The Transom

The Transom is another of those psychological hurdles. It needs to be done but it is a daunting prospect. Get it wrong and the boat is spoiled. Her original one had been played about with over the years. It was made of oak with a replacement section at the top. Parts of it had gone the same way as a lot of the  frame futtocks and turned into compost.In addition the iron drifts had chemically attacked the oak and destroyed its structure.

I can't believe this shape in any way conforms to the original lines.

 The top couple of planks although rotten are, I believe, very recent. The shape however seems to differ from the original lines. This is where the 3D model came in in making a judgement on what the transom should look like.

New planks in Iroko splined and bonded with epoxy

The new transom is Iroko and bonded together with epoxy from Von Corvin resin supplies. Great product and service from Herr Von Corvin. To help with alignment during the glue up the plank edges have splines. Very long spar clamps were used to clamp the planks together during the glue up.

Spline fitted as a trial to test the fit.

New transom after initial shaping and, I think, nearer to the original intent of her lines drawing. It is slightly more rounded at around  deck level than the drawing however to get the model fair this was necessary and hey it looks fantastic so what the hell. Hopefully the purists will forgive me.

A bit of reverse engineering

As a bit of fun I created a 3d model of Providence's hull from the lines published in book The Little Ships of Dunkirk.

Published Lines Drawing

The program I used was DELFTship which will also compute the various design coefficients which adds a bit of interest to the whole project.

Line Drawing produced in DELFTship.

 The lines drawing wascreated in an early version of the program that did not allow diagonals at anything other than 45 degrees hence these are a bit meaningless as far as fairing goes.

What a babe!

And a basic version in AutoCAD

I created AutoCAD "as built" drawings however my computer gave up the ghost and I did not have backups. There is still a slight chance of recovery however.