hexnut

Let's look at some of the information I found on the Diesel Engine compartment.
 
As shown by the blueprint, there are three main tanks in that compartment (and there are many secondary and very important tanks to operate such complex machine). There are two Fuel tanks located under the engines and multiple lubrication tanks located right between the engines, under the walkway. These 3D renderings will help: 

That first drawing shows the fuel cells under each engine and the multiple oil/lubrication tanks, pipes and associated pumps. Quite complex.

The drawing above shows the two engines and the walkway installed between them. Notice that the two engines are not parallel to each other. This is not correctly represented in the Trumpeter kit. I will see if I can give the model some offset on the engines.
 
The three following drawings are showing the armature holding up the two massive diesel engines. Fuel tanks are built in between the frames, whereas oil tanks are installed as separate cells between the main longitudinal frames. I have decided to not represent any of these fuel and oil tanks, as I like to be able to show  the nice ribs arrangement.


Here again, the Trumpeter kit does not provide the two elevated frames marked with a warning signs.

The next diagram show the cooling and anti-corrosion system used for the diesel engines and electrical motors:

We saw that the diesel engines were introduced by an opening on the pressure hull. That opening was bolted and carefully made waterproof. the two following pictures show that large opening. On the second picture, the opening is shown in greater details, but it is a later model than the U-552 (possibly even a Type IX). You can also see the large pipe bringing fresh air to the engine compartment. On the U-552, that pipe would be almost straight.


Finally, some views and blueprints of the engine itself: 


I have to say that Trumpeter did an excellent work on the engine details. It is rendered in great details as we will see.
 
Yves

I am now moving away from the Trumpeter instructions.... not that I have followed them very much, since the beginning. What should have been glued last, is actually done first.

This is done to allow me to fine tune the alignment of the engine(s) and transmission shaft(s). If you do that task at the end, as suggested by the assembly instructions, you run the risk of having the shaft not match the opening in the bulkhead (which is exactly what is happening, already). So, some intervention will be necessary at this location.
 
I have two diesel engines, but they are identical and not symmetrical as are the real ones. So, we need to perform some important surgery on the starboard engine. In addition, keeping the two engines fully assembled will hide the "prototypical" and correct looking engine and presents to the observers, something that is not right. So, I have decided to cut down to the crankshaft case the second engine and prepare it for a little surprise..... If I can do it. More will come later, in a few days....

This is where we stand at this moment. hopefully, most details of the port engine will be visible over the "cut" starboard engine. This is going to be a very busy compartment.

Thank you for all the "Likes", encouragement and support.
 
Yves
 

Good news! No need for concern, the plank shape and run is fine!
 
The computer can unroll a curved surface to give the straight surface it originated from, very useful when it comes to planks. The shapes I got were odd, and despite what the software was saying, eyeballing the hull they did not make sense. 
 
The problem was that really, CAD is very unforgiving. The hull is curved and fair but the planks are flat. I divided the hull to planks widths and asked it to unroll but this sections were curved and hollowed along their width, following the contour of the hull and not flat. This led to funny inaccurate shapes!
 
I created a random sheer plank but made it flat this time. The result was much closer to what I expected.


The plank blank now needs to be 39 cm wide which is much more feasible.
 
Another interesting snapshot is the following, comparing my frames and sheer to the plans as given. The sheer is spot on as well as the aft frames. Note frame No 1 is identical and frame 2 and (to a lesser degree) frame 3 quite a bit different due to the errors and difficulties we discussed above.

So all is good, the only minor loose end left is actually building the boat.😁
Putting all sort of disclaimers on accuracy of lofting etc, if any of you have an interest to build this boat let me know, I am happy to share these plans.
 
