, I guess I just need to take my lumps and be happy it didn't go worse. Or as Captain Jack would say, "Always pick the lesser of two weevils."


(Dr. Maturin is nonplussed and so am I.)



The next stage is something I've really be stressing about and that is planking the hull. I've been reading about this process for a solid month now. Every source I refer to (modelshipworld.com, youtube tutorials, books) describes a different technique. The instructions that come with the kit essentially say, "plank the hull." Very helpful. So, the next post will probably be laced with blood, sweat, tears, some alcohol and likely a little profanity. Considered yourself warned.

Next Up: Walking the Plank!

 

[korben44]

I find that alcohol always helps through the most difficult parts of a build...lol... This is inspiring and makes me want to tackle a wooden ship model... in the distant future...lol... Maybe the Black Pearl... since I do fancy the Pirates of the Carribean franchise and Johnny Depp's portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow.

 

[3Dsf]

Fascinating writeup!

 

[Hoplitespear]

Hi Orthofox your post looks like a vision of myself in the near future....

A year ago I got bitten by the model building bug, and a few months ago I came across a wooden ship on reddit which led me to Modelshipworld which in turn (just like the RPF) has captured hours of my attention in the last few weeks.

So I descided to take the leap. Scrolling for some second hand equipment I came across a person here in Belgium that sold his complete workshop due to age. I went to take a look and holy **** his living room was filled with beautifull models he build himself over the last 15 years. The center piece being a 1/48th caldercraft HMS Victory inside a beautifull glass case.

Obviously being completely sold I bought his complete workshop inventory (tools, extra wood, clamps, the lot!). Just one problem... I don't have the room -.-'

So the last few days I am actually moving the toilet and laundry room (small renovation) to make room for my new workshop!!!

I hope to be done by the end of Januari, and then ... a thread like this will follow, not knowing what the hell I'm getting into but excited like hell!!

I am really loving the fact there is a wooden ship build on the RPF I can follow and learn from, and I will join you soon!!!

You are doing great btw, good luck on the planking and consider me subbed!

-Hopli

 

[chris_s]

Love it! Love it! You're writing and descriptions are great. I'm enjoying every post! Awesome build!

 

[Analyzer]

Seems it is becoming quite a challenge

Good luck in the next stage

 

[orthofox]

Thanks so much for your support and feedback. And here's to Hopli for actually remodeling his home to share in this madness! My apologies for the dearth of updates this week but work has been an absolute bear. But things are in motion again and new posts are forthcoming so stay tuned.

 

[orthofox]

Fitting the garboard strake: My first lesson in futility.

Well, dear readers, the time has come to embark on the one thing that I've been most dreading about this build: planking the hull. Now, you are probably asking yourself why I would be dreading this part, as this is where the ship really comes to life and starts to show her shape. Yes, yes - that is true. But in doing some research, I learned there are about 367 different methods to execute this on a wooden ship model. Some replicate the methods that are (and were) used on real wooden vessels, others are geared entirely to just getting the job done. But most are somewhere in between. In my real life, I'm a veterinary orthopedic surgeon and we have a theory about situations in which a number of different corrective surgeries are plausible: none of them is clearly a superior method, or else there'd be only one. Hence, my feeling of dread. When you don't know what you are doing, selecting from a myriad of techniques that are completely foreign to you is a bit like taking a 14 year old to a vineyard and asking them what type of wine is their favorite. I don't know what I don't know. Translation: Take everything that follows as a big experiment and let the general guffawing commence.

First things first. The hull of the Victory model of the HMS Pegasus will be double planked. However, the fashion of this double planking isn't consistent with a real ship. In a conventional period ship, the two layers of planks would exist on either side of the frames as is seen in this schematic.

But In our model, one layer of hull planking will lie directly upon the second one. I think this is an attempt to compensate for the large reduction in number of frames the model possesses in providing a good base to the shape. But much of this has already been compensated for by fairing and filling the frames as previously detailed. Thus, the plans describe layering the entire hull in planks that will be covered by a second layer of planks. The first layer will never, ever be seen. And planking the hull even once is no small task. At any rate, I've decided to follow the directions and will be applying two layers to the hull.

I need to describe the pattern in which the planks (or strakes) will be applied as there are two options: carvel and clinker. British naval warships used a carvel pattern in which the edges of the strakes are butted up against one another without overlap. This is in contrast to a Viking ship which utilized a clinker or overlapping pattern.



