Lady Nelson by vossiewulf - Amati/Victory Models - 1:64

[vossiewulf]

So finally got to sit down and work on this again. And found what I had carefully done before was not right, at least the wales position wasn't and I had to undo some of the work before redoing the wales location and then being able to move forward again. 

 

Rick, I'm going back to my original planking plan, I can only assume the mid-aft section of this ship is distinctly different the Cheerful hull. First thing I did was lay out the garboard and the next plank straight as you pointed out was done with Cheerful. The garboard was very carefully laid out using dividers to ensure the correct .160" width the whole way to the stern. What looks like a bend is where it does the 60-70 degree twist.

 

But it don't look too good.

It doesn't look straight, it looks like I have a severe downward turn. This hull, or at least in the way I have it, seems to want to do what I originally had. But I'm also not sure if garboards were permitted to leave the keel and have a stealer complete the run. That sounds wrong too.

 

Also I was going a bit crazy trying to get the wales locations to work correctly, I was measuring from the plans and I wasn't getting fair lines when I looked down the length. So I did the same thing on the plans. That'll teach me not to blindly accept plans even from supposedly good companies.

 

[Rick01]

I see what you mean about the garboard plank appearing to want to rise at the stern. I've just done a quick search of the NMM for planking expansions and none that I found show the garboard leaving the false keel. Your fore/aft shot looks good with a nice clean line following the keel, it's the deep belly that causes the apparent problem (as we both know). Hows it look if you lay out a couple more planks above it? I did notice a couple of expansions in the NMM where the garboard stopped short and the second plank had a hook end but that actually was effectively two planks into one which has the opposite effect. Both cutters that I've built have had the garboard run the full length of the keel and the stealer occurred naturally just before the 90 deg. twist up to the stern counter. Sorry I can't be more help here but I feel that the straight run is more correct.  

[Rick01]

Tomorrow I'll try and photograph the hull of another model I've bashed to show those first planks. The hull itself is actually the Lady Nelson hull with some major mods to the upper works so the planking is exactly the same (I hope).

[Rick01]

Not the best shots but you should be able to see the run of the planks from the garboard fairly well.

 

The stealer was inserted 5th plank up.

 

 

[vossiewulf]

Ok, thanks Rick. I will go draw a couple more and see what it looks like. But elegant is not one of the words that comes to mind at the moment.

[vossiewulf]

So I guess this is what it's supposed to be. But it's less than elegant and the best thing I can say is that it looks somewhat less inelegant when it's right side up.

Also after looking at it this morning I'm probably going to move one more plank to run straight, if not two, so we can at least move the stealer point to someplace less visible.

[popeye the sailor]

they're like a telescope.....the more  'in focus' you get 'em,  the better they look       don't worry.....the ship is still in the box somewhere.    it's a bit of work to find it.......and you will,  I'm sure  

[vossiewulf]

Thanks Popeye

[popeye the sailor]

well........it's true.......I haven't had one yet,  that looked good at this stage of the game.  it's when you get the hull squared away and start populating the deck,  you begin to see the fruits of your labor.

      if you need to use a stealer,  it won't be that large.   you may see that you'll go another row before you'll need to do it.  that will move you positions up.......if you plank from the keel up

[Rick01]

Popeye has got it - 

1 hour ago, popeye the sailor said:

if you need to use a stealer,  it won't be that large.   you may see that you'll go another row before you'll need to do it.  that will move you positions up.......if you plank from the keel up

This is the point where I despair of getting it right but by planking this way the stealer positions itself pretty well and shouldn't be obvious. The only way to find our is to start planking. 

[donrobinson]

Although there is nothing wrong with stealers, to avoid them you may have to do some spiling and/or some creative edge bending. Spiling is a little more work but does leave a nice finish, and you will need some wider stock

[vossiewulf]

I could avoid stealers with some spiling of wider material, but I don't have any wider material, final planking is boxwood from Crown Timberyard and I neglected to buy any sheet stock. Probably because it's very expensive ;-) I think I'm going to reroute two planks down to running straight to the rudder post as Rick did, that will move the stealer location to where it's almost tangential to the expected viewing angle so you wouldn't have a chance to notice unless you really look around. 

 

I'm not sure why, I didn't need any stealers with the first planking that was .200". Final planking is .160" and I have a very nearly three-plank gap at the stern. I wouldn't think that plank width would matter, what would matter would be the ratio in sizes between bow and midships and stern. What am I missing?