Regards
Vaddoc

Very nice work. vaddoc!  Are you using Rhino?    First of all, I understand the pushback from the "ship's curves and paper" fans, but at the same time, I think part of the frustration some experience is that CAD offers a LOT more precision, and old boats simply were not that precise.  Go down to the drydock on a nice, salt-spray-blowing November day in Bristol, crawl around a large hull taking measurements, dodging teams of workers doing sheathing and caulk, go back to the office and calculate the offsets by candlelight--Or during the initial build, lay out the stations with splines, ducks and chalk on the lofting floor, then have wrights rough the sections out of wood with a pit saw and broadaxe.... It's enough to give a quality assurance/risk mitigation director nightmares...  I think the historian in all of us can't help but have enormous respect for primary sources, or  high-profile scholars working at an earlier time (Chapelle, Longridge, et al.), but the reality is that by CAD standards, the original plans often weren't all that accurate. 
 
One of the biggest problems in lofting a hull in 3D is getting the stations and WL's to line up and meet while being fair in both directions.  I have yet to trace a vintage plan where that happens, because the original was never fully-resolved until wood started coming together.  There is a bit of an 80/20 rule--what is good enough to start construction without wasting too much material?  When doing it in CAD, every tiny surface imperfection is abundantly highlighted; where on the model, it's an issue that may be solved in 30 seconds with some 120 grit. 
 
vaddoc, the truly good news is that now that you've put the work in to make a faired hull, once you make it solid you can boolean ribs and even planking out of it,  setting up shiplap profiles at a station and extruding single-rail surfaces using the planking curves projected onto the hull. You can also offset the polysurfs to accommodate whatever you choose for wood thicknesses...
 
Great-looking hull!

Very nice work. vaddoc!  Are you using Rhino?    First of all, I understand the pushback from the "ship's curves and paper" fans, but at the same time, I think part of the frustration some experience is that CAD offers a LOT more precision, and old boats simply were not that precise.  Go down to the drydock on a nice, salt-spray-blowing November day in Bristol, crawl around a large hull taking measurements, dodging teams of workers doing sheathing and caulk, go back to the office and calculate the offsets by candlelight--Or during the initial build, lay out the stations with splines, ducks and chalk on the lofting floor, then have wrights rough the sections out of wood with a pit saw and broadaxe.... It's enough to give a quality assurance/risk mitigation director nightmares...  I think the historian in all of us can't help but have enormous respect for primary sources, or  high-profile scholars working at an earlier time (Chapelle, Longridge, et al.), but the reality is that by CAD standards, the original plans often weren't all that accurate. 
 
One of the biggest problems in lofting a hull in 3D is getting the stations and WL's to line up and meet while being fair in both directions.  I have yet to trace a vintage plan where that happens, because the original was never fully-resolved until wood started coming together.  There is a bit of an 80/20 rule--what is good enough to start construction without wasting too much material?  When doing it in CAD, every tiny surface imperfection is abundantly highlighted; where on the model, it's an issue that may be solved in 30 seconds with some 120 grit. 
 
vaddoc, the truly good news is that now that you've put the work in to make a faired hull, once you make it solid you can boolean ribs and even planking out of it,  setting up shiplap profiles at a station and extruding single-rail surfaces using the planking curves projected onto the hull. You can also offset the polysurfs to accommodate whatever you choose for wood thicknesses...
 
Great-looking hull!

Very nice work. vaddoc!  Are you using Rhino?    First of all, I understand the pushback from the "ship's curves and paper" fans, but at the same time, I think part of the frustration some experience is that CAD offers a LOT more precision, and old boats simply were not that precise.  Go down to the drydock on a nice, salt-spray-blowing November day in Bristol, crawl around a large hull taking measurements, dodging teams of workers doing sheathing and caulk, go back to the office and calculate the offsets by candlelight--Or during the initial build, lay out the stations with splines, ducks and chalk on the lofting floor, then have wrights rough the sections out of wood with a pit saw and broadaxe.... It's enough to give a quality assurance/risk mitigation director nightmares...  I think the historian in all of us can't help but have enormous respect for primary sources, or  high-profile scholars working at an earlier time (Chapelle, Longridge, et al.), but the reality is that by CAD standards, the original plans often weren't all that accurate. 
 
One of the biggest problems in lofting a hull in 3D is getting the stations and WL's to line up and meet while being fair in both directions.  I have yet to trace a vintage plan where that happens, because the original was never fully-resolved until wood started coming together.  There is a bit of an 80/20 rule--what is good enough to start construction without wasting too much material?  When doing it in CAD, every tiny surface imperfection is abundantly highlighted; where on the model, it's an issue that may be solved in 30 seconds with some 120 grit. 
 
vaddoc, the truly good news is that now that you've put the work in to make a faired hull, once you make it solid you can boolean ribs and even planking out of it,  setting up shiplap profiles at a station and extruding single-rail surfaces using the planking curves projected onto the hull. You can also offset the polysurfs to accommodate whatever you choose for wood thicknesses...
 
Great-looking hull!

Very nice work. vaddoc!  Are you using Rhino?    First of all, I understand the pushback from the "ship's curves and paper" fans, but at the same time, I think part of the frustration some experience is that CAD offers a LOT more precision, and old boats simply were not that precise.  Go down to the drydock on a nice, salt-spray-blowing November day in Bristol, crawl around a large hull taking measurements, dodging teams of workers doing sheathing and caulk, go back to the office and calculate the offsets by candlelight--Or during the initial build, lay out the stations with splines, ducks and chalk on the lofting floor, then have wrights rough the sections out of wood with a pit saw and broadaxe.... It's enough to give a quality assurance/risk mitigation director nightmares...  I think the historian in all of us can't help but have enormous respect for primary sources, or  high-profile scholars working at an earlier time (Chapelle, Longridge, et al.), but the reality is that by CAD standards, the original plans often weren't all that accurate. 
 
One of the biggest problems in lofting a hull in 3D is getting the stations and WL's to line up and meet while being fair in both directions.  I have yet to trace a vintage plan where that happens, because the original was never fully-resolved until wood started coming together.  There is a bit of an 80/20 rule--what is good enough to start construction without wasting too much material?  When doing it in CAD, every tiny surface imperfection is abundantly highlighted; where on the model, it's an issue that may be solved in 30 seconds with some 120 grit. 
 
vaddoc, the truly good news is that now that you've put the work in to make a faired hull, once you make it solid you can boolean ribs and even planking out of it,  setting up shiplap profiles at a station and extruding single-rail surfaces using the planking curves projected onto the hull. You can also offset the polysurfs to accommodate whatever you choose for wood thicknesses...
 
Great-looking hull!

Thanks for the likes and nice comments.
 
painting.
The last time I painted a plastic ship model was in the early eighties. I only have experience with military models on a 1/72 scale
My painting technique will therefore probably be different from other plastic ship models on this forum.
 
First a base layer of diluted light gray over the entire model.

Here we go (deck first).
The deck gets a few layers of diluted sand yellow (yes sand yellow) Then a dry brushing of light gray and white. And a few wash layers of diluted light gray

A layer of reddish-brown for the parts on and around the deck. And a helm for the rudder.


Black color  on the kitchen vent and part of the windlass. And a drybrush with sand yellow.

Not ready yet. To be continued.
 

Small update
 
Added belaying pins around the masts

And this

Washed with water and soap and ready to start painting.

Thanks for following

Further progress
Made a ship's wheel, a capstan, pumps and a "dovecote" on the stern. All made of leftovers from the partsbox
And added eye bolts
 
the original parts
A new ship's wheel (not yet glued on the deck)
the wheel itself is in the front of the axel and not in the rear as on most model kits

the capstan and 2 pumps. 
The capstan (could be made better, but scale 1/110 is small) There are 2  pumps as on the origal drawing of the ship, and not a chain pump as on this kit.

The dovecote.
It looks like that this "dovecote" served to store the signal flags. The front part protects the rudder (not yet ready)
 
Thanks for following

Update,
 
The chimney from the kitchen below deck. On most models, the output faces forward. On the old plan it is directed backwards.

Original piece.

Adjusted and mounted on deck

Extra detail on the channels

The windlass 

Original piece. 