Now, the wood provided to comprise this first layer of hull planking is limewood, 5mm by 1.5mm. I can tell right away it is very soft which well help in conforming it to the complex shape of the ship's frames. Still, some method of making it even more pliable will be required as the strakes will need to bend in both directions (crowning and side-to-side) and be able to twist, sometimes as much as 90 degrees. On a large scale wooden ship, this would be done by steaming the planks.

To see this action, check out this video of shipwright Michael Gorman from the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum: link.
Here, Gorman is standing next to the steam box which is being filled by the boiler in the background. Inside is a piece of preshaped cedar, an inch and a half thick (and hopefully a couple of lahbstahs). The basic rule of steaming is 1 hour for each inch of thickness (that applies to the wood, not necessarily the labstahs).


There are lots of ways to make the small stock I'm using for hull planks to be more pliable. There are commercially sold plank benders (which use dry heat), there are homemade plank benders using curling irons, and there is a way to just use a heat gun. Conversely, I can soak the wood in hot water for 10-15 minutes. Since I'm relatively cheap, I decided to go with the soaking method instead of buying a plank bender or heat gun. In rummaging around some old items I kept from college (many moons ago), I found a 36" tall "yard" drinking glass. I wanted to use this as my hot water soaker. But since it is very old, I thought I should test the integrity of the vessel first to make sure it wouldn't leak. So I filled it with beer. This waylaid the planking for a bit, but was well worth the test run. The glass did not leak.

Having proven the yard was water tight, I wrapped this in foil to insulate it to retain the heat a bit longer, and filled it with hot water straight from the tap (about 110 degrees).



Now, the first strake (or plank that runs from stem to stern) to be laid is what is called the garboard strake. This is the plank that lies in the rabbet cut in the keel (you remember that critical step that the instructions omitted). It will need to twist nearly 90 degrees along the length of the ship's frames. This is what the process looks like in securing a freshly steamed garboard strake along the keel of a real wooden ship.

Nothin' says lovin' like a plank from the oven.


Clamps are a good thing.


More clamps are better.


Ok, my turn. After preshaping the bow ends of my two garboard strakes, I popped them in my plank jacuzzi. The limewood is so light that they just want to float, so I had to use a couple of flip back clamps to weigh them down. I let them soak for about 15 minutes.


While they soaked, I got the boat ready. Inverted on a stable surface, I applied PVA glue to all the frames and within the rabbet along the keel. I made sure to have clamps and map pins ready to go.


And one at a time, I fit the garboards into the rabbets and secured them.




After just a few minutes, I removed many of the clamps as the limewood is so soft, I noticed they were indenting the edges. In this photo you can tell how the garboard strake starts off on the bow end nearly vertical, twists to nearly being horizontal, and then returns to vertical at the stem along the keel.



On a real ship of the period, these strakes would be secured much like the deck planks, with treenails. For this model, there isn't much point in marking those as I've done on the deck, since this layer of hull planks will ultimately be covered not only by a second layer of planking, but then by copper sheathing. And when I think about that, I realize what an exercise in futility this really is. You could shape a couple pieces of styrene down to the frame to provide the base layer of the ship's entire hull in the time it took me to prepare a single strake!

Ah yes, you could grasshopper, but let us remember what Master Po from Kung Fu said,


"The bird sings in the forest. Does it seek to be admired for its song? Let tears come if your heart tells you it's sadness."

I have no idea how that applies, but I kind of do feel like crying when I see how many of these planks I'm going to have put on...twice...so that no one can see them.

Next up, Planking and Crying!

 

[Analyzer]

Well hopefully not too much crying

When you don't know what you are doing, selecting from a myriad of techniques that are completely foreign to you is a bit like taking a 14 year old to a vineyard and asking them what type of wine is their favorite.

That made me laugh.

It reminds me of some of the painting contests we had at gaming tournaments. The person running it would give prizes for fully painted armies, but would often let his 6 year son be the one to choose the winner

He would often pick the winner with no regard to skill, just that he liked the color "orange" or the big stompy model looks cool

Also, if I am correct that museum is the one in St Michael's Maryland?

We sail into/out of there all the time with my wife's parents

 

[orthofox]

Plank Club

The first rule of Plank Club is that their are rules for planking. Who knew?

The second rule of Plank Club is that despite there being many right ways to skin the proverbial cat, there is most certainly one very wrong way. And that is shown in this illustration that is part of a planking practicum available over at the Model Ship World Forum: link.