 

I do think what we're seeing though indicates that the hull form is simply wrong somewhere. Anyone who knows aerodynamics or the hydro version knows that good shapes are elegant and tracing cross-sections in any axis should result in lines and curves of similar elegance. Here I think the hull, as Rick has pointed out, is very full-bellied for her size and I'm thinking excessively so, followed by a too quick transition to a narrow lower hull. In short I would guess these lines indicate that this model's hull isn't an accurate representation of the real ships. Although I think I've built it pretty close to what the kit wants, I could also be off in a way that exacerbates the roller coaster lines of the lower planks.

 

Anyway, as always thanks very much folks for suggestions and insights.

 

[donrobinson]

To help make stealers look better, try not to use a triangular piece but a four sided(minimum)piece or even a hook or a scarf joint. Make it longer than necessary by cutting into the top and bottom strakes thus moving the end of the stealer forward towards the bow. Doing this will still leave a nice fit at the stem and the site of the joint won't be easily seen. It is a good rule of thumb to try and not use planks with points, although, there are exceptions to this also. What I have done is to measure the length of the stealer I want, cut it, shape it then lay it in place tracing the outline onto the planks it is laying on then trim them accordingly. With sharp knives and chisels(which you have) you cam make a stealer look quite attractive.

[Rick01]

I fit mine in a similar way to Don but make a blunt arrow head shape on the narrow end rather than a square end. Fitting a couple with maybe two full planks between them make for a much neater look. 

[popeye the sailor]

then there's the though of joggling these plank lines together further up the contour.   you'd get the combination of a joining scarf joint and creating the needed plank row.

[vossiewulf]

I've continued poking at this, but it's been small slices of time for the last couple weeks, I've redone the planking layout twice, it just wasn't working for me and as mentioned above some of what I was seeing indicated there was a fundamental problem someplace and I just wasn't seeing it. I finally did in that I was cramming too many planks on one side of my arbitrary main tape line and not enough on the other. The side of the boat looks like I've been trying to torture it to death with divider points.

 

But I finally got it as right as I think I can get it, and then repeated the layout to the other side. That was a couple days ago. 

 

But work is being problematic, I'm still on a conference bridge with 75 people or so spread around the world for today's crisis and am into hour 30 or so in two days, and it's been like that a lot lately. And I have family and one ex-wife coming at the same time to visit me (they get along fine) next Wednesday through the weekend. And it'll take a good three days to get my fully bachelorized pad with socks on the floor in every room presentable for temp female habitation again, she visits a few times a year and as always throws my life into total disarray for the duration. So it will be early week after next before I can spend quality time with it again.

 

It has a four-butt shift with 25 foot planks like Cheerful.

[Rick01]

Looks like you've got it this time! Those stealers seem to sit quite naturally now so don't try tweaking it any more or you'll never be happy with it. One of my worst habits is going back again and again "just to try a little improvement" and generally ending up with something a bigger mess than when I started.  

 

Can't you just leave your socks on the floor in the hopes that someone will take pity on you and do a quick tidy-up. Or have you tried that before and failed? 

 

 

 

[vossiewulf]

Oh yeah no further changes will be made, this is it. The previous version had only one stealer, but that was pushing it to the point where the lines were less attractive overall for the sake of closing one gap, I decided that the imaginary shipwright building this ship would have opted for the more attractive lines, so the last revision leaves it with two stealers on either side of a plank and the resulting lines make a smooth transition from the straight run of planks on the lower hull to those running significantly upward to the transom.

 

Unfortunately I am completely cooked to a blackened crisp today, didn't get done until 1AM or so when I finally decided things were sufficiently on course that I could turn the rest over to my team in Bangalore. And these crises are very intense since they involve dollar amounts with many many zeros associated with major corporations you all recognize, we handle 100% of their payment processing so if we're having a problem, they don't get paid. And when they don't get paid, SVPs and COOs on their side rapidly start calling their counterparts on our side. And I am the focal point they are all staring at. Well, me on the application side and one other guy who's on point on the network side. Last night's issue was pure application though.

 

No I'm not quite sure why I do this. I assume it's a sign of some undiagnosed mental illness.

[vossiewulf]

18 hours ago, Rick01 said:

Can't you just leave your socks on the floor in the hopes that someone will take pity on you and do a quick tidy-up. Or have you tried that before and failed? 

 

 

 

She's a redhead.

[popeye the sailor]

good luck with your meeting,  Mr.  Ambassador      I think your on to something with your planking plans.

[vossiewulf]

I'm not sure, but this appears to be a plank. Well two planks of one strake, you can see my dots for treenails. I got everything back in place and functional and family members back home and ready to push ahead on this again. Had to trim bottom edge of bow plank pretty severely post this shot to get it back on its lines, seems like the garboard line rises toward the bow more than I thought. But it's straight now and I'll be doing more tomorrow.

