I figured out where things went south for me on the planking. Tucked away underneath an inventory sheet in the box were two instruction sheets, one for tips on planking, the other tips on rigging. In the tips on planking, they use a much different method of planking the hull than what's shown in the instruction book.
Instead of laying 10 planks starting at deck level and going downward, you lay one plank at deck level, then count down 5 planks and temporarily attach the second plank. The second plank gives you that upward sweep at the bow and stern and then you have two regions to plank, the one between the first two planks, and then after permanently attaching that temporary second plank, you go from there to the bottom of the keel. Also it says in that tip sheet to make all tapers on the top of planks rather than the bottom. I must have misread something somewhere about only tapering the bottom of the planks.
I've cut new pieces for the keel and bulkheads and will give that method a try, see if it works any better.
Rule number 1 here, always check the contents of the box first, right??
Forging ahead, I have a couple of questions on doing something with the keel, stern, and bow plates. For reasons too numerous to mention here, I want to cover those plates with some mahogany veneer so they will match better with the hull.
The first pic shows the hull and the veneer I'm going to rip and cut to shape. The second pic shows a rough hand drawing of what I was thinking about doing.
Does that drawing look OK, or is there a more realistic way of cutting that out, especially at the stern, I'm not sure if having the stern plate joined to the keel plate like that is correct.
Also, where the wales hit the bow plate, should I notch out the veneer so the wales appear to go inside that plate, or should the wales butt up against the veneer?
My apologies for the use of any incorrect terms in the above.
Many thanks;
Charles