Adjusted and mounted

With extra detail

Small update,
 
Some PE parts have been used (leftovers of military modeling)

 
Looking around this forum for different Bounty logs. It seems like there are different models. Every manufacturer of ship models has its own version.
I go for this solution.

Thanks for following

Installed a new railing and all the cannon supports are in place
And also added some extra detail to the beakhead.
Thanks for following

Welcome back to this fun build of a little Bounty.
 
I started reapplying the removed parts.
The belaying pins( primitive, but better than the original) and new steering wheel is under construction.

A piece of cargo bed from a 1/72 truck is perfect for the hatches on the deck.

Removing the supports from cannons and rebuilding them.

Thanks for following

Druxey, indeed!
GL, it is really not that difficult. Get any CAD, draw a dot, then another one, then connect these with a line. You 're off to a good start! The rest is improving on this!
Keith, I actually do have access to a massive CNC mill but it feels a bit like cheating! I would sure like a bench top milling machine though!
Bob, you are very correct, CAD (Rhino, well spotted) is very unforgiving and indeed this degree of accuracy is not necessary. I am aware that when actually cutting the wood the tolerances will be just horrible in CAD terms, nothing that sand paper or filler cannot fix. This however is a small boat so it was feasible to get all lines to work together. These guys of old, cutting wood without power tools and following some drawings where even one copy was not identical to the other...but I read that it was not unusual for ships to be a bit asymmetrical! In the end of the day, the ship has to be built! The picture you paint I think was their reality.
Now I was indeed tempted to draw the planks, which would be a lot of work being a lapstrake. It is unnecessary though as I ll do the planking the old fashioned way but I will divide the hull just to get a nice run of the planks. I ll post this images later on
 
I actually have in a couple of weeks another few days of computer time, I might be tempted to loft another boat or even something a bit larger. I ll have a look through the NMM plans.
 
Regards
Vaddoc

Of course it is wonderful to watch a skilful craftsman at work and a job well executed probably gives these craftsmen great job-satisfaction. However, what counts in the real world is the quality of the result, how much time is needed to arrive there and how much it costs. Modern technology allows us to produce intricate parts that would be very difficult, if not impossible to make with traditional tools and methods. Perhaps I could have made these steering-wheels as a sandwich of five or ten on my filing machine, but even the finest and smallest commercially available files (and I have these) may have been to coarse. My original intention was to use photoetching, but this is always a very complex procedure, when you cannot have it set up permanently somewhere - not really an ad hoc useable tool. Perhaps CNC-milling would be an alternative too, but here you always have the problem of rounded corners due to the practical limitations of tool size, which is probably 0.3 mm diameter, compared to the 0.1 mm for the laser-point.
I was aware of the limitations of this lasercutter before I made the decision to go for it. Unfortunately, I don't have the space for a bigger and more powerful machine.
Apart from the cutting-speed, I am not so sure that tracing a vector-drawing gives really a better end-result. The slightly jagged edges would more or less remain due to the motion of the stepper-motors. They might become somewhat more smoothed out though due to the fact that the laser would remain powered during the movement. As the laser-dot is twice the size of the steps, a certain smoothing already occurs.

Thank you very much for the kind words !
********************************************
There are some really delicate parts lined up now, such as the frames for the freeing ports along the bulwarks. My original thought was to have them photoetched from 0.1 mm brass. However, given the difficulties I had in creating good, dense etching masks, I thought of trying a different route and something that is less messy. Laser-cutting seemed to be an interesting proposition.

So I got myself a new little toy at 100€ incl. shipping. Toy is perhaps an adequate description for these small compact machines that are now on the market. Their design-purpose probably is to mark merchandise with a burnt-in logo etc. For this reason they are mobile, so items of any size can be marked by just putting the little (15 cm x 15 cm x 15 cm) box on them. Their power is limited, 3W. A mechanical resolution of 0.05 mm is claimed, with a diameter of the laser-spot of 0.1 mm. The engraving area is 53 mm by 53 mm. The software driver works by converting the images into bit-maps and then it runs them down line by line. I should try to find another driver that uses vector graphics, which would speed up the cutting process presumably.





