A Dutch Fluyt in shell first, reconstructing the "Ghost ship" scale 1:36

[RDN1954]

.....These are what my straight timber looks like . Seriously tho : What a brilliant example of authentic period driven modelling should be. Stunning work Maarten. Cheers Grant

Than start a Dutch build, you can do it without additional work .

I (almost) fully agree with Maarten.
Regards, Peter

...almost doesn't count as an option

….. In no way I did consider building the shell first on my Balder.

.... this is a serious statement and requires proof.

So far all talk and no correlated action...

 

[Peter Voogt]

Deleted my message, just back to the superb build of Maarten.
Regards, Peter

 

[Maarten]

More floor timbers added towards the stern. The remainder of the aft floor timber all need to be tailor made due to the rising of the floor from this point.

A heavy weight again used during setting of the glue.




Now the space between the center frame and the stem is cleaned.


And floors added.

 

[shota70]

More floor timbers added towards the stern. The remainder of the aft floor timber all need to be tailor made due to the rising of the floor from this point.

A heavy weight again used during setting of the glue.
View attachment 457502
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Now the space between the center frame and the stem is cleaned.
View attachment 457505

And floors added.
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View attachment 457507

Maarten my dear friend
I simply salute you for the quality of your work and your pioneering

 

[RDN1954]

More floor timbers added towards the stern. The remainder of the aft floor timber all need to be tailor made due to the rising of the floor from this point.

A heavy weight again used during setting of the glue.
View attachment 457502
View attachment 457503
View attachment 457504

Now the space between the center frame and the stem is cleaned.
View attachment 457505

And floors added.
View attachment 457506
View attachment 457507

Immaculate, as we’ve come to expect.
I noticed that some of the plank splices are close together, sometimes close to adjacent. Is that something the early day shipwrights weren’t bothered with?

 

[Maarten]

Immaculate, as we’ve come to expect.
I noticed that some of the plank splices are close together, sometimes close to adjacent. Is that something the early day shipwrights weren’t bothered with?

Thx gents for comments and likes.
No worries about this planking as the scarph joints create an overlap any way.
See below the planking of the Samuel wreck showing the same.

 

[Maarten]

Before I continue with fitting the most Fwd and aft floors I start working on the first futtock, in Dutch called "buikstukken or zitters".

In the fluyt design these are the same for a large part of the hull so to speed up construction I saw them from a block instead of a plank.
I have drawn the zitters shape on the block.


Then with my small proxxon bandsaw with a 3mm blade easily saw the thick zitter.


Cut this into slices on the bandsaw. Just by hand so pieces are slightly irregular. There was a shrink crack in this block of wood so some pieces are too short.


The second one is crack free.


The majority of work is creating the individual sizes of the zitter. After fitting 10 pieces on the SB side this is the current status.

 

[Steef66]

Dutch ships are: "plank maar raak voor een knaak"
The English translation: Plank it for a buck

 

[Steef66]

Before I continue with fitting the most Fwd and aft floors I start working on the first futtock, in Dutch called "buikstukken or zitters".

In the fluyt design these are the same for a large part of the hull so to speed up construction I saw them from a block instead of a plank.
I have drawn the zitters shape on the block.
View attachment 457536

Then with my small proxxon bandsaw with a 3mm blade easily saw the thick zitter.
View attachment 457537

Cut this into slices on the bandsaw. Just by hand so pieces are slightly irregular. There was a shrink crack in this block of wood so some pieces are too short.
View attachment 457538

The second one is crack free.
View attachment 457539

The majority of work is creating the individual sizes of the zitter. After fitting 10 pieces on the SB side this is the current status.
View attachment 457540
View attachment 457541
View attachment 457542
View attachment 457543
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View attachment 457545

smart

 

[RDN1954]

Thx gents for comments and likes.
No worries about this planking as the scarph joints create an overlap any way.
See below the planking of the Samuel wreck showing the same.
View attachment 457534

Yep, now I remember having seen this layout, still my brain struggles with this random splicing...

 

[RDN1954]

Dutch ships are: "plank maar raak voor een knaak"
The English translation: Plank it for a buck

It's in our national character: more for less...

 

[dockattner]

This is looking really cool Maarten. I love the artistry...

 

[Peter Voogt]

Before I continue with fitting the most Fwd and aft floors I start working on the first futtock, in Dutch called "buikstukken or zitters".

