FINISHING THE CASE.

Sheathing the frame of a ship's hull, made up of a keel and frames, with cladding boards became a practice in shipbuilding in the 14th - 16th centuries.
Before this, the construction of a ship began with the formation of a sheathing “shell”, into which transverse reinforcement ribs were then squeezed.

The plating of ancient ships had its own characteristics. First came the first two, thicker rows of sheathing boards embedded in the keel, which were called tongue-and-groove belts. This was followed by a thinner plating of the lower part of the vessel from the sheet piling belt to the waterline—the bottom plating. Above the waterline, the sheathing belts alternated with reinforced belts—velkhouts.

Longitudinal seams between the side edges of cladding boards adjacent to each other are called grooves, and transverse seams are called joints. Temperature and changing forces can cause seams to expand or contract, affecting the watertