The engineering puzzles you (and my little buddy Kurt) are working through on these builds (along with the knowledge/understanding of ship construction being evidenced) has highlighted for me that I am playing around in the land of giants in this hobby. What I DON'T KNOW is so expansive that it makes me wonder if what I think I DO KNOW is even right.
My deepest respect and admiration to all you giants out there.
This is not rocket science, Paul. You can do this on your next ship. Just some good pre-planning with minor modification of the bulkheads. We are playing with sticks here and forming shapes, nothing more. Nigel and I simply came up with ways to plank the inside, and removing the bulkheads. With the method Nigel is using on the Soleil Royal, instead of adding planks on the inside surface of the first layer of planking like I did, he is trimming the bulkhead edges 2mm to make room for the inner most planking layer, the bulwarks themselves. This inside planking now forms the shape of the hull, with what would have been our first layer is placed over it, and the third, finishing layer placed over that. This totals three layers.
With that much wood holding the shape of the hull, warping and flattening of curvature is minimized. Planking the inside surface of a hull versus the outside is more difficult. Nigel has planned ahead and trimmed the edges of the bulwarks so that after all three layers of planking are done, he can destroy and remove the bulkheads and the hull will hold its shape, then he'll add deck support structures like I did and build the insides from the bottom upwards.
Longitudinal members (stringers) that support the edges of the decks where they meet the hull are also pre-planned by cutting notches in the bulkheads. In this way, even waterboards and margin strakes can be shape to their correct shape and installed on the bulkheads at the correct height and sheer curves.
Before you even lay the first plank, you know where everything will be. It's a improvement over my method of planking the inside of the hull and trying to get the deck heights correct by measuring off the gun ports. The is far simpler, and only with a little bit more planning at the beginning.
Paul, you are on your first ship and I am only on my second. Please try to save some new tricks like interior decks for your second ship. There are SO many things I am improving on since finishing
La Couronne. If you actually managed to do everything right to perfection on your first build, you'd never want to build another one.
Good job I had a productive day
In this method, the location of the gun ports is what you measure from to determine the height of the deck support structure, starting with the stringer that supports each deck at the bulwarks.
So I had to sand multiple layers of the ply off leaving one layer in place.This brought the shape back, so I added another layer of planking.
