HMS Sovereign of the Seas - Bashing DeAgostini Beyond Believable Boundaries

Since we got 3" of snow today, aside from running the store for some groceries for the family, more work was done on the Sovereign. The gap on the hull planking is slowly narrowing and the end is in sight. After gluing on every couple of planks, the planks are lightly sanded to remove glue and smooth rough edges. I can't wait to see how smooth the final sanding will turn out.

1246 Slowly Closing the Gap.JPG

The gap at the stern has parallel sides, ensuring and easy finish for covering the buttocks with planks that require little shaping. I finally got smart enough to cover the stern chase gun ports with tape to prevent sawdust from entering.
1247 Slowly Closing the Gap.JPG
 
Since we got 3" of snow today, aside from running the store for some groceries for the family, more work was done on the Sovereign. The gap on the hull planking is slowly narrowing and the end is in sight. After gluing on every couple of planks, the planks are lightly sanded to remove glue and smooth rough edges. I can't wait to see how smooth the final sanding will turn out.

View attachment 340738

The gap at the stern has parallel sides, ensuring and easy finish for covering the buttocks with planks that require little shaping. I finally got smart enough to cover the stern chase gun ports with tape to prevent sawdust from entering.
View attachment 340739
Good morning Kurt. I have been super impressed with your work from the start. How you get such beautiful planking with such symmetry without a predetermined planking chart is beyond me. This is great work. Cheers Grant
 
Good morning Kurt. I have been super impressed with your work from the start. How you get such beautiful planking with such symmetry without a predetermined planking chart is beyond me. This is great work. Cheers Grant
Thanks for the compliment! As the builder, I can tell you where all the flaws are. This is true for all builders. Two of the planks today are not symmetrical because of mistakes. Not a big deal though. It's like trying to pick out one tree in a forest.

As you can see, I add planks starting at both the keel and at the bottom wale, and the process is such that the gap between the planked area shrinks, until the planks meet somewhere near the turn of the bilge, where the curvature of the hull in cross section is sharpest. I use a small set of Fiskars scissors to cut and shape the planks along with a small hand sanding block to straighten the cut edges and do subtle trimming

How to get them both symmetrical? Do one or two planks on one side, the do the other side with mirror copies. Don't do one whole side of the ship, then try to duplicate the pattern on the other. You pay attention to where the tip of the drop plank is, and try to make the tapers on each plank about the same. Where planks end at the stem or stern, step back every so often and use some dividers to see if one side's planks are resulting in faster growth and coverage measured from the edge of the planking to the keel, or from the edge of the planking to the bottom wale. After a long series of planks, one side may cover 1mm more that the other, so you make the next two planks on that side a hair less wide and rebalance the plank coverage.

Where to insert drop planks was a free-form decision process, where I can imagine the effect of a particular drop plank on the shape of the line of advancing planks as the gap closes. On this model, the area to be planked on one side formed a triangle near the bow, then straightened out as you moved aft, changing for a very subtle taper as you approach the stern, below the expanding are of the deadwood, as seen below. Filling the triangular area was the hardest, judging where to place drop planks and how to position their points to crate the right amount of planking expansion as you move aft.

1248 Planking Tutorial.jpg

1249 Planking Tutorial.jpg
 
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Thanks for the compliment! As the builder, I can tell you where all the flaws are. This is true for all builders. Two of the planks today are not symmetrical because of mistakes. Not a big deal though. It's like trying to pick out one tree in a forest.

As you can see, I add planks starting at both the keel and at the bottom wale, and the process is such that the gap between the planked area shrinks, until the planks meet somewhere near the turn of the bilge, where the curvature of the hull in cross section is sharpest. I use a small set of Fiskars scissors to cut and shape the planks along with a small hand sanding block to straighten the cut edges and do subtle trimming

How to get them both symmetrical? Do one or two planks on one side, the do the other side with mirror copies. Don't do one whole side of the ship, then try to duplicate the pattern on the other. You pay attention to where the tip of the drop plank is, and try to make the tapers on each plank about the same. Where planks end at the stem or stern, step back every so often and use some dividers to see if one side's planks are resulting in faster growth and coverage measured from the edge of the planking to the keel, or from the edge of the planking to the bottom wale. After a long series of planks, one side may cover 1mm more that the other, so you make the next two planks on that side a hair less wide and rebalance the plank coverage.

Where to insert drop planks was a free-form decision process, where I can imagine the effect of a particular drop plan on the shape of the line of advancing planks as the gap closes. On this model, the area to be planked on one side formed a triangle near the bow, then straightened out as you moved aft, changing for a very subtle taper as you approach the stern, below the expanding are of the deadwood, as seen below. Filling the triangular area was the hardest, judging where to place drop planks and how to position their points to crate the right amount of planking expansion as you move aft.

View attachment 340766

View attachment 340767
Kurt, did you concern yourself with where bulkheads were? I tried to get my drop planks and butt planks to end where the treenails would go. I’m not sure that’s where they were supposed to end, but I’ve seen it that way on other models.
 
Kurt, did you concern yourself with where bulkheads were? I tried to get my drop planks and butt planks to end where the treenails would go. I’m not sure that’s where they were supposed to end, but I’ve seen it that way on other models.
Yes. Assuming that a frame would be at the same of each bulkhead on the model, that's where the planks usually end. I penciled the bulkhead locations onto the first planking layer earlier in the build. Of course, the locations of the bulkheads may not line up with a frame on the real ship, but since there are so many frames, chances are that they do. The location of any plank end which does not terminate on a bulkhead is completely arbitrary, but if two plank ends terminate close to each other horizontally, I make sure they line up with each other vertically, so that they appear to be on the same frame. There are many frames located close to one another, so choosing a place to terminate a plank is not going to be way off the mark no matter what. If they do not land on a bulkhead, the ends at least are not totally random in location. If this were a POF model, you'd know where all the frames were, and thus where to terminate the planks.

So, yeah... I put some thought into this.
 
There is space in the gap for 6-1/2 planks to fill it in near the stern. So, if you take a little material off the wide of each of those remaining planks, all judged by eye, the planks will fill the space nice and even. I added enough stealers in the deadwood above to ensure that the two edges of the gap are as even as possible for the last few rows of planks. Fitting drop planks in the right locations and the required quantity for fill the triangular area at the bow was a lot more difficult because it was harder to guess how much the angle of the gap would change with each drop plank. Of course, I could have measured, I tend to free-form these sorts of problems by feel. Usually, the results are good enough.

When painted, most of the plank seam lines will be drastically downplayed in appearance, with many disappearing altogether. I am wondering if adding heavily dilated paint, acting line plastic model panel liner, will improve the appearance by making the lines stand out better, or ruin the appearance by have some line stand out proudly and other not take the color and remain invisible. An experiment will be required, and if it doesn't look good, I can just paint it all over. To color the lines, I am thinking a diluted brown or perhaps grey might suffice. If this works, all that plank work will be visible.

1668537610179.png
 
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Planking continues. Planking on the hull bottom was completed and sanded on the port side. A gap remains to be planked on the starboard side.

1250 Planking Continues.JPG

The gaps are narrowing.
1251 Planking Gaps Narrowing.JPG

Final plank on the port side.
1252 Closing Plank in Port Side.JPG

Port side after sanding.
1253 Port Side Planking Complete & Sanded.JPG

1254 Buttocks So Far.JPG

1254 Port Side Hull Bottom Planking.JPG

The buttocks have much better shape than the original DeAgostini design. This is fairly close to the shape in Lely's Portrait of Peter Pett.
1255 Buttocks.JPG
 
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