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[Bluebird v2]

The majority of modellers – me included – tend to take for granted what we have learned through experience and also, what we have been taught.  Sometimes, we naturally presume that every modeller has a lot of the basic knowledge.

So this short topic is aimed at those who would like to learn a little more about how we produce our model from lines on paper and where we acquire our plans from.

This is intended to be a short topic in several parts

Let us then now try to share some of our knowledge.

TO COMMENCE WITH WE WILL LOOK AT WHERE WE OBTAIN OUR PLANS FROM AND HOW THEY ARE GRADED

Plans come in many forms; from builders plans to plans we draw up from our own imaginations.  As far as the modeller concerned (model boats) there are two types of plans:

a)   Those the draughtsman draws to make a full life size ship (naval architect)

b)   Those the draughtsman draws for the modeller

So, what is the difference between the above?

Naval architect plans, are drawn so the shipyard builders can produce a full-size vessel.  There are literally thousands of these plans drawn up for one vessel.   Not only for the ship’s basic shape and size, but for every valve, and pipe work, for every piece of angle steel welded to the vessel – there will be a plan or a drawing.

Obviously, not all of these drawings and plans would be much use to the modeller.   Some of these drawings though can be used.

We will describe what can be used from the above drawings and how to read at a later topic.

So, now, let us have a look at the plans that have been drawn by the draughtsman for the modeller.

The draughtsman is either a) a modeller or b) he knows the modellers needs.   When he redraws, from the original shipyard plans, he or she may remove all unnecessary lines or all unnecessary information that the modeller doesn’t require but will include sometimes modelling or construction hints and tips.

Where then do we obtain our plans from?   You can acquire shipyard plans from Museums, Shipping Companies, or sometimes the Shipbuilding Yards.   Sometimes the Local Archives hold plans for ships.  These types of plans have no modelling information on them whatsoever; they are for the ‘real’ life size ship/vessel.

There are also magazines/plan handbooks

[Bluebird v2]

The modelling plans can be sub-divided by draughtsmen; some draughtsmen who draw for modellers do not include any modelling information whatsoever.   There is a line drawing of the ship sometimes, with ‘exploded’ views of different areas and cross-sections.  To give you an idea to draughtsmen who spring to mind, Jacobean plans, and
John Lambert plans.    More on this subject later.

In these magazines, you will find numerous plans from what is classed as ‘stand – off’ looking vessels to very highly detailed plans which enable you to build a model of extremely high standards, depending on your capabilities.   

How, are these plans graded? And, what do you get on the plan?   On the vast majority of plans catalogues, the plans will be graded one star up to four stars. 

One star (see pic 1 below) being the very basic and normally a standoff scale model with a lot of building hints and tips.   Sometimes, these will include materials to use and perhaps a building sequence.  Two draughtsmen here who spring to mind who tend to draw in this way are Vic Smeed a very well known and respected draughtsman and also Glynn Guest.   These two draughtsmen also have drawn some highly detailed plans for modelling.  For the beginner, looking to build for a plan for the first time, I would personally recommend having a look at some of their drawings....

Let us have a look at a couple of one star plans to give you an idea of what information is on the plan.

[Bluebird v2]

We will have a look now at two stars.   

As we move up the scale towards the four stars grading, information on materials and build sequences tend to fall away.   This leaves it up to the builder’s own initiative.  Sometimes you still get a suggestion of maybe what motors to put in the model and where to put various items of hardware e.g. radio gear and batteries etc., inside the hull.

Now we move on to the three stars grading, the information for the building sequence and the materials now have almost disappeared on the majority of plans.   We are having to start to research the vessel ourselves because, certain items on the plan will only show one or two views, e.g. you may only get a side-view and top view of say a winch.  This will be on the actual vessel; it will not be a separate drawing.  You also may just have say a side-view and top view of the bridge with no front view.   You will, however, get (as is the case of all drawings) what they call a hull line drawing.  Also a body plan and we will explain what these are at a later topic.