KKMoon-Lasercutter with a 3W laserdiode

 
The software allows to adjust various parameters, including the contrast of the image, the power output of the LED, and something called ‘cutting depth’, though it is not clear what the latter really does. The focus of the LED can be adjusted manually to allow for materials of different thickness, but it is difficult to judge, whether really the minimum of the spot-size has been achieved.

Given the power of only 3W, there are limitation to what materials can be worked with. The cutting resp. engraving effect depends on how much energy is needed to burn or vaporise the material. Paper works well, but a 0.4 mm cardboard seems to be the limit. I did not have much success with white styrene, only some light surface marks resulted even at the highest settings. Hard paper (phenolic resin impregnated paper) would have been my favourite material, but apart from the strong smell (the fumes are also not terribly healthy) a 0.2 mm thick sheet was only cut half-way through. Semi-transparent tracing paper does not take up enough of the energy and remains untouched. A sufficient optical density is required in order to absorb the energy and burn/evaporate the material. Strangely enough, the laser left quite visible marks on the piece of roof-slate that I used as fire-proof protection under machine.

Converting a drawing into a cut-out piece is not quite straightforward. I first had to work out a way to scale the bit-map and JPEG images that I created from my CAD-drawings. The solution was to draw a box around the graphics to be exported, measure this box and then to scale the exported drawing in Adobe Photoshop to a number of pixels the resulted in the box of being of the desired size when laser-cut. The resulting scaling factor was 1 mm = 20 pixel, which was indeed the claimed resolution of 0.05 mm.

On an image everything that is black will be burned away and everything white will remain. However, simply converting the CAD-drawings into images resulted in too narrow/small parts due to the fact, that the each burnt point has a diameter of at least 0.1 mm. Therefore, it was necessary to adjust the sizes of the areas to be burned away so that the remaining parts have the desired dimensions. The effect depends on the burning parameters and on the material. So, unfortunately, each new material and new part will require a certain amount of trial and error.

I tried my luck on another set of very delicate parts, namely the steering-wheels. They have an OD of just under 12 mm. Turning the complex shape of spokes of 6 mm length appeared to be daunting task, even if one could have perhaps made the handles and the spokes themselves in two parts. The laser-cut ones look quite good after a few trial runs, but I have to see, whether I can build up enough thickness from several layers. Cutting them from 0.4 mm thick cardboard was not fully successful.


Laser-cut steering wheels of 12 mm outer diameter


 
I just wanted to share the first experiences with this new workshop toy and trials will continue.


 

 
To be continued soon(?) ...

Well, two new things to announce.  First that the hull is finished. Secondly, I discovered another mistake!
 
This one was in front of my eyes since the beginning. Simply, the body plan lines are indeed to the inside of the skin, but all other lines are to the outside! This is dead obvious looking at the drawing.
 
What a mess! I have drafted all lines to the inside of the skin. Still, with a plank thickness of 2 cm (so that in 1:10 would be 2 mm), the error is not significant but could explain why I had such difficulties to get the hull to work.
 
Still, lofting the profile view to the inside of the skin instead of the outside, creates some unique new problems that I had to overcome. I will try to explain these with some images.
 
As I have defined the inner skin, I can easily get the shape of the frames at any position. What is left is the rabbet line at the keel, the stem and sternpost. To get this line, the outer skin is needed. This was very easy to get by asking the computer to offset the inner skin by 20 mm which is the plank thickness.

Now, the rabbet line (the line the outer skin meets the keel) should be horizontal at the keel. The reason is that this line is given straight and the lofting is done on this basis. But I lofted considering that the bearding line (the line the inner skin meets the keel) was straight. So the skin pivots against the bearding line and the rabbet came out curved in two planes. The next snapshots show the problem.
 
