The Bitter End

A brief update on second planking progress. I have decided to buy myself a little extra time before I have to make a final decision on the wales by planking down to where the Wale should begin and rough-sanding this back. This will give me the option to have a thicker squared, smooth or chamfered wale depending on what I decide. For those that care I am leaning in the direction of doing a chamfered wale mostly because I would like the colour scheme to match that of the admiralty models and the Antczak model. This can be done with a smooth wale but I believe the paint effect will be better if the paint is applied to a slightly raised wale as opposed to a smooth hull. Below a photo of the scheme for referenc e. I realise this is a strange deviation for this drive for historical accuracy but I cannot bring myself to paint over the hand-cut pear planks. Due to my lack of skill and the fact that I am cutting these planks on a 20-year-old 2kW table saw I really struggled to get consistent plank thicknesses. I therefore started very rough and over-thick and sanded back. The first planking allows for very effective pinning of the planks together to eliminate some of the smaller gaps. A very rough result: Which was largely remedied by rough sanding with 80 grit sandpaper. The finish is still rough-sanded and will later be sanded down to a far finer grit and sealed. Any defects will also be filled with a sawdust and glue filler and the imperfections in the upper edge of the bulwark painted over as in the antczak model above and hidden under the planksheer strip so I am not too concerned about minor defects in these areas, I hope to produce a far nicer result once this is all cleaned up properly so please don't judge too hard. For those interested in the minutiae of my decision making process my planking was chosen as follows. The average width was in the region of 10inches, there was some variation according to lords drawings but these are minor enough to not be worth replicating. This translated to a 3.3mm wide strip. As for planking pattern and length, I went with a 4 butt shift pattern with the additional element of not allowing and butt to fall directly above or below a gun port it it was within 2 strakes of a gunport. The offset between butts was 6ft which I achieved by marking out the butt lines on the first planking at 24mm intervals and having butts land on these marks. This is a planking style which I got from HMS victory reconstruction specifications, I appreciate that this is not necessarily what wouldhave been used across the pond but its good enough for me in the absence of other information. The records show that average hull plank length was around 40ft(159mm). I used this length as my baseline but always went upwards in plank length not downwards when a deviation from the 4 butt pattern was required. I chose to do this as a minor nod to the fact that American ship builders had access to far better timber resources than their European counterparts so I guessed they would have access to longer planks. If anyone happens to want a copy of the planking spec I used feel free to give me a shout and ill send it over. T.B.E. PS. I just realised that I messed up the 4 butt shift. The last plank is incorrect and its butt advances 2 beams to the bow instead of moving 3 beams back. Luckily it is only one incorrect strake before I can "reset" the pattern below the wale planking. but I don't think I can justify removing that strake. If anyone has a way to justify my mistake please let me know. i know this error, no matter how invisible to most views, will bother me forever.

Thank you for this Jon This drawing has been a great addition and I have pored over it for ages. For what its worth, I agree with your transcription. I wonder what they mean by chamfering of black strakes. If it had just said Wale I would have been less confused. Keep these drawings coming whenever the urge hits you, I love them.

Marcus my friend A woderful and well thought out response as always, I have wavered considerably during this investigation and I must say I tend to lean toward your thinking around the mechanics of the ship and the act that any sort of edge would be a structural flaw. As you point out this feature is not visible anywhere on any contemporary representation of the ship and only really appears on technical drawings made much later. I was considering doing the chamfer but I lean now far more toward an essentially smooth transition. to be fair a chamfer on a 0.5mm thick plank is basically going to look like a taper. thank you for your effort and research. It is nothing short of a joy to me, Cheers Haiko

If only we could all have the confidence of Ericsson who has the rigging of the constitution nailed down to its exact configuration down to the hour! Its hard for my very OCD brain to accept that I have to make hundreds of compromises for me 1797(ish) guess at what she might have looked like. Infact the only thing I know for a fact is that it definitely wasn't exactly as I am building her.

Thank you very much my good man! I hope I don't disappoint. It has been a great journey so far.

Hello Peter! Thank you very much for this and for your reference to the work of Marquardt. All very interesting and another opportunity to learn. I think I am with you and monsieurs Grok and Marquardt that there were certainly wales comprised of heavy strakes. The question is now becoming more and more, how visible are these wales, somewhere between a totally smooth curve and a total step above and below. From a practical perspective, I would say that there was probably a thickened section with heavy chamfering on the corners to prevent tearout, so essentially a sort of hybrid between a curve and a step. It is so hard to really determine what to follow, in reality when trying to make an approximation of what the vessel really looked like. For one, I wont be painting her, so that is certainly wrong, but the subtleties of the choices made by the ship builders on the day are sadly impossible to know, but make a great opportunity for discussion and interpretation. Cheers! Haiko

Good evening All After a bit of a break to focus on redoing the farm website as well as the labours of preparing for the summer season I am back at work on the important stuff. I dove right back into planking and quickly ran into some problems and then some more problems. firstly, the wale. In my attempt to pursue historical accuracy I did a little research on what the wale might have appeared like in 1797 and came across the following very confusing information... 1. the 1926 lord cross section drawings: Starboard side(presumably showing what the restorers were meant to built to). Note only one lip on the wale upper edge 2. 1926 Lord cross section, same drawing, Port side, presumably as found?? smooth hull no Step on the wale 3. yet another lord drawing showing an upper and a lower step with a protrusion of 1 to 1.5 inches 4. The hull model from 1812 showing what appears to be a totally smooth hull....this model pays alot of attention to other details so it would surprise me if this feature was there but was not shown in some form. 5. and finally the humphreys plans which appear to show some wort of wale like markings but that is by no means a definite It is of course possible that the wale was there but was just so insignificant in protrusion that it was not shown on any of the paintings or drawings of the ship from the time, while in reality still being there. The fact that Lord included this feature may also simply have been a byproduct of the fact that he simply expected it to be there based on standard practice. I am personally unable to find any feature or piece of text which indicated the stepped wale other than the one version of the Lord drawing. I would love to hear your views and perspectives on this. how should the wale be represented?! Should it be there at all? and if it is, an upper and lower ledge or just the upper. Cheers Haiko

Thank you for this, I assumed that this was just a deck planking layout but It seems that it was applied to hull planking too. I am probably going to make use of this plan coupled with the suggestion by Dziadeck below. Thank you to you too, this is a great example of how well all your contributions can help. I have decided to go for roughly a 4 butt shift while simultaneously always erring on the side of longer planks rather than shorter planks where a question comes up about where a joint should land. this is a small detail but the intention is to show that the builders in america at the time would have had access to more abundant timber resources than their european counterparts. I have quickly found that landing on a perfect 4 pattern shift very rarely happens. a plank ending near the bow or stern can easily be extended a few feet or a oint landing too near a gun port can be shifted. quickly leading to a lost 4 butt pattern, in short im using the 4 butt pattern as a guide while working as a ship builder would have...as far as possible. Cheers Haiko

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen I am in the process of doing my second planking on my USS Constitution. (see log in signature). I have opted to go with a double planked hull for reasons which currently escape me. I see most modelers allow the joints to fall on the bulkheads provided in the kit but as these have been covered I can have my joints fall wherever is most historically accurate. Does anyone have any sort of idea of how planks were staggered in terms of distances between joints and not just pattern(although I would love a reliable planking pattern too). Dude to the short intervals between the ribs on the actual ship I guess any plan could theoretically have worked but I am really interested in achieving as much accuracy as possible, specifically focusing on how she would have looked when launched in 1797. Any ideas would be very well recieved. Cheers Haiko

Beautiful and unique. I wish I could see it in person. Well done!

And normally the bottle neck to the results is the ability of the user. So congratulations, good tools or not, you are the one steering the ship. What exact models of lathe and milling attachment do you have? Cheers Haiko

Holy smokes I want that lathe.

Good morning Daniel, Thanks for your message. I wish I could show you a proper finished product but life has been incredibly busy and I have not had a chance to actually get to the finishing part of any of my build(besides a matte aerosol varnish on the completed stern gallery). That being said I did do some testing and I must say that the finished produced by the osmo poly-x was by far the most beautiful. This was suggested by @Mike YAnd is the result of careful testing which he did, I couldn't be happier with the results. Here is his work https://modelshipworld.com/topic/7297-beavers-prize-1777-by-mike-y-148-pof-hahn-style/?do=findComment&comment=788496 I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Good luck! Haiko

What a beautiful shot, you are doing spectacular work. I love the natural wood.

It seems the tribe has spoken and everyone agrees you are the man to go to for planking advice. I will take a look through chucks instructions and read your log and see what I can come up with... Also thanks for the advice on ropes, I will be doing some online shopping in the near future. Haiko