Jaager

Based on the necessary mechanisms, to support a claim that their product can penetrate, at least part of the formulation would need to be a dye as well as larger pigment particles that intercalate with a surface polymerized binder.  In theory, it should yield a higher quality result than a semi transparent paint alone.  However, any surface coating of pigment in a binder seems like an insult to high quality wood.  Wait a tick ,,,, given the quality of the wood species provided in most mass market kits, an obscuring surface stain would be an improvement there.  

Thanks for the scream, jaager, and for the interesting thoughts about mixing dyes and about shellac. I hadn't thought of those, and I have a good stock of shellac which I make up myself with spirit. I did know about the difference between dyes and stains but my thoughts just made a slip while writing too quickly. So I hope you can forgive my senile moment.
 
Thanks also for mentioning the beautiful old colour of the boxwood, Allan. I too love the colour and would prefer to use it as is. It's just with 2mm blocks and below I find it hard to use pear and the lighter colour of the boxwood looks a bit odd to me when I look at contemporary models. In fact I might continue without trying to alter the colour. I also have a stock of India ink for the wales, but that won't be for the boxwood.
 
Roger: you put the thought of castello into my head. I have a large chunk of that, so I might try making small blocks with that.
 
Gregory: thanks for the experience with Chuck's blocks, as that seems to be good evidence.
 
Mike: thanks for the comparison between water- and spirit-based Liberon. I had tried the spirit-based on some lime and had the same experience. So I'll try water-based in future.
 
Anyway, a very stimulating set of thoughts for me to use as I ponder!
 
Tony

Jaager,
 
Thanks for your clarification.  My post was intended to introduce Neophytes to the mysteries of ship drafting and was based general principals.  My Naval Architecture education occurred in the early ‘60s, prior to the dawn of CADD.  We were still required to manually make a lines drawing from a table of offsets with the finished drawing India ink on vellum.  What a mess!  The ship in question had a steel hull and if lines drawing sections were a multiple of frame spacing we had no way of knowing.
 
I certainly agree that there were many framing conventions in the wooden ship era most of which were certainly connected to construction techniques, a subject usually ignored.  I agree that many ships were built by lofting a minimum number of frames and then adding filler frames between, all dubbed to produce a fair hull.
 
This may account for differences in performance of sister ships built to the same lines.

It is to scream in frustration!  The use of jargon with this causes confusion about which agents to use.
A stain - the noun - applies to a semi transparent paint. It does not penetrate wood. It sits on the surface.  It is largish pigment particles in a binder.
A dye - is near single molecule pigment.  It actually enters into the wood and becomes part of it. As commonly found, the pigment is either dissolved in water or alcohol.
The water based version penetrates more deeply but also can swell surface wood fibers (raise the grain).
The alcohol based version penetrates not as deep, but does not affect the wood surface.
 
Small boxwood blocks  - depth of penetration is not something that can be seen, so alcohol is probably the more efficient version.
If you buy a small quantity of red and black dye.  An endless variety of shades of brown is possible by adjusting the relative ration of the two solutions.
Even more variety is possible if a brown pigment is in the mix.  In any case, a little black goes a long way.
Test on scrap.  This is both more tricky than is first imagined and messy - gloves - skin will dye too and it takes a few days for dyed cells to be shed.
Once you have the desired shade, the intensity can be less by adding more alcohol.
To finish, use a coat of clear shellac on the dyed blocks.
 
Or you could leap to the final stage by doing what the original Navy Board modelers did.  Use garnet color shellac on the raw boxwood.  First coat, 1/2 strength, second coat full strength.

It is to scream in frustration!  The use of jargon with this causes confusion about which agents to use.
A stain - the noun - applies to a semi transparent paint. It does not penetrate wood. It sits on the surface.  It is largish pigment particles in a binder.
A dye - is near single molecule pigment.  It actually enters into the wood and becomes part of it. As commonly found, the pigment is either dissolved in water or alcohol.
The water based version penetrates more deeply but also can swell surface wood fibers (raise the grain).
The alcohol based version penetrates not as deep, but does not affect the wood surface.
 