 

[Rick01]

It's surprising how much that first one rises at the first attempt, once you've got it sitting right however the rest should follow quite nicely. By the way - with four garboard builds under my belt I still can't get them right so you look to be well ahead of me!

 

 

[popeye the sailor]

I've not done from the keel up.  usually,  I'll start at the bulwarks.......the line stays pretty straight,  till the curve of the bow takes over and tapering planks is warranted.   the stern will go the opposite way.....there may be stealers in your future {noting wrong with it}.......but you will see the line creep up at the bow.  if you taper to keep the line straight,  you will run the need for jogging planks,  to create the fill in row I spoke of.   you'll just have to see how the curve of the bow accepts the plank     you'll do just fine. 

[vossiewulf]

I'm planning just to do the bottom 6 planks on both sides as that was one band, and then switch and work from the bulwarks down. Everything is carefully marked, so as long as I pay attention to those marks it should work fine. But just as with the first planking I didn't want the garboard to be the last one I was trying to fit.

 

Also I prefer to keep it the way it's oriented now, if I flip it up I have to hold it by the keel and I don't care how much glue and how many CF pins there are in there, torquing around on that joint is not something I want to do. My Keelalator thingy is grabbing the ship's central keel plate so I can put quite a bit of force on it, something that's important when I am mostly using CA and hand-clamping.

[Jörgen]

I don't know how much Lady Nelson differs from Sherbourne but I started my planking just under the gun ports to get the lines right and then I planked the upper parts down to the whale. Now I am about to plank the lower parts just like you and it seems that I can keep full width of the planks on all my 14 4mm planks and just taper them to 2mm in the bow. So minimal work to shape the planks.   

[vossiewulf]

They differ very little, so in general experience with one puts you in a position to suggest what to do with the other. Thanks for the reminder/suggestion of placing an early plank at the bottom of the gunports to ensure they are aligned. And welcome to the cutter party BTW:)

 

I AM making progress here, just slow as my time windows remain a bit constricted and I keep finding myself spending half of it on workshop logistics, this evening was making new sanding tools using spring steel pieces of various thicknesses as a backing for PSA stikit gold paper of various grits. Then I got annoyed at the lack of a curved-edge scraper of small enough radius for this ship so I took one of Lee Valley's small scrapers (which are nice BTW) and ground it into a basic curved scraper with several convex and concave curves.

 

That said I'm sure Lee Valley scrapers are just spring steel of the right thickness, I keep meaning to get a roll of that thickness plus some heavier- I really like my heavy luthier scraper's lack of chatter and want to try thicker small scrapers. And I've been thinking why not make some "carving" tools with traditional straight/convex/concave/v-parting cuts but make them pure scrapers - a "gouge" would just be a fully hardened tool steel piece like any small palm carving tool, except it ends in a transverse blunt curve of the correct radius. When you really sharpen something like that, you can carve with them with far more predictable results than the usual edge tools. On the downside, of course much slower. So I want to make some for finishing of difficult curves that cross the grain but I also think they'll be quite handy for general ship work and particularly planking.

[Jörgen]

Thank you  It is quite fun that we actually are at the same point in the build and also little bit do the same things on the kits (so far). Could be very nice to exchange ideas.

[vossiewulf]

8 hours ago, Passer said:

Thank you  It is quite fun that we actually are at the same point in the build and also little bit do the same things on the kits (so far). Could be very nice to exchange ideas.

Yes, but also keep in mind there are like 137 Lady Nelsons and Sherbournes being built at one stage or another here

[Jörgen]

And many that are finished! It is goldmine to have so many references of very nice models to learn from. Trying to keep an eye of all of them.

[shipmodel]

Hi Jay - 

 

Just found this log and have enjoyed reading about your progress.  It looks like you are steadily working your way up the learning curve, and coming out with a nice model.

 

A few planking suggestions learned by reading everything in sight and by trial and error this past 30 years -

 

1.  The garboard strake, and even the next strake known as the first broad strake, flare at the stern on actual ships.  On a narrow hull like a cutter this may eliminate the need for any stealers at the stern.

 

2.  At the bow, keep the tip of the garboard plank low.  The more it is allowed to rise up the stem the less room you will have for the upper planking strakes, so the more they will have to taper or you will have to use more drop planks.

 

3.  Don't worry about locations of butt joints in the hull planking.  They were pretty much random, and governed by the availability of various plank lengths.  The only general principal is that you do not want butt joints on the same frame unless they are separated by two or three solid strakes.  The 3 and 4-step planking layout applies to the deck, not the hull.  

 

4.  The best resource I have found for hull planking, deck planking too, is "Planking the Built-Up Ship Model" by Jim Roberts and available from Model Expo and/or other book sellers.

 

Hope this helps a bit.  

 

Be well

 

Dan