This is the face view of the two skins, the keel area is magnified in the second snapshot

Nothing I can do for the bend downwards. To level things off however, the keel surface needs to come out and meet the outer skin. So I trimmed all lines to the same level. No idea how this will work when planking but the difference is about a mm or so. I think it will be fine.

In profile view, the rabbet takes a small dive but it should not be visible. The black line is horizontal and the red line is the rabbet

After this there is not a lot really to do. I projected the part of the transom that meets the planking just to see the bevels and the shape of the sternpost. There should not be a need to fair the frames at all as all the bevels will be known and cut in advance.


Joining the two halves with a keel 80 mm wide gives us the final boat shape with the inner and outer skins


I now need to decide whether I will use steam bent ribs or solid frames. The position of the temporary molds for the lapstrake planking will be such that the same screw holes would be used for the molds and the permanent frames. I would like to leave the planks unpainted so no rogue holes allowed. This might change though.
 
What is needed now is to finalise the shape of the stem and the transom and to figure out the positions and shapes of the frames and subsequently the positions and shapes of the molds. I ll do this when I am ready to start building this boat. A couple of cant frames will be needed as well
 
I ve learned a lot from this exercise and I dare say I now understand boats better. The error in lofting did not change the shape of the boat significantly as it was limited only in the rabbet and also due to the small thickness of the planking. This is good as I do not think I could start over for a fourth time!
 
Thank you all for your likes
 
Vaddoc
 

Dear friends
 
After endless pains and buckets of digital ink, lofting is done (-ish)!
A few pictures:
 



I had to add 2 waterlines and one more diagonal and eventually, lofting to the waterlines was the most efficient way and only took two cycles.
 
Now, I honestly think that there might a bit of a problem with the lines in the original drawing. Of course it is a thousand times more probable that my lofting skills are inadequate rather than the long dead builder making a mistake but I absolutely could not make the thing work in regards to frames 1 and 2. It was coming out very wrong so in the end I had to keep close to either. I chose to keep close to No 1 frame which, being the closest to the bow, should had a stronger influence in the shape of the hull. As a result, all the other foreward frames had to change a bit. Still, I am not too far off the original frame shapes.
 

Now, this is the INNER surface of the hull. It seems this was common practice at the time  which is unusual today as almost all plans give the lines to the outside skin.
I now need to project new frames to the surface. The computer smooths things out by creating the surface so the new frames that will be produced will be very fair. Then I ll need to create the thickness of the planking and create the outer skin. I will also need to decide the thickness of the keel, adjust the Transom, create the bearding line etc. Tons of work! 
 
I also would like to publicly declare my huge respect to all of you that can pull something like this off without a computer!
 
So all good so far unless I discover a catastrophic mistake. A final screenshot and to be continued!
 

A quick update. I did tons of work and have nothing to show!
 
I finished lofting the hull and then realised that although all the lines and frames were fair, I had deviated from the original plans more than I wanted. So I started from scratch again, this time lofting to the waterlines and diagonals rather than the frames. I moved the lines around a bit so that from the beginning they lined the best with the frames as given.
 
I had a big issue with the bow as the second frame was coming out constantly wrong. Finally, after a week of hard work I fixed the issue and produced a very nice fair hull. It was at that time that I realised that somehow the hull had rotated a bit and the sheer was completely wrong so again I had made a different boat only that this time it was lopsided. 
 
I am pretty traumatised but I think I have enough sanity left for a third attempt. 

Now, I did not really intend to get involved in a project like this. My current boat (Deben 5 tonner) still needs a lot of work and has been going on for close to 4 years.
However, this week I somehow found myself with a lot of free time to sit in front of a computer but not being able to work in the garage. I stumbled across the prints that the National Maritime Museum sells and there were some of boats carried by ships of the line that looked nice and detailed. I have always wanted to draft from printed lines and I ve been missing messing about with planks so I started playing with CAD. I just used the images the museum has on the on line shop. I progressed rather well, kind of 20% through the first lofting, so I thought I ll start a log initially with the CAD lofting and then with the boat it self, provided of course I ll get a reasonable result. Without a deck and rigging and with just a few planks it should not take more than 2 years to complete...
I would like to try and do a nice lapstrake, not sure if it is historically accurate. Also, I cannot find easily much info on how these boats were actually built in terms of stringers, thwarts etch so I ll use some more modern arrangements and hope for the best, unless in the meantime I get by some more info. I admit I have not searched through MSW yet. I would like to try for a quality model, choosing appropriate wood, lining up holes, being careful with fit and finish etc. We ll see..
 