Small boxwood blocks  - depth of penetration is not something that can be seen, so alcohol is probably the more efficient version.
If you buy a small quantity of red and black dye.  An endless variety of shades of brown is possible by adjusting the relative ration of the two solutions.
Even more variety is possible if a brown pigment is in the mix.  In any case, a little black goes a long way.
Test on scrap.  This is both more tricky than is first imagined and messy - gloves - skin will dye too and it takes a few days for dyed cells to be shed.
Once you have the desired shade, the intensity can be less by adding more alcohol.
To finish, use a coat of clear shellac on the dyed blocks.
 
Or you could leap to the final stage by doing what the original Navy Board modelers did.  Use garnet color shellac on the raw boxwood.  First coat, 1/2 strength, second coat full strength.

From your comments, it appears that you have a misconception about what it is that his being described.
Deadflat does mean flat.  It is about understanding what it is that is flat. 
At the midship - generally this is the frames about 40% of the distance from the FP.  Almost never is the midship half the distance along the length.
If a plank is placed against the outer face the frames here, it is parallel with the keel.  There is no bevel, so it is flat.  Beveling is tricky and bothersome to do, so it gained an accolade "deadflat: instead of just "flat".
 
In old shell first hulls and early frame first hulls, the first inside reinforcement  timber across the keel defined the inside bottom. If they were close enough together to walk on or had boards placed across them, they were the floor.
 
If the inside of the frame timbers are covered with planking, this serves to seal the inside of the hull.  It is a sealing.  No Webster's or Oxford and imprecise spelling  becomes ceiling.  If you think on it, the layer of material fixed to the underside of the beams for the floor above a room does sort of seal it also.

Roger,
I have a definite bias about this, but in all of my observations, I find that the stations more than match frame locations. They define them.
In every instance that I have encountered, a station line is the midline of a bend (paired frames). 
For POF framing of a model, where the lofting methods in current general use is employed, the stations are all but useless. This is certainly the case if a bend is glued up before a pattern is mounted then final shaping is done.  This certainly an incentive to discount the importance of stations
 
I see that there was a major change in framing and lofting after about 1860.  Most of the books that we reference about lofting and framing were written after this change occurred. Most were published near or after 1900.   Iron and steel require a different level of precision than does wood.  After 1860 iron and steel quickly began to rule.  The old shipwrights who knew the old methods were no more.  The methods required to shape and iron or steel frame had "infected" those who built using wood.  At least those in the major industrial yards that influenced the book authors. 
 
My proposed explanation for how it was most often done, before 1860::
It is my thesis that lofting was more of a guideline.  On the loft floor, what was enlarged to full size and used to produce the frame patterns was only the stations.
For the midship bend, the pattern could be used to define the complete bend since both frames had no bevel.  At the other stations only the down bevel frame was cut and erected.  The actual bevel was cut on the ways using battens resting on each station as a guide.  Once that was satisfactory, the up bevel frames were shaped using the same patterns and the eye of the experienced shipwrights. The intervening bends and (pretty much only in England) the single filling frames were preliminarily (rough) shaped on the ground and then finished on the ways using the battens.
 
There was a note on one of HIC plans for a class of USN warships where the sisters were being built at different east coast yards. The frames patterns were to be made by the loft team at the lead yard and shipped to the other yards along with the plans.   Patterns for 12-20 stations is much more practical to ship than 120-200 patterns representing both faces of every frame.
 
With my first POF hull (Kate Cory - Hahn style), I came to really dislike point plot lofting.  I found that getting a curve to connect the plotted points was error prone and inconsistent  from frame to frame.  For me, the Hahn method  (forming a glued up frame horse shoe of wide timber planks and fixing a pattern)  involves an unacceptable amount of waste of expensive wood.  After a long search and several false trails, I developed a new way.  The timbers are shaped as individuals, but include the bevels on both faces.  There is also some extra needed for alignment of the stack of frames between each pair of stations.  The spaces have temporary wood filling them.  The space wood is cheap Pine and it is held by a bond that is easily released.  The Old Boys would have used low cost and rectangular chocks to fill part of the spaces.   My method of frame assembly that only needs the already existing stations to define my frame shapes.  The logic of this process as probably being similar to actual practice became clear to me.   I thought/think that those Old Boys, for whom time and effort was vital,  would not miss the reduced time and expense that this way of doing it represents.  I have an additional advantage over the batten guide method.  Because the pattern is already on each timber,  I can position a pattern with both stations on it in precise alignment on both faces of the stack of frames.  The bevel for both faces is precisely in place.  I can shape the stack off the hull as a unit.   This is much easier and less error prone in lofting than the ca 1900 published methods. 

