I have been working on the stern frames and remaking the plywood stern support, the subject of my last post.
As part of all of this I've been looking at fairing all the frames in order that they might give me the correct shape of the fore and aft stern frames.
I'm using pine cut into battens at scale thickness of 4mm x 6mm wide to fair the hull frames.
Again I have been side tracked,
this time by troubles with the last three frames in the ship. On the lines plans the frames seem fair but when put into the ship and viewed in three dimensions things are far from good
One of my planking bench marks is the transition plank at the top of the stern post where things switch to horizontal at the rudder port in the hull. This will be no 8 plank up from the keel and it cuts across the top of the stern post in a rabbet at that point.
In the above photo the bottom most fairing batten hits the stern post at this point.
The problem has been that the batten could not reach this point with the original frames shapes at 16, 18 and 20.
Out with the multitool and its wobbly snake extension and my tile cutting bit.
To get the battens to hit my bench mark and make a fair curve I was forced to reduce the frames somewhat and this can be seen in the above photo.
Same location from above, you can clearly see the steps that the battens sit in to get them to run in sweet curves.
There used to be an unnatural hump in the battens here and I hope you can see that they now take a fair sweep into the stern. The port side frames are still the original shape and a comparison in shape can be made.
When I'm satisfied with the fairing on the starboard side I will make templates and transfer the respective shapes to the frames on the port side.
A bloke can never be sure a scaled up lines plan is truly correct until he builds a model from them and this build is a point in case.
Now the battens take a fair curve that I'm happy with.
Note the support post at the far stern supporting the plywood form at its correct height from the building board.
The chamfer you can see is to outside of planking and you can see an explorative notch which when faired with other notches yet to be cut will give the curve to inside of planking which will in turn give me the shape of the horn timbers (stern frames) where they will eventually cut through the arch boards in the deck.
The fun thing about scratch building is that there are new challenges to overcome at every turn