Enough talking, lets get down to business.
 
This is the set of plans I used. The print costs £25 and can be ordered on line but as I said I just used the picture uploaded on the webisite. I think we are ok with copyright issues.
More info on https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/86936.html

The plans show that this boat has a Davit but I will ignore this, at least for now as I do not really understand how it works. It seems like an interesting twist though.
 
These plans are really very detailed. They include the keel, three WL, two diagonals, the sheer, all but the middle frames (this seems to be common practice) and also some of the interior arrangement. They proved later quite accurate and it is amazing that people can produce this with a ruler and a pencil. Especially the accuracy of the diagonals is impressive.
 
Tracing the lines showed that there was slight distortion of the paper so adjustments had to be made.

Getting all pieces in the correct position produced a half hull

In the next photo, the sheer was created from the two views (red lines) provided in the plan. It fits the frames reasonably close. After I took this screenshot I had to re position all fore frames to account for the missing middle frame. This sorted things out. Later on I also found a small mistake and correcting it raised all the frames a bit.


These is the top view of the waterlines. A bit of effort was needed to get them somewhat fair

And on to the hull...not too bad. The diagonals (blue) are also added

The sheer seems reasonably fair. This is the only line that really needs to be fair as it will not change and will be a reference line. All other lines except maybe the diagonals will change during the lofting cycles.

The waterlines are also faired but these will get adjusted many times

The hull with just the lines. Note that the transom in the plans is given in its vertical projection. It first needs to be projected in the angled plane it would normally be prior to adding to the hull

This concluded the first part which is to just get all lines drawn. Now, the first lofting cycle begins. 
I created two more WL to help me maintain the shape of the frames in the upper strakes (green colour)

I decided that the diagonals are the more accurate lines and I will follow these, using the WLs to maintain the shape of the frames. This is how I arranged the new shape and how much off the frame was. Not too much really. The small horizontal lines were added to maintain the distance from the old line, so keeping the same shape as close as possible. Later on, the WLs will be created anew and faired and the cycle will begin again.

In the next two photos, you can see that the frames on the left side that have been faired follow the lines much closer than the rest

Now we can try and create a bit of surface with the frames we have adjusted and see how it looks and how smooth it is. The points and lines from adjusting the 5th frame can be seen in the background.

This is not bad at all considering that the waterlines have not been faired back at all. Of course the difficult areas will be first the two segment at the bow and possibly the transom. To my experience the transom always creates problems! It looks promising though.
 
I am not sure when I ll have time to do any more work on this but it has been fun. If I ever manage to build this it will be a big baby at 640 mm LOA, some planks will be close to 80 cm long!
 
Off to a very busy weekend, I will be doubling the lighting in my garage, it should be as bright as a supenova afterwards.
 
Regards
Vaddoc

The ships wheel is built and painted.  Minor touchup still needed.  I've thinnned the monkey rail a bit and added the anchor catheads.
 

Maury

While at the NRG Conference, I met Andy Small, one of the two vendors present.  He makes wonderful laser-cut accessories, mostly for the model train crowd.  One being a "Fish Cart or Hand Cart" and some boxes that I can display next to the boat.
 

Since he makes great wheels, I asked him if he could cut a "ship's wheel" and he agreed to try.
Below is the resulting kit (two wheels shown). The pieces are sandwiched; dark outer rims and handles with the light colored spokes in the middle to make a really good scale wheel.

