G'day all
Believe it or not!
I've been very busy in the drawing stage of the construction of the kit. The last week or so, I've been concentrating on the strength of the keel to hold up the yacht on the two keel's stand. Even though this is an increadale kit, I'm making sure that there will be enough strength to hold the ship upright. The ship's height of around 1.4 meters or so when it has full sets of masks, will make the yacht TOP HEAVY. I'm afraid it might get a SLIGHT bump, and the result could be a disaster!
I will adding 30mm of hardwood (merbau) using 15mm on both sides of the false keel between the bulkheads and a 15 x 68mm merbau under the first (strenghting) decking. I'll will also add 30mm to the thickness to all the bulkheads under the first decking. Again 15mm both side of the bulkheads.
All the merbau timbers will be joined together either be blots and nuts or being screwed to form a solid block of hardwood 'surrounds' the plywood keel and bulkheads.
I will be using 12mm hight tensile bolts through the keel as the main support for the stand. As you can imagine the 5mm ply keel will be cut away by the drill hole for these bolts. Where the bolts are, I will add an additional 15mm (both sides) merbau timber between the bulkheads.
This way, there will be a 28 to 29mm x 70mm blocks (both sides of the keel) of merbau thickness next to the high tensile bolts. Not to mention the the merbau plank under the first decking.
I might be doing an overkill in the strengthening department, but my father always told me , 'if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing right THE FIRST TIME. It stand to reason, I'll would not have the privilege to redo it again, so I'll have to do it correct the first time.
I don't think I will be transferring the weakness to a different area because the all the bulkheads will be integrated with the keel and it's plywood's 'strengthener'.
Even the mask will be set in the merbau timber under the first deck.
On top of the first deck I will be placing slotted merbau timber which will be used to hold the 5 forms between each of the kit's bulkheads. I will have to draw (only from bulkhead 7 to bulkhead 12).
This is where I'm going to do some cheating. I'm going to make the decking of the main cabin and the king's stern cabin FLAT as well as the decking above the king's cabin . This is because I'll be putting guides under the floor and decking to hold the forms. This will be a LOT EASIER TO DO FLAT, RATHER THAN A CURVED SURFACE. The forms between the bulkheads will be 10mm wide, with a space of approx 2.9mm between each form and the bulkheads. The bulkheads is made from 5mm plywood, so I'll be adding 2.5mm veneer to each side,
so the visible portion of the bulkheads, will appear to be 10mm wide, to follow the other forms.
The visible portion of the bulkheads will cut to make it like the others forms, which I'll be making.
WITH ALL THE EXTRA MERBAU IN THE HULL, THE EXTRA WEIGHT AT THE BOTTOM SHOULD HELP TO LOWER THE CENTRE OF GRAVITY!
HENSE LOWER THE CHANCE OF TOPPING OVER.
This brings me to another
IMPORTANT THING THAT I HAVE TO CONSIDER!
The weight of the extra hardwood forms that will only be on the starboard side!
I don't know how much extra weight there will be, but I would presume it will be enough to make the yacht 'lop sidded' to the starboard side.
To counteract this, I'm planning to put a series of bolts on the PORT SIDE with heavy weights attached to the ends of these bolts. The bolts will be able to move in and out (before the planking is done on the hull), I'll will place the model on a pendulum stand and adjust the screw, so a balance point will be obtained.
The further I'll screw the bolts out, the weight on the bolts will appear to increase because of NEWTON'S 3RD LAW, if I'm not mistaken! And screwing in, the weight will decrease respectively.
Sounds good in theory, only doing it will tell if I'm correct!
The stand will be use to hold the model while I'll be working in it, so it will have a double use!
Photo to come very soon.
Havagooday and thanks for watching.
Greg