From your comments, it appears that you have a misconception about what it is that his being described.
Deadflat does mean flat.  It is about understanding what it is that is flat. 
At the midship - generally this is the frames about 40% of the distance from the FP.  Almost never is the midship half the distance along the length.
If a plank is placed against the outer face the frames here, it is parallel with the keel.  There is no bevel, so it is flat.  Beveling is tricky and bothersome to do, so it gained an accolade "deadflat: instead of just "flat".
 
In old shell first hulls and early frame first hulls, the first inside reinforcement  timber across the keel defined the inside bottom. If they were close enough together to walk on or had boards placed across them, they were the floor.
 
If the inside of the frame timbers are covered with planking, this serves to seal the inside of the hull.  It is a sealing.  No Webster's or Oxford and imprecise spelling  becomes ceiling.  If you think on it, the layer of material fixed to the underside of the beams for the floor above a room does sort of seal it also.

From the point of view of a home sawyer and saw miller, much time is involved in getting water out of wood and getting it equilibrate with atmospheric water concentration.  Soaking a plank is undoing all that, if you even could get water deep into the interior.  The natural glue that holds wood fiber together is not soluble in water in any case.  It is heat that loosens the bond enough to allow the fibers to slide as individuals and then rebond when the heat as dissipated,  Steam is more efficient than air at heat transfer. The hotter the steam the faster is the transfer.  Liquid water does not exceed 100 degrees.  It is probably a bad thing to actually cook the wood.
 
There are more than a few threads here concerning the various methods and devices used to bend planking.
 

If it is Butapren (which I think it is), than its equivalent in the US is contact cement.
Butapren also stinks fiercely, so I wouldn't use it for shipmodeling...

From the point of view of a home sawyer and saw miller, much time is involved in getting water out of wood and getting it equilibrate with atmospheric water concentration.  Soaking a plank is undoing all that, if you even could get water deep into the interior.  The natural glue that holds wood fiber together is not soluble in water in any case.  It is heat that loosens the bond enough to allow the fibers to slide as individuals and then rebond when the heat as dissipated,  Steam is more efficient than air at heat transfer. The hotter the steam the faster is the transfer.  Liquid water does not exceed 100 degrees.  It is probably a bad thing to actually cook the wood.
 
There are more than a few threads here concerning the various methods and devices used to bend planking.
 

This inspired me to investigate my archives.  For a time, I explored building a model of HMS Prince 1670.
This was at a time when I was teaching myself some skills on the drawing board, so no wood was ever in danger.
 
My first step is to gather up as much information as I can find.
 
Long ago, I bought:
A set of 1:48 lines plans of the ship (model?), I think it is  from the Science Museum.  It is a really large photograph - on two sheets.
A set of 1:96  plans ID'ed with CM (Clive Millward?).
A folder of model plans 1:60  (POB - ugh) in Italian  Teconmodel .
I think I have a series of photos of the Science Museum model - probably from their museum shop.
 
At the time, I was working thru the design exercises in Deane's Doctrine.  This made me aware of "touch" as relates to keel and ship length.
Touch is what the dimensions in tables from the time list as the length of the ship.  It is ~20% shorter than the length on the gun deck.
I was corresponding with someone who was building a kit of HMS Prince. He was having trouble getting the deck gear placed.  It turns out that the designer of his kit confused touch with LBP. The hull was too short.  It could have been rescued early on by patching in an additional section of spine at the dead flat and duplicating or triplicating the midship mould.   
 
For your kit plans, it would be prudent to verify that the length of the hull is correct.
 
A first rate 17th century floating palace is about as daunting a challenge as it gets for a ship model.  If you are determined to forge ahead, but wish your first scratch project to have sufficient documentation and plans,  ANCRE has a recent monograph of a French 17th first rate that is both elegant and magnificent.  It is St. Philippe.  But a really challenging aspect is that all of the frames are canted forward between 1 and 2 degrees.
 

