Dead flat stations

[Don Case]

On the body plan are the stations in the dead flat area identical? If there were no labeling would you know how many there were?

[AON]

can you post an image of your body plan?

What is the ship? Year?

[Don Case]

Discovery1789. If you don't mind me asking why would a drawing help with that question?

Edited February 14, 2021 by Don Case

[allanyed]

Don, Look  at the profile plan as well.  There is only one dead flat.  On contemporary plans the "station" marked with a + or X within a circle is the dead flat.  On the profile It is sometimes shown as a single line or sometimes with two lines within which a floor timber could fit.  For the Dorsetshire 1757 example below, there are two lines.  In this case the lines are 14 inches apart.   

 

Edited February 14, 2021 by allanyed

[Don Case]

That would solve it but I thought that any stations in brackets (like (D)) were part of the dead flat. You can't really see the brackets but there is also a drawing by John McKay that shows bracketed stations and they match with the drawing you posted.

 

Edit - I just took a better look and your drawing doesn't show any bracketed stations. Would you have a link you would share?😃

 

Hang on- the picture you posted is for the Dorsetshire  Am I confused or what?🙂

Edited February 14, 2021 by Don Case

[Don Case]

OK I was confused, I thought what you posted was the Discovery.

OK back to the bracketed stations

 

I can be awfully thick at times.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Don Case

[Chuck Seiler]

41 minutes ago, allanyed said:

On contemporary plans the "station" marked with a + or X within a circle is the dead flat.

...or in this case a "+" in a circle.

[allanyed]

Some drawings show stations near the dead flat in brackets, some don't.   Some show letters forward and numbers aft, other show just numbers.  In place of brackets, some show the letter O in front of the station number or letter.  (Attached example of Litchfield 1695-  Note that the first example is the 1695 version, NOT the rebuild of 1730 which was a completely different ship.-- - second drawing)   Depends a lot on

the era, but not always.   Whatever the case may be, the body plan station identifications match with those on the profile drawing.

Allan

[Don Case]

OK I'm obviously still confused about what the deadflat is and how the bracketed stations relate to it. I'll do some reading and see if I can sort myself out. 

 

I'm making a set of station shadows to just get an idea of what the hull is shaped like. I started at the stern and have done 5 stations when I glue them to a board a batten doesn't lay nice on them. The stations are close together for the aft 2-3 stations and then the spacing doubles. I'm thinking that if I have the wrong spacing in the wrong place it could explain that. I have no labeling on the body plan and they are very blurry on the profile. If I knew for sure how many stations there were I could sort it out

[AON]

Sorry for not answering your question.

1. it is good to know the ship you are asking about.  I believe she was a 10 gun sloop.

2. the year helps in that multiple ships carried the same name over the years, but were different construction.

3. looking at the plans helps. some have the plans but cannot read them.

 

Dead flat is a location and a station/frame identification.  I believe the bracketed frame stations are similar shape to the dead flat but are not identified as the dead flat station.

Other frames beyond the dead flat and bracketed ID are square frames but contoured towards the bow/stern until you get to the cant frames.

Cant frames are not square (90 degrees) to the keel.

You have one dead flat and multiple similar contoured frames.

[Jaager]

3 hours ago, allanyed said:

For the Dorsetshire 1757 example below, there are two lines.  In this case the lines are 14 inches apart. 

There is a lot more specific data in the tables than first appears.

I would use 1745 Estab. for scantlings.  14" is a healthy sided dimension for frames, but is the sided dimension for a 70 gun ship .     With Stations that are placed at 3 bend intervals in this ship, I would measure the distance between 0 and C (OC).    0C / 3 = R&S.   OC / 6 = frame side + 0.5 S   OC / 6 -14 = 0.5 space.  The double lines at 0 means to me that at the deadflat it would be 3 mated frames (a bend plus one).  The two outside frames would be the ones with Floors.  When the lines plans are design, the Stations are the shape (inside the planking) of the midline of the primary bends. 

 

This period - 1757 - was getting very close to the framing style seen frequently at the time of the American Revolution.  That style was almost all Room. The Space was between bends The space became about  one inch wide. It was essentially a solid wall of wood.  There is little visual interest when planking is left off.  (It is my premise that H. Hahn developed his style - omitting every other bend - to counter this.  Davis had already set the stage by demonstrating similar early 20th century methods as being applicable (not at all true) to the earlier periods.).