Now we move on to what is regarded as a four stars plan.  This normally consists of a side view and a top view of the complete vessel.   Also, you will get a body plan, side elevation plan and a bottom elevation plan on some plans.  Alongside this, you may also get separate drawings of the working features, e.g. on a warship you may get the guns, a few bridge sections.  You may get some drawings of the small launches and whaling boats.  Yet again, there are no construction or material suggestions on these plans.

[Bluebird v2]

There are obviously several notable draughtsmen who tend to draw these types of plans.   I have already mentioned Jacobean and John Lambert but, there are also Norman Ough’s plans and James Pottinger (some of his plans fit into this category). 

Also, modelling plans can come from reference books.   But, and this is only a personal view, unless I know the draughtsman who has drawn the plans up in the reference books – I tend to treat with caution.  This is because I have come across one or two plans in books that were slightly incorrect.  These plans I refer to were for a steam coaster.  They were not plans drawn up for modelling purposes.

Hope this helps some people to understand where we obtain some of the plans and what information to expect in some of the plans.

Ive included part of a drawing from John Lambert's plans to show his style of drawing and the information he gives on his plans.

Aye
John E
BLUEBIRD

[Bluebird v2]

In our last topic we looked at where we can acquire plans and very broadly some differences between the plans drawn by the draughtsman.

In this topic, I intend to look at a plan I regard as a 1-2 star plan, in greater detail.

The plan I have picked was a ‘free plan’ which came with Model Boats magazine and it is of the Fairy Swordsman.  The designer is some guy called Dave Milbourn   :)   now I think this youngish gentleman has something to do with Model Boats.

So, let us have a look; you will see that I was unable to scan the plan in and I have used photographs.   I hope they are clear enough for you to see.

Let’s make a start:-

We have laid the plan out on a flat surface and we are looking at the plan and looking at the side profile which, will be in photograph one.

What does the plan tells us – shows us the shape of the boat, the length, height, but, what else does it show us.   What else do we need to know?   What are the important things that we require?     

On closer inspection, we will be able to trace the outline of the keel; that gives us the shape of the keel/the shape of the hull on the flat plane, we will find this is common in all plans (this is one bit of information we will require from ALL PLANS).

The next thing we will look for is the position of the ribs in the keel.  So, for the time being, these are the two bits of information we have to familiarise ourselves with.

If we look lower down, there is a top view of the boat; and, it is only drawn in half profile.   This is quite common in a lot of plans.   However, in this particular plan, it hasn’t shown the half thickness of the keel.   That is no problem; it still shows us the position of the frames/ribs.

If we look further down, at the bottom of the photograph, you will see two frames drawn out; in actual fact, these are four frames; on the left hand side there is frame 12.    On the right hand side of frame 12, there is frame 11 drawn.  Meaning, when we actually have to cut frame 12 out, we trace the frame shape out, flip the tracing paper over on the centre line and trace the other half of the frame 12.

This gives us the full width of frame 12.

Next to frame 11, you will see frame 10, exactly the same.   Half a frame drawn, and, on the opposite side of that frame we have half a section of frame 5.   The same procedure of tracing to provide a full frame is copied out on all the frames. 
 
Now, if we look at photograph 2, which is the flip side of the drawing, you will see the rest of the frames and also the keel shape and parts of the cabin build – all pre-drawn for you.  :)

On the bottom of the photograph, you may be able to make out the actual build sequence, which has been supplied by the draughtsman.

First stage shows you the keel layout; the second stage shows you the positions of the frames and also the procedure of build.  The third stage actually shows you the skinning of the model, stage four shows you the cabin building and stage five shows you the finishing off.

In this type of plan, materials and building techniques are all suggested, to you, and to me, this means it’s a well tried and proven way of building a model.

On the plan, if we go back to photograph 1, it gives suggestions for mounting all of the radio and steering servos, position of electric motor and actually suggests a type of motor to be used with the model.   It suggests 6 cells; sub C, NiCad battery pack.

This type of plan then, although it is classed as a ‘semi-scale plan’, to me it looks remarkably close to the real ‘I am – the real boat  :) ‘

Just checking wood supplies, I may have enough light ply stashed away to actually do a build of this model mmmm food for thought. 

As I have said, this plan is one of hundreds.

This plan is one that I would regard to be the next step up the ladder, if you like, from building semi-kits, onto building from a plan.

