English or Dutch

At first Piet didn’t recognise my drop plank in the photo, and then he did: I had applied the Dutch method, with square butt ends, whereas the Diana is an English frigate. In the English system, drop planks end in a triangular or rounded point.

Now I was confused. I actually have Mondfeld in triplicate: started with the German edition, then found the English one, and a few weeks ago picked up the Dutch one via Marktplaats. In there, under the English system, I see exactly the kind of strake I made, as the first ‘half’ drop plank. The Dutch system puts several half drop planks side by side, the English doesn’t, but a single one does seem to be allowed. Ah well, the Diana became Dutch in the end too, even if that took a while. I’m counting it as correct.

Henk, who is building the Victory at 1:48 and owns a lot of drawings, added that Mondfeld doesn’t give quite the right picture for the English system of the Nelson period: square butt ends don’t appear on his drawings. More important was his calculation. The hull planks of his Victory at 1:48 are about 130 mm long, 5.2 mm wide and 3 to 3.7 mm thick. Converted to 1:64 I ought to be planking with planks about 3.9 mm wide and 2.5 mm thick, whereas I’m working with the 5 mm wide kit planks and end up at 2 mm thickness with two layers. Planks that are too wide make the curves difficult, and that’s where the clinker effect comes from.

My strips of 100 mm length are fine at least: with his figures I arrive at 97.5 mm. That the thickness and width don’t match is odd, but that’s how it comes in the kit and I’m not going to change it. If I don’t want to taper more than half a plank width and don’t want to start before the wale, I’ll keep suffering from the clinker effect, and then the English system gives me just too little room to manoeuvre. With the Dutch system you can solve a lot more.

A pity that Mondfeld shows the wrong system precisely there. This drop plank will presumably disappear under the wale, so in the end nobody will see it. For the rest I’ll try to keep to the English system, though I wonder whether I’ll manage. The annoying thing is that I’ll have to make the same ‘mistake’ on the other side. It does have to be a bit symmetrical.