I've assembled one as a test.  Since the ship had a metal wheel with wooden handles, I need to wait for some good paint to arrive.
In the meantime, he is happy to sell these kits (one wheel) for $5 plus $5 shipping and handling.
Contact him at:   sales@traintroll.com 
www.traintroll.com  1-401-480-5381
Maury
 
 
 

The rails are installed and nailed.  The alignment of the pins in the monkey rail went more smoothly than expected.  The fancy end of the rail (someone will tell me the term for that piece, I'm sure) is carved from a piece of 1/4" x 3/8" box.  Inside of curve cut while part of the longer piece, then cut off and finished.  Still some more adjustments to be made, thinning them down a bit.

Maury

In August, after finishing my smack cross section, I started a new project. The first series of pictures are sorted now, it is time to start with the log of this new scratch project.
 
Introduction
Since ages, the ship model was the ideal tool to show how a vessel fits together.
Ship builders used models to present their new designs to the admiralties. (painting 'A New Ship for the Dutch' John Seymour Lucas)

In the 19th and early 20th century they were very suitable for museums to show to the general public how live on board of a ship was. (Picture of the old Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, borrowed from the website of the Rijksmuseum).

And not least, the ship model was used as a didactic tool in maritime education. (Source of picture: fishermen's orphans during nautical education, 'IBIS' Orphan school in Ostend during the 50ties. Screenshot from archive movie 'Koninklijk Werk IBIS')

I had my first naval training in the mid-seventies. In that time the era in which the ship model was a current didactic tool was already past. The ship model was replaced by slides on overhead projectors and video.
Nowadays maritime education centers use Power point, smart boards, digital simulators, and all kind of virtual tools.
But I still remember that the Mine Warfare School in Ostend had a series of beautiful dioramas to demonstrate all the different types of mine sweeping gear, in the seamanship classroom in the Naval Education Center they had all kinds of models of the rigging for replenishment at sea. We learned the maritime buoyage system with models of the buoys. During sailing classes we learned the different parts of the sail boat with the help of a 1/5 scale model of the Caravelle sailing boat.
All those fine didactic models are vanished. I suppose that a lot turned into dust in cellars and attics. Some disappeared probably to private collections and hopefully some are preserved in museums although I didn't see back a lot of them.
Up to now I have built some didactic models, two cross sections and a full framed fishing sloop with one side left open. From nostalgic motive I want to build a pure educational model. It will be a old fashioned school model, intended to learn a landlubber (or a new naval recruit) the different parts of a boat.
The image below shows more or less what I have in mind: making a model of a stripped boat and naming all the parts of it. (drawing from 'Le Chasse Marée')

I find a suitable design for my project in the book 'Apprendre le modelisme naval' (a publication of Le Chasse Marée).

In the chapter 'Le modèle de chartente' (the model on frames) the boat carpenter Gerd Löhmann explains how to make a model on frames. The chapter is a description of the build of the mackerel cutter 'Marie', a small sailing fishing sloop of the type which was used along the Breton coast (France) before World war II. Gerd Löhmann built his cutter just like I would like to be my didactic model (Picture from the book 'Apprendre le modelisme naval').

The book contains also the detailed plans of the vessel on scale 1/10. The real vessel was built in 1928 and was 6.86 m long, so the model will be ±69 cm long. I will build it in cherry (Picture from the book 'Apprendre le modelisme naval').

Some time ago I got a few stumps from the trunk of a cherry tree that an acquaintance cut down in his garden. I have split the stumps into sawable pieces an stowed them away on a dry space.

That is the wood I will use for my instruction model: Some pieces sawn into planks, ready to  be planed to the necessary thicknesses.

To finish this post, a word about the layout of this building log. I would like to make this project not simply an instruction model, but also a lexicon and encyclopedia about wooden shipbuilding terms. So, I will work in three phases: first the boat model, then the lexicon and finally the encyclopedia. My log will follow this sequence and will be build up in three chapters:
I. The Boat
II. The Lexicon
III. The Encyclopedia
Now I am ready to start. The keel will be laid in my next post.
I hope I will be able to captivate you with this new project.