Just a little update to wrap up our weekend here in the US.
In order to provide some additional strength to the stern assembly I have now added the deck clamps. There are five formal decks on the aft portion of the Saint Philippe. From top down: a poop deck, a quarterdeck, and the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st decks. There are also some deck structures below the first deck, but they don't have deck clamps.
Each deck clamp is dimensionally different - and the clamp for the 1st deck is quite substantial (indeed, it had to be fabricated as a curved piece - bending it to the shape of the hull would have been impossible)..
Students of period French Naval Architecture know that the deck beams are joined with their respective deck clamps via blind dovetail joints. As you will notice in the images below, I have chosen to omit that detail. Once the beams have been installed the dovetail joint is invisible - and while I am not averse to including details that will ultimately be hard to appreciate (see my Kingfisher build) - the additional complication just didn't seem
worth it.
Adding the deck clamps is a fairly serious matter and required careful measuring. I guess only time will tell if I got everything in the right place.
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I do wish
@Donnie would restore the Image Editor function. It's kind of a bother to post images without it (love you, Donnie!).
