18th Century Merchant Man Half Hull Planking Kit by Jim M - NRG - 1:48 - ON HOLD

[Jim M]

Ohh I think I am going to do a quarter check stealer that will end at bulkhead F.

 

 

[Jim M]

All, I have decided to put this project on hold for a while until I get a couple more kits under my belt. I am struggling with getting the hand cut planks correct, and I will need to again start over.

[RossR]

looking forward to following along when you get back to the half Hull.  

 

[palmerit]

5 hours ago, Jim M said:

All, I have decided to put this project on hold for a while until I get a couple more kits under my belt.

While I found the Half Hull an interesting model and it exercised a different set of modeling skills - and gave me a good appreciation for how hulls can be planked - it is quite different from the other kits I've attempted. My attempt wasn't a complete success by any means. 

[Jim M]

@palmerit I agree. I definitely learned a lot from my attempts in which I will apply going forward. I think what I found hard on that project was the cutting of the planks I could not get it correct at all and I think it is well beyond my skill level at this point of time. I am really looking forward to this project that is more at my skill level.

[Jim M]

@RossR I definitely will get back to the other project after I get a couple other projects under my belt.

[TOM G]

6 hours ago, Jim M said:

I think what I found hard on that project was the cutting of the planks I could not get it correct at all

Are you using a set of ships curves when cutting your planks ?

[Jim M]

2 hours ago, TOM G said:

Are you using a set of ships curves when cutting your planks ?

yes. 

[TOM G]

Have you edge bent the plank...... useing alcohol and a hair dryer ?

[palmerit]

For those who don't know the differences (like I wouldn't have a year ago): This NRG Half Hull model doesn't use bent planks. It doesn't use planks. You create your own planks, each of which has a custom shape you determine: You cut out the pieces to shape (usually by first tracing a template from something like a manilla envelope - at least that's what I used) from a large blank sheet of basswood, so the pieces are shaped to the right edge bend by virtue of cutting them to that (often curved) shape. The Dory, Pram and Smack from Model Shipways (and the Dory from Midwest) had laser cut planks that had their "edge bends" in the shape of the pieces (so the only bend is in the direction the wood wants to bend) - unlike the Vanguard models I'm working on, the Sherbourne and Ranger, which have narrow strips of planking all the same width that need to be (sometimes) edge bent in that way. The Half Hull is more like the Dory, Pram, and Smack in this regard than the others (and most models) where you do need to edge bend planks.

 

What's especially useful - at least it was to me - about the Half Hull project is that you get a better sense of why you even do "edge bending". You're trying to get via edge bending what you would get if you created a template (from a manilla folder). What looks at first blush like a straight plank actually becomes a curved plank because of the 3D geometry when you have curves in multiple dimensions. When you cut the pieces out from the template, they're curved. When dealing with straight strips you need to achieve that curve by edge bending. 

 

I know I'm not saying anything here that lots of people know about already (and I probably don't have the language quite right) - it's if someone new(ish) finds this to help them better understand some of the differences (I've discovered over the past year) between different kinds of models.

Edited Tuesday at 07:33 PM by palmerit

[Kenchington]

Thanks for that Palmerit! I am still a long way from the NRG Half Hull but I can dimly see it, somewhere in my future.

 

I was hoping to one day build it with contemporary textbooks open beside me (or, rather, reprints kept safely away from the glue pot!), in hopes that I might finally understand ship planking. However, it seems that we face at least four different ways of planking. First would be the wrong way (maybe multiple variants of the wrong way), which typically ends up with bottom planks curving up to butt against a band of planking beneath the wales. Ugly mistake, unless covered with lots of paint or an outer layer of properly-laid planks.

 

Next up, there's the right way to build a lapstrake boat, which is followed by the Model Shipways dory and pram (albeit with the burdens on the novice builder eased). For the full-size boat-builder, that involves "spiling" (laying an edge over the moulds, be it a wooden spile or your manilla folder, then taking lots of measurements from that to the previously fitted plank), followed by sawing a complex, curved shape out of a broad board. The dory and pram kits have those shapes laser-cut, of course.

 

From your post, it seems that the Half Hull kit intends the same approach, but with the model-builder doing their own spiling. That and a whole lot more strakes, of course. But that is not how full-size wooden ships are planked. For one thing, plank was (and is) expensive and wider planks are disproportionately more costly. So nobody would want to cut a 12-inch curved piece out of a 24-inch plank if they could avoid doing that. Also, ship planking is not just a waterproof skin over an internal frame: It makes a major contribution to the structural strength of the hull. (Indeed, as the NRG kit is of an 18th-Century English or Colonial vessel, I could add that most of the real thing's futtocks would only be attached to one another or to the floors through their connections to the external planking and internal longitudinal pieces -- clamps, spirkets, footwaling etc.) That need for strength demands that the shipwright minimize any cutting across the grain of the plank.

 

In many hulls, some "edge bend" becomes unavoidable in places, yet bending full-size plank in that dimension is almost impossible. The solution was to pick out planks that had "sny", meaning that the grain curved across the face of the plank, such that a side-curving plank could be sawn with no more than minimal cross-grain cutting. (Smythe distinguished "sny" from "hang" by the direction of curvature in the grain. I don't know who used the dual terms nor when.) However, pieces with sny were rare (and likely almost unavailable today), hence expensive and only to be used when all else would fail. I guess that the edge-bending required by the Vanguard kits could be seen as a model-builder's approximation to a shipwright's exploitation of any sny to be found in his available material, though the lack of any cost penalty won't encourage more-economical use of straight plank wherever possible.

 

Maybe I should look at building two of the NRG kits, one by model-building techniques and one by those of shipwrights!

 

Trevor