In a way, if you put all the materials that are required for this model – in a box, along with the plan, you have your very own kit.

Hope this sheds a little bit more light in building from a plan.

Aye
John E
Bluebird

[Bluebird v2]

Hi ya there Chris

There is, shall we say, outline plans for sometime in the future to cover these questions and topics you are mentioning.   The table of offsets as they are known and how to plot frame references from water lines.

However, as you can imagine, this side of naval architecture and indeed all naval architecture can become very intensive and 'heavy' going.

What Ive got to try and do is keep this topic as simple as possible, so, those folk with no drawing experience can follow.   But, as FullLeatherJacket has already answered your query, and he has offered information on CAD drawings, no doubt this will help you out. 

Aye
John E
Bluebird

[Bluebird v2]

Hi all, this is jumping the gun a bit and going a bit ahead of the topics.  However, I am putting this posting on to try and help Chris (Charvey).

Its one of my scribbles  :)

At the top of the scribble, you will see the outline of a proposed ship.   If you can make it out.

It has been divided up by several lines.     Underneath it, you will see a plan view of the proposed ship.  This has also been divided up with lines.

So, we will take the first line and we will call this D1. This represents deck level of the ship.   If we look further down, we will see another line drawn along the length of the ship and we will call this waterline 1, waterline 2 and waterline 3.

Now, if we look on the drawing below, the top half of the drawing represents a Birds-eye view of the starboard side of the ship.

You can trace out the deck line, being the most extreme line, followed by waterline 1, which is slightly inboard.  Followed by waterline 2 which is further inboard and waterline 3 which is running next to the keel.

Now wetake a look at how the ship is divided across the hull by three lines.  We call this F1 representating frame 1, F2 and F3  (frames 2 and 3).

If we look at the bottom of the drawing, you will see 4 vertical lines.   The one nearest the centre represents the centre line of the ship and this is where we take our dimensions from.

The first dimension we will put in will represent frame 1, so, if we go to our Birds eye view of the waterlines and take a measurement from the centreline of the ship, to the extreme of D1 - mark that position on our graph with the corresponding height from the keel to the deck level D1.  This will give us a plot or a mark on our cross-hatching grid.

If we come down to waterline 1, and see where it disects F1 and take that measurement and height from the centre line and place that on the cross-hatching that will give us another plot.  Do exactly the same for waterlines 2 and 3 and this will give us a plot on what we are calling the cross-hatch grid.  You will have 4 marks.

If we look back at the birds eye view, on the portside, you will see the ship has been divided along its length by lines and they are marked L1, L2 and L3.

Now, they also give a marking, where they actually cross F1, will give us another reference plot, and, if we carry on this procedure, we will be able to build up a set of what we will call plots.   If we join these 'plot marks' up, this will give us the shape of the frame, at that position F1.

If we repeat this procedure for F2 and F3, we will be able to produce plot marks on our hatched grid and they will produce the shape of the frames at that section of the ship.

I hope this is of some help.   Ive tried to dilute it down as much as possible.   This can only be done if you only have the lines which represent WL1, to WL3.

Also, L1 to L3 on both side view and vertical view of the ship.

When you build your bottom plot graph up, the water line spacings must be exactly the same as the ones on your side view plan and your vertical line must be exactly the same spacings away from your keel as your top view plan.

For obvious reasons Ive left out a lot of the technical names such as Buttock lines, diagonal lines which I havent shown and perpendicular lines which arent really shown in my scribble.    This is just to prevent confusion and make a difficult subject easier to follow.

Hope this helps you out Chris and of course anyone else who is interested and hope its as clear as mud ... well not too muddy.

aye
John E
bluebird

[Bluebird v2]

Now, we move on to a different draughtsman, this gentleman,
James Pottinger, does a wide selection of plans for the modeller, from fairly simple stuff which is what we are going to look at this time, to very complicated drawings.

Just as a side note, the plans I am using in this topic, all come from the Model Boats catalogue.  As far as I know, they are all still in print.  So anyone interested, in any of the plans being shown or that will be shown, well you know you can still get them in the catalogue or on the web.

Lets get back then to the plan.

