Symmetry

[Don Case]

I'm putting in the second pair of limber strakes. Is there any reason other that pride of workmanship that the butt joints in the planks match from one side to the other?

[Gregory]

Who's going to know?

 

But now that you mentioned it, we'll be watching...  😁

[Jaager]

1 hour ago, Don Case said:

Is there any reason other that pride of workmanship that the butt joints in the planks match from one side to the other?

I suspect that a private yard would use the stock that was available.  If they wasted material,  they would not stay in business.  In a model - it is ultimately a work of art - even if the goal is the focus on an exact replication of the micro level assembly.  I think the eye/mind craves symmetry.  An actual ship would probably be too large for a lack of bilateral symmetry to be observed.  The size of a model makes a lack of symmetry sort of stand out.

 

Going to school on the actual methods and techniques in extreme detail at the primary learning stage is wise and probably necessary.  But ultimately with a model, Art also has its demands.  Sturgeon's Law certainly applies to our efforts, but we should try for the ten percent.

[kurtvd19]

A full size asymmetrical hull will tend to go in a big circle one way or the other - best to avoid if possible😎

[Don Case]

2 hours ago, Gregory said:

Who's going to know?

 

But now that you mentioned it, we'll be watching...  😁

Threats work🙂

 

50 minutes ago, Jaager said:

I suspect that a private yard would use the stock that was available.  If they wasted material,  they would not stay in business. 

Discovery was built in a private yard. I'll hold that one for when I really screw up.

 

 

 

24 minutes ago, kurtvd19 said:

A full size asymmetrical hull will tend to go in a big circle one way or the other - best to avoid if possible😎

One of my previous hobbies was bonsai so I have a fondness for asymmetry. Doesn't work in boats though.

[Bob Cleek]

Actually, when it comes to butt joints, even with butt blocks, it's proper to install them in a spacing which keeps them all as far apart from each other as is possible. The butts are inherently weak points which are better spread as far apart as possible and there are various classic "butt shift schedules" which you will find in any wooden boat or ship building text.  I have seen in many modeling books the practice of butting planks on a frame. However, in full size construction practice and its related literature, I've never seen planks butted on a frame to be a recommended practice. The butt block is a far stronger and better construction method. Modernly, of course, epoxy adhesives have made face-scarfing plank stock a viable alternative, eliminating the plank butt issue entirely. In all my years mucking about boatyards, I've only encountered one vessel, a 63' staysail schooner, which, oddly to everyone's eyes, had her planks butted on her frames. She was originally launched as the Mavoureen Mary and was renamed Landfall a few years later. She was designed by Edson Schock for the actress Maureen O'Hara and her husband. and launched in the early 'thirties. She's had a good long life and is still around, last I heard. When I last saw her in the mid-seventies, the was undergoing frame and planking repairs which were occasioned, according to the yard crew, by the fact that her planks were butted on her sawn frames. They attributed this oddity to the fact that, for some reason, she was built by the Boeing Aircraft Company! Boeing of Canada did build yachts early on, an offshoot of their seaplane manufacturing subsidiary.  

 

4 hours ago, kurtvd19 said:

A full size asymmetrical hull will tend to go in a big circle one way or the other - best to avoid if possible😎

Gotcha! In fact, the Venetian gondolas are intentionally built with an asymmetrical hull. They do move to one side if left to their own devices. The purpose of this oddity is that it compensates for the opposite tendency when the gondolier sculls with his oar on only one side of the boat. This design feature is unique to gondolas.

[Don Case]

A butt block would be a block that fayed on the face overlapping the joint? How do you do that when there is no space between the frames without making a tripping hazard? But I guess tripping hazards were common on a sailing ship😉

[druxey]

Butt blocks are used where frames are widely spaced. With narrow spaces the butts were always on the frames themselves.

[Don Case]

Thanks