In the fluyt design these are the same for a large part of the hull so to speed up construction I saw them from a block instead of a plank.
I have drawn the zitters shape on the block.
View attachment 457536

Then with my small proxxon bandsaw with a 3mm blade easily saw the thick zitter.
View attachment 457537

Cut this into slices on the bandsaw. Just by hand so pieces are slightly irregular. There was a shrink crack in this block of wood so some pieces are too short.
View attachment 457538

The second one is crack free.
View attachment 457539

The majority of work is creating the individual sizes of the zitter. After fitting 10 pieces on the SB side this is the current status.
View attachment 457540
View attachment 457541
View attachment 457542
View attachment 457543
View attachment 457544
View attachment 457545

A beautiful irregular construction with coherence, Maarten. A pleasure for the eyes.
Regards, Peter

 

[Maarten]

Thx gents.

A small update on the zitters, also the PS side is now added.
You see I have left some space between my "zitters and liggers" floors and first futtocks.
I am building a cargo ship which has slightly lighter timbers then a warship. Secondly the space between the timbers avoid entrapped water between the frame parts, outside planking and ceiling "huidgangen en wegering".

 

[Steef66]

Are you sure about that space? Because these parts of the frame also make the ship strong and when there is so much space the ship could break in a storm or big waves. A few gaps okay but at every frame.....

 

[Maarten]

Are you sure about that space? Because these parts of the frame also make the ship strong and when there is so much space the ship could break in a storm or big waves. A few gaps okay but at every frame.....

Gaps or no gaps doesn't change the strength of the frames. The strength is coming from the connection to the planks as the frame parts are not interconnected. Only if you connect the frame parts to each other, lengthen the zitters or increase the thickness of the zitters you increase the strength of the frame.

In war ships they closed this ring of wood especially at the waterline between the second and third futtock to create a barrier against incoming cannon balls and have a solid ring of wood.

 

[Tobias]

Fantastic work Martin.

 

[Steef66]

Gaps or no gaps doesn't change the strength of the frames. The strength is coming from the connection to the planks as the frame parts are not interconnected. Only if you connect the frame parts to each other, lengthen the zitters or increase the thickness of the zitters you increase the strength of the frame.

In war ships they closed this ring of wood especially at the waterline between the second and third futtock to create a barrier against incoming cannon balls and have a solid ring of wood.

That's not what I ment to say, the stiffness of the hull in the length is coming from the frames that are placed to each other. These Dutch ships have the frames only attached to the hull planks and not to each other. That makes these ships more flexible in the length. Placing these frames with a gap that much will make the ship to bent to much. The ship will come in problems. A drawing to show what I ment. It is like plywood that you want to bent, you make with a saw carves in the plywood to bent it to the side where the carves are made.


In above picture you can see, more space between the timber, more bent. (top)
Less space, less bent, more stiffness in the length of the ship.
And when the ship is to flexible the movement between the timbers will increase, which will lead to much movement in the connections, something you don't want.
But this is how I think about it. Because I see this like those bridges in the past, what are starting to wobbling with the frequency of the wind and collapse in a while. But I could be wrong.

 

[Bela]

Your train of thought is understandable. If the ship only had a flat bottom, the whole thing would be very unstable, but then there are also the upright sides of the hull. This is where the frames would have to be kept at a distance from the planks when the hull bends.
And then there are the beam supports, chine supports, jibs, ribs...
I am not sure if the translation is correct, so the last part is also in German:

...And there are the "Balkweger, Kimmweger, Scherstöcke, Leibhözer..."

 

[Maarten]

Hi Stephan,

I agree with @Bela on this. The strength is coming from the sandwich construction of the planking, ceiling etc.
Even if you have a small space between the beams the effect you are mentioning is already gone.

Keeping in mind the shrinking effect of oak while drying I expect timpers in shell first build ship most probably never were directly joining each other. We have used 14 cm oven dried oak beams in our kitchen and even these shrunk 1 cm in diameter. If you would have that in a ship where much thicker beams were used this would be a lot more, so spaces between the timbers would be unavoidable if you are not joining the timbers together with treenails or bolts.

In the historical records of new build ships there are even complaints about the lack of seasoning of the wood before used in construction which caused rot, keep in mind the shrinking on these types of fresh cut timbers.

See below the space between the timbers of the Witte Zwaan of Willem Barentsz