 

-There was a time stretch when even paired frames were offset with a 1" air gap - held apart by chocks at every fastener bolting the bend together.  (Which I would ignore in every case as there is too much strength in the bonded frame pair in a bend).

 

3 hours ago, Don Case said:

On the body plan are the stations in the dead flat area identical? If there were no labeling would you know how many there were?

In your time period, it is almost certain that the next Stations on either side of the midship Station will be slightly smaller. 

The Dutch tended to repeat the midship bend shape several times, At least the spare intervals of their Stations suggests this.

One of the USN corvettes that has its contract in HASN - Falmouth - has an 8 bend interval between Stations at midship. This is unique even for the 2nd quarter of the 19th century.  But this was not at all the style in the last half of the 18th century.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Jaager

[Don Case]

8 minutes ago, Jaager said:

 

 - has an 8 bend interval between Stations at midship. 

Ahh, so if there was no change in the shape of a station they would just leave it off the drawing. It wasn't necessary for anything. Did I get it this time?

[druxey]

All numbers or letters in brackets mean that their shape is identical and 'dead flat'. The dead flat area is always an odd number (usually 3 or 5), to allow for the change in direction of the floors in the frames.

[AON]

Don

I find what Jagger describes as very interesting.  He describes R+S (Room and space) to include 1/2" air gap between frames for a 70 guns ship.

 

For my build (74 gun launched in 1786) there were 3 drawings available. 1) Body, Half Breadth and Sheer Plans, 2) Disposition of Frames, and 3) Deck Plans.

The space between frames per the contract (at the keel) at dead flat was 1/4".  It increased as you moved towards the stem and stern post and the frames became narrower.

My #1 Plan showed 9 frames each side of dead flat up to about the 2nd water line.  Nothing was shown above that.  Thank goodness I had plan #2 available.

 

Your half breadth plan shows all the station lines, one half is from the stern to dead flat and the other from the stem to dead flat.  Your build is on top of the full plan. Does the other view reveal anything regarding frames at and about the dead flat station?

 

I do not know anything about a sloop construction so cannot offer anything to help you.  Possibly a search for other sloops on the forum might reveal more.

[AON]

Possibly an online search of the National Maritime Museum (NMM - RMG) in Greenwich might reveal a sloop framing drawing.

 

https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections.html#!cbrowse

[Don Case]

OK there must be at least one station hiding under that outside line. I count 20 stations on the half breadth and 19 on the body plan. Looks like the middle three are either identical or close to it. Is the 0 (double line) station on the left or right side of the body plan? Or is it on both?

I'm getting close, I can feel it🙂

[AON]

on both!

[Don Case]

I managed to get hold of someone at the Vancouver Maritime Museum today. Apparently their archivist left a month ago and they just hired a new one. They start in a week or two. My e-mails have been sitting in someones inbox. Once I get my hands on John Mckay's drawings I think I'll feel better. It will be nice to have figured this out by myself(with you guys help) though.

[Don Case]

5 minutes ago, AON said:

on both!

OK I'll run with that and see how it works.

[Jaager]

1 hour ago, Jaager said:

The double lines at 0 means to me that at the deadflat it would be 3 mated frames (a bend plus one).  The two outside frames would be the ones with Floors.

I may have this reversed.  I keep getting confused about where the floors are positioned in a bend.

(Keeping in mind that "never" and "always" and similar absolute terms do not reflect every situation.)

 

The French seem to have the floor on the aft side of the pair forward of the deadflat and on the forward side of the pair aft of the deadflat.  Strange things were done at the deadflat Station to do this.  If anything needed doubling, it was the Floors.   All of the French framing that I have seen indicates that all of the framing was bends.  They also seemed to avoid cant frames. (very wise)

 

I think in North America the floor was always on the aft side of the paired frames. Also favored was all bends and avoiding cant frames.  The strangeness  at the midship Station was avoided.  It was to pick a pattern and live with it.  My present thinking about Canada built ships is that although the English ruled, the shipwrights were France in method, as were those in the US.

 

The English seemed to be all over the place.  Some times all bends and many others there were single filling frames.  Some times the number of filling frames was an odd number.  The alternating Floor to F1 interval was maintained.  This means that whether a Floor was on the aft side or fore side of any specific bend is not predictable.  It does not matter if the bends are in the forward 40% or in the aft 60%.  Cants fore and aft were the rule. 

 

 

[AON]

I cannot say for your build.