(Full credit for this figure and the entire planking guide goes to Dirk DeBakker, Greg Brooker and Dave Rogers.)

I'm going to be trying to do what is illustrated on the side that is labeled, "Correct side." That will prove to be more difficult than it appears, because as I will find out, once you begin this process, there are underlying forces afoot that keep pulling you into replicating what appears on the side of the illustration labeled "Incorrect side."

Having already secured the garboard strake last time, the next step is to place the top most strake just under the gun port forms. The thickness (1.5mm) of this planking will bring the 1st layer of hull planking flush with the gun ports so that the second layer of planking can start at the top of the gun port forms and run smoothly and seamlessly over both them and the first layer of planking. Clear as mud? Great, let's get it on.

The top most strake is soaked in hot water while glue is applied to the frames. The bow end of the plank is then wedged into the rabbet and its length slowly bent around the frames and fillers, progressively pinning it down with map pins and a small tack hammer.


I should mention that the kit provides special pins that should be used for this purpose. You need to buy a pin pusher to then seat the pins. I personally found this a bit awkward and was much more comfortable working with the map pins and a small hammer - but to each his/her own.

Third rule of Plank Club: Always work on both sides at the same time to try to make the plank pattern on the hull symmetrical. I don't know why it is so tempting to work all the way down on just one side, but fight the urge! So after doing the port side, I repeated the process on the starboard side.


It was at this point that my wife came down to the shop to check on my progress. She thought this looked rather festive and suggested I just stop here and turn this into some kind of colorful Christmas decoration. I told her depending on how the next several days go, it might become a hell of an expensive Yule Log for the fireplace.


Having the garboard and top strakes in place, now the real fun begins and we get to do some "maths" as my British friends would say. "Why," you may ask? "Why can't we just keep slapping 5mm wide planks on this baby and call her good?" Let me see if I can show you why. If we measure the distance between the top most strake and the garboard strake along the 6th frame, we get 81mm. I've demonstrated this with a piece of card stock that has 5mm intervals marked on it.


Cool. This means at the 6th frame, we can fit 16 strakes on the hull per side, leaving just 1mm for error and gapping between planks.
"But WAIT!", you say, "Is that distance the same on every frame from the bow end of the ship to the stern?"

Well, let's check. Let's measure the distance between the top and garboard strakes at the 3rd frame: 67mm.


"Well, futtock, that's not even close", you astutely observe. No it's not, dear reader, no it is most certainly not.

Enter the Plank Fan:


Nope, wrong kind of Plank Fan. This is the kind we need:


The plank fan is a tool that will help us calculate plank width depending on which frame we are working with and what distance exists between top and garboard strakes.

So, note that in this version, someone has drawn a horizontal line marking where each division is 5/32" exactly. Since the provided limewood plank material is 5mm wide, I need to find a similar line on the fan in which each division is 5mm wide. I do so and label this as the 6th frame. Remember that I should be able to get 16 full 5mm wide planks between the top and garboard strakes on the 6th frame. But now I go back to the 3rd frame and measure its distance: 67mm. If all 16 planks are going to fit along the 3rd frame, they are going to have to be a lot skinnier. How skinny? If we measure a distance of 67mm on the plank fan, counting out 16 planks, we can measure how wide each of those planks needs to be on the 3rd frame - about 4.2mm.

(You can also just divide 67mm by 16 - but then you don't get to have a visual of drawing all of your frame lines on your nifty little fan.)

It gets even more fun. The distance between the top and garboard planks is different for each frame. So yeah, we need to do some maths. And we might even need to construct a matrix and fill all of those numbers in the matrix.

(Now tell me this doesn't look like fun.)

But wait, there's even MORE fun. The frames are not evenly spaced. So I had to make a long paper strip to mark the distances between frames that I could lie along side each individual plank. Then, referring to the matrix I marked the thickness the plank needed to be tapered to at each frame.



Using an Xacto knife and a metal straight edge, I then tapered each plank accordingly. This was done in pairs - one for the port side and one for starboard. When they were both done, they were held on edge and together and sanded lightly with a 220 grit foam sanding block to try to take out all of the undulations and make them match evenly - sort of an edge planing technique.

Enter the fourth rule of Plank Club: No plank may be tapered to less than 50% of its original width. If you need to do that for some reason, you must seek an alternative solution. (More on that next time.) Fortunately, for my calculations, the most I would need to taper any plank would be to 3.5mm.

