Laser cut timber

When compared with the intricate tasks involved with making a number of the tiny detail components, the construction of the hull is equally as important. You have to work to a higher standard of accuracy ensuring that the hull isn't crooked or planks are not buckled and wavy. In the building of a sealed hull or plank-on-bulkhead model ship, undoubtedly typically the most popular type of construction, the false keel and bulkheads would be the underpinning of both the structure and form of your model.

The three kinds of models are frame, admiralty and fully planked. The fully planked closed hull is the easiest to build but still requires great care. After removing any spurious material from the laser cut false keel and bulkheads, start at either end through the use of the bulkheads. Very often the precut bulkheads - the solid anthwartships - found on plank on bulkhead ship model are out of symmetry and off centre. If you assemble them without correcting the imperfections, you end up having an uneven hull profile.

Place a bulkhead piece from your kit on a heavy bit of paper and trace its outline. Cut around the outline, fold the paper in two ensuring top of the outer edges are matched and clipped together when you crease it in the middle. The crease will create a true centerline and show if the lower outer edges are cut unevenly or if the keel slot in the frame is off center. If the outer edges are misaligned, remove the excess on the pattern with scissors to even out the edges of the 2 halves. Return the folded pattern to the bulkhead frame, mark and file off the excess from the frame itself and draw the centerline. If the keel slot has gone out of center with the pattern, mark it on the false keel. Continue this on another side of the frame by simply turning the pattern over and aligning it on the previously drawn centerline.Laser cut timber

Next correct the bulkhead frame's outer profile by filing off any excess you have marked. If the guts slot has gone out of alignment with the centerline, glue on thin strips of wood to fill one side and remove the excess on another side. Finally, draw the centerline on top edge of the bulkhead. This mark may help make the frame with the keel during the particular assembly. If you continue this procedure with every bulkhead, you find yourself with a symmetrical hull profile.

When assembling the bulkheads to the false keel, be sure that the biggest market of each bulkhead is aligned with the keel, the tops of the frames are flush with top of the edge of the keel and that the frames are neither too tight nor too loose in the keel notches. 
One trick is to utilize the false deck as an aligning method for the bulkhead frames. With a pen, mark the centerline on both the most truly effective and bottom of the false deck. Place the keel on the deck and mark the outline of all the frame slots on the deck line. With a square, mark the bulkhead lines on both sides and top and bottom of the false deck. Then you can begin the assembly process.

Place and pin the false deck on the surface of the false keel. Then be sure that every bulkhead frame is exactly on its line underneath the deck. Laser cutting acrylic

Each bulkhead has to be positioned at true right angles to the false keel. Attach the frame by way of wood glue and reinforce with pins. Glue has a tendency to distort the false keel so be sure that one bulkhead is placed on at the same time and continually check for warpage. Once all of the bulkheads are in place and fastened firmly take a long bit of sandpaper wrapped wood or a rasp and gently sand the design of the bulkheads ensuring clean lines from bow to stern and that the port side mirrors the starboard side without the concave or convex areas.

In order to avoid warpage as time passes, you are able to apply a coat of diluted glue or vanish to seal the wood cells. Click here

There are many tools available to make this job an easy task to deal with. A Fair-A Frame holds and aligns both the false keel and bulkheads during assembly. A Keel Klamp or a Timber Tapering Tool may help ensure that the false keel doesn't warp during construction. And a small square is an invaluable aid. Understand that no real matter what tool you employ, you're building the skeleton of your ship model. You should understand this right to possess your model looking its best when it's complete