Good morningThat's an American ship, right? I'm not sure it will follow the scantlings of the English navy. I'll look.
Steel says that in 1805(about) English ships keels were tapered both ways from the center. The one I'm looking at is a 273 ton cutter and is 8" sided(wide) at the stem, 13" midships and 8" at the sternpost. It is 13" deep. Not much help, I'm afraid.
Hello, I don't think it's fussiness if the question and answer have been asked, knowledge is never too much, greetings FrankBut, I have to ask, just from the viewpoint of playing devil's advocate, does this not affect a model's historical accuracy, or does this point just rise to the level of nitpicking? By the way, any clue as to why the tapered keels? Does such a feature improve sailing qualities, or affect strength in some way?
there are very few actual historically correct models unless you building from data off a fully complete shipwreck.
keels were tappered to match up with the stem and stern posts which were sided at 8 inches. . Take the Eagle built on Lake Ontario the keel was 12 inches sided at midship and at the extreme forward end tappered to 8 inches to match up with the stem and tappered 8 inches at the stern. It is an excepted practice in model ship building to make the stem, keel and stern post all the same size except in the extreme builders catagory.
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Sorry Daniele, your observation is more than correct, a question has been asked and an answer has been given, that's all. Of course you will never get the real ship from a kit, in my opinion there is more time to read up than to build. FrankI would want to think about the utility of trying to taper the keel at the scale we are working with on a typical kit model. My first concern would be how it affects the relationships to other parts, mostly the fitment of the frames to the keel. Most kit parts are cut assuming a non tapered keel so would your taper affect the fitment of the frame parts as they attach to the keel? My second concern, and one that we all ignore as we seek more accuracy, is would we even see the taper in the finished build? At least check the issue of fitment and relationships as they relate to the kit you are building if the taper is not considered in the kit’s instructions…