Then, working in pairs, each strake was soaked, fit, glued and pinned to the framed hull. Toward the aft end, these strakes need to make a serious bend upward toward the transom, which really demonstrates the value of all of the fairing and filling done early in the build. All of those hours are paying dividends now.

This is getting so festive, I can hardly keep myself from singing out Oh Tannenbaum!

And have I mentioned yet how important carving that rabbet into the walnut keel was? It is especially so in the prow, at the bow end of the boat, to capture and hold each of the strakes as they are bent around the wide curve. And have I mentioned that fashioning this rabbet was completely omitted from the plans???


Next up, Plank Over Troubled Waters..

 

[Hoplitespear]

Amazing read like always! and outstanding progress. Don't think I can pull that off, renovation almost over tho... I'll know soon enough.

keep up these amazing posts!

-Hopli

 

[korben44]

Just let me get burned by the Mother of Dragons, well, dragons...lol

 

[JamesM242]

Wow - thanks for sharing your progress AND the process. Very insightful.

 

[orthofox]

Dropping strakes!

During the last update, we had begun planking in earnest and had learned how to calculate the appropriate amount of taper each strake required and then began to apply them one by one according to the hallowed rules of planking. We did lots of planning and calculating using grids and plank fans with much consternation. And in today's installment, we'll demonstrate what Mike Tyson meant when he famously said, "The best fight plan goes out the window as soon as you get punched in the face."

So here's where things left off last time after the pins were removed:





At this point, I had only been planking in one direction: from the top (just under the gun ports) down toward the keel. I figured it would probably be a good idea to also add several strakes from the garboard up, to sort of meet in the middle. And that is when I noticed the problem, which I've highlighted with a bright green arrow in this photo.


It may be hard to notice, but there is a wide spot in the area not yet planked. Somehow, through my calculations, I had gotten a wee bit overzealous in my strake tapering toward the bow end. This error then became magnified as more strakes were placed resulting in a widening of the resulting non-planked portion of the hull that started to look a bit ominous. What was more problematic is that immediately in front of this widening is a rapid narrowing of the space. So, what to do?

The first thing I did was stare at it for a while and grumble about how much I don't like math and how yet again, it has failed me. After all, this is absolutely math's fault.

The next thing I did was lay a piece of clear packing tape on the hull over the void and trace its shape with a sharpie.


Then I transferred this pattern to a large sheet of paper.


This allowed me to see a flattened version of the space and start to work out how I could fill it most appropriately with the given plank material.


Essentially, my problem was that I had a wide portion that needed to rapidly be narrowed as the planks run forward to the stem.



So doing a bit of research, I learned that this is a problem in ship building not unique to just models, but to full sized ships with wooden planks as well. The solution was to utilize what is called a "drop plank or strake." Here is a schematic courtesy of master model builder and expert on the HMS Pegasus, Dr. Greg Herbert. (More on him later.)


In this diagram, the thickness of three planks is reduced to two without tapering any individual plank more than 50-66% of its original width. Here is an example on a full sized ship in which double drop planks have been used to reduce the number of planks from 4 to 2 in similar fashion (link).


And with some more maths, and lots of virtual planning, I tried my hand at a drop plank as well to hopefully help fix my problem on both sides.


Overcoming this hurdle, I continued on....measuring, tapering, soaking, gluing and pinning one identical plank on each side, watching the remaining gap in the planking slowly decrease in size, 5mm at a time.


Until eventually, I reached the end.


All in all, that's 18 strakes per side for a total of 36. And it sort of looks like crap. There are gaps between some of the strakes, and toward the bow end many of the planks want to "clink" and ride up over one another. The good news is, I have both sandpaper and wood filler. So after several more hours, was able to get things looking a bit more reasonable.








And now the problem is knowing when to stop sanding. The more I look and work on it, the more I find and feel subtle irregularities, or flat spots that I try to work out and even up with 220 grit sanding pads. I'm at a point now where the strakes are flush with the walnut stem, which is great. But the bad news is, I have to repeat this entire hull planking one more time, and those strakes are the ones that need to end up being flush with the stem, meaning, I've got to sand the first layer down to be as absolutely thin as possible without burning a hole right through them. Good times.

Next up - Questioning what inspired me to try to build this thing in the first place.

 

[korben44]

You have great patience, sir. I don't know if I could do it... Ok, maybe I could...lol... It sure makes you appreciate that brilliant ship builders from centuries ago. They did all this without the tools we have available today. It's mind boggling to think of how they were able to acheive anything.

 

[Analyzer]

This thing is going to wind up sea worthy when it is done