From the point of view of a home sawyer and saw miller, much time is involved in getting water out of wood and getting it equilibrate with atmospheric water concentration.  Soaking a plank is undoing all that, if you even could get water deep into the interior.  The natural glue that holds wood fiber together is not soluble in water in any case.  It is heat that loosens the bond enough to allow the fibers to slide as individuals and then rebond when the heat as dissipated,  Steam is more efficient than air at heat transfer. The hotter the steam the faster is the transfer.  Liquid water does not exceed 100 degrees.  It is probably a bad thing to actually cook the wood.
 
There are more than a few threads here concerning the various methods and devices used to bend planking.
 

Clear, quick set, absolutely no shear stress or prise struss -  cellulose nitrate adhesive - Duco here-  maybe Ambroid in some places?
 
I would not use it to assemble a model, but it is quick and dirty to fit a round toothpick into a piece of stiff packing foam to use as a custom size PVA spreader, applicator.

From the point of view of a home sawyer and saw miller, much time is involved in getting water out of wood and getting it equilibrate with atmospheric water concentration.  Soaking a plank is undoing all that, if you even could get water deep into the interior.  The natural glue that holds wood fiber together is not soluble in water in any case.  It is heat that loosens the bond enough to allow the fibers to slide as individuals and then rebond when the heat as dissipated,  Steam is more efficient than air at heat transfer. The hotter the steam the faster is the transfer.  Liquid water does not exceed 100 degrees.  It is probably a bad thing to actually cook the wood.
 
There are more than a few threads here concerning the various methods and devices used to bend planking.
 

Bruce,
It looks like you have beautiful, clear stock.  It does not get much better than Holly.  Fortune turned her smile onto you there.
 
I don't know what your building material is over there,  but here, the most common construction lumber is 2"x4" x 8' Pine or Fir.  It is not expensive as far as wood goes.  If you can mill it, it works well as fill stock between the moulds.  Do an inside curve, rather than solid to the "keel centerline piece" to save wood and weight.  It can be a several lamination. 
If an additional throw away layer that is the thickness of the plywood moulds is added, two adjacent mould patterns layered in a drawing program with locator guides added - bamboo skewers - straight from the package make good dowels - if you have a drill bit that diameter and a drill press to make sure the holes are perpendicular.  Only need to manipulate the pattern for one side - flip horizontal is a big time saver and assures lateral symmetry.
Most of the scroll cutting,, layer assembly, shaping to near final curves - done off the hull. - paper or cardboard shims if there is play between the moulds.
Do this all the way and it is like having a solid hull.  One layer of planking is enough.  The planks have about as good a glue support as possible.

I guess I must be missing something about double planking a series of POB moulds.
The outer layer is done in a way that covers whatever is under it?
Unless the hull is intended to actually float ( and POB is a poor choice for this) why bother with a filler for the first layer? It will not be seen anyway if longitudinal gaps between planks is what is being "fixed".  If the run has hollows, a wooden scab is probably a better fix.
 
Bruce,
Have you milled your Holly logs yet?  If you did not immediately get the logs into a kiln,  unless Blue Mold is restricted to this side of the Pond, it is likely to have invaded your lumber.  If so, the bad news is that the wood will not be white,  rather grey or light blue.  The good news, the integrity of the wood is not compromised.  It is just as hard, bends just as well - really an excellent species for our needs.  It accepts aniline dyes well.  The fungus does not affect that - except for the final shade..  I am thinking that infected Holly may yield a more realistic deck than a marquetry white stock.
 

All and all, I think a quote from one of your countrymen applies here: "You don't want it."

In a parallel thread about downloading NMM drawings, there is a link to a Wiki commons  site with JPEG of NMM plans.
There are several for a Discovery 1789 including lines - They are for conversion of that ship to a bomb vessel.  The vessel is not at all attractive.

All and all, I think a quote from one of your countrymen applies here: "You don't want it."

Make friends with a nearby pharmacy tech.  Some pharmaceuticals still come in small glass bottles and they are just pitched into the trash - unless the Rx is for the amount in the bottle. 
There are Science "surplus" web vendors who sell a variety of small glass bottles.
 