The Plan I have picked out, is of a modern Dutch Coaster.

I personally would grade this one as a grade 2 plan to nearing a grade 3 plan.   I have split the plan up into several scans for ease of viewing and hopefully ease of understanding.

The Plan shows a suggested method of building, and, is discussed also in the magazine article that the plan was published in. 

At the moment, though, we are not interested in building techniques - we are interested in understanding the drawings.

So, let us have a look at the drawings.

You will see in the main drawing there are several different views – side profile – what looks like a front profile and a bird’s eye view of the hull.  There are also several deck level views.

Let  us take one view at a time; first we will take the side profile of the vessel.  We can trace the basic outline of the ship and now you will see there are a lot more lines in this profile than there have been in the last plan we looked at. 

We will see that the length of the ship is divided into vertical sections, and, these are numbered from zero to thirteen.  These we will call, for the time being, sections of the ship.

We will see there are horizontal lines running from front to back of the ship.  There is water line 1 (W1) water line 2 (W2) water line (WL) and then a main deck line.  On this particular drawing, there isn’t a line drawn underneath the ship but on some drawings there is – this is normally called a Baseline.    On this particular drawing, she is a flat keeled ship, so we will call this the Keel line (the very bottom of the ship).  This is where all your height measurements come from (the keel line).

Now, if we look at the drawing which we have called the Bird’s eye view, (3rd drawing down in the pictures below) where we are looking ‘down’ on the ship – you will see there is a centre line drawn all the way through the centre of the ship.   On our starboard side of the centre line, imagine we are looking down on the ship.  On the portside imagine we are underneath as if looking up at the ship.

We will look at the plan that we have called the front view, or, to give it its correct name Body or Sectional View. 

We can see this has a vertical centre line drawn – this centre line corresponds with the centre line on the bird’s eye view.  To the left side (portside) of the centreline, this view of the sections of the ship represents us looking from the back (stern) of the ship up towards the front (bow).   Now the right hand side or the starboard side of the centre line represents you standing at the bow of the ship looking towards the stern.

If we look at the side view of the ship and say we pick position 3 and then have a look at our body plan, we look for the frame or the line that is numbered 3, you will see this is showing the shape of the vessel in a cross-sectional view, but, only in half profile.

Could we make a model from the information that we have so far gained from the plan – yes we could is the answer.

We have the sectional view and we also have the profile view of the side of the ship.  So, how would we do it, first of all we would decide on what type of construction we are going to use and say, for arguments sake, we are going to make  a ‘plank on frame’ model.

First of all, we would trace out the side profile of the ship and, on the side profile, along the keel, we would mark our frame spacings.  We would then trace out our sectional views from the body plan from 0 to 13 remembering to flip the tracing over to produce a full frame.   These frames would then be traced onto our material – wood or whatever we are using and they would become our ribs.

This would give us (when we have cut out our side profile) our keel, bow, and stern shape and then we would mark the spacings onto our keel and this would give us the positions to slot in and fit our ribs.   

This would give us the basic skeleton which we could plank over.

The other method we could use to construct a hull and we would require a little more information about for this method which is there on the plan, is to construct a bread and butter hull. 

What information would we require from this?   

We would still need the side profile of the ship and we would still need the body plan profile shapes, but, instead of making ribs out of these, we would make templates.   The other bit of information is where the horizontal lines come into play on the body plan which are marked Water line 1 and 2 and deck lines.

If we look at the bird’s eye view of the plan, we can see what shape we need to cut the pieces of timber. 

The keel piece of timber or the bottom of the ship you would draw out water line 1 onto it on the flat surface. 

The next one you would draw out water line 2 and so on.  Bearing in mind, the thickness of the timber would need to correspond with the distance between the water lines and therefore the distance between the keel and water line 1 would be the thickness of your first plank of timber.   The distance between waterline 1 and 2 would be the thickness of your second piece of timber and so on.

You would still have to mark the positions of your frames along the centre line of the keel.  This would give you the positions to use your templates at which you have traced from the body plan.

I hope this is of some help in understanding a bit more about line drawings.

Aye
John E
Bluebird

[Martin (Admin)]

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