I share your sense of wastefulness with your present process.  But step back and look at a wider perspective.  The variables involved with an alternative probably make it make it  more "expensive" overall.

If the material presented for Discovery 1789 represents what you have to work with, and Discovery itself is a specific target, a bit of compromise in ambition may worth considering.  There are no lines plans.  Never mind Body, neither of the other two planes are available either.  (A merchant ship, built in a private yard may have never had plans as we know them.  If there were plans, they were probably viewed as disposable, either by the owner or his inheritors.) 
 
With a bit of obsessiveness, a reasonably  accurate waterline model may be possible using the two NMM plans. 
 
The masting and rigging would be about as accurate most any of our models if you use the same references.
What is available for HMS Chatham = ?
 
There is another candidate for PNW.  The Peacock II 1828 was a corvette that was eaten by the bar of the Columbia River.  HIC redrafted (?) her lines, so they are available.  So too are the lines for the other three squadron mates who survived their encounter with the PNW.  They are Vincennes, Flying Fish, and Porpoise II and all are part of the S.I. collection.  Well, Flying Fish is in a really grey area - the plans are John McKeon. To match the published dimensions of Independence (what the USN renamed as Flying Fish) I scaled the breath and depth up 110% and added 2" to each space.  The overall shape of New York pilot schooners of the times was pretty well set - (adapted from a Norfolk developed model).  Someone at S.I. thought it was close enough.
 
For a first scratch venture,  I suggest that a wise choice would be to limit the number of new challenges.  I would start with a subject that has existing plans.  Ideal is a monograph where the frame lofting work has been done and the details drawn.
 
Now - removing my 'any pretense to faculty' hat and strictly in my curmudgeon hat:
 
Presupposing that your objective is  POF   - a popular choice is the Swan series (but probably too oft traveled) or much less often done, one of the smaller ANCRE subjects ( with frame lofting already done).  For a first outing, it may be prudent to give any attention to internal detail a pass.  Totally plank the hull and deck and save fabricating the guts and really complicated bits like cant frames and butt chocks  for a later project. (Assuming that you ever come to care about that sort of thing.)  
If solid (laminations) is your method there are many more possibilities.
 
Something here that dismayed me at first is the popularity of scratch POB.  The whole process is really ugly and an insult to the beauty that is a ship's hull.  It may be a bit quick and dirty, but I can't get past how cheesy it looks.  Once it is covered up, it does not matter, but I would always know if I did it that way.
 

Make friends with a nearby pharmacy tech.  Some pharmaceuticals still come in small glass bottles and they are just pitched into the trash - unless the Rx is for the amount in the bottle. 
There are Science "surplus" web vendors who sell a variety of small glass bottles.
 
I share your sense of wastefulness with your present process.  But step back and look at a wider perspective.  The variables involved with an alternative probably make it make it  more "expensive" overall.

Make friends with a nearby pharmacy tech.  Some pharmaceuticals still come in small glass bottles and they are just pitched into the trash - unless the Rx is for the amount in the bottle. 
There are Science "surplus" web vendors who sell a variety of small glass bottles.
 
I share your sense of wastefulness with your present process.  But step back and look at a wider perspective.  The variables involved with an alternative probably make it make it  more "expensive" overall.

If you do a deep search into the vessel name, location and captain - you have a high probability of discovering that the vessel is not a clipper.
The time of the clippers was 20 years earlier.
The hull looks a bit short and small to be rigged as a clipper.
A combination of schooner and ship rig had become popular because a smaller crew was needed.
I would bet, the fore was square rigged and the mizzen was schooner rigged.  The main? Flip a coin, but I bet schooner.
Rather than directly use a commercial kit rigging plan, go to the same sources that they used.  There are several books on rigging that were published about that time.  There are books for modelers that extracted and made systematic the information from those original sources.  
For the large and cutthroat sailing ships, an age of ugliness in rigging was coming into use around 1874 = steel lines, chain, turnbuckles.  An actual clipper in 1874 probably was rigged using the new tech.   I am betting that the model that you have is a bit more prosaic.  The rigging was probably still natural fiber. Any further information is likely to provide an identification for the actual rig. 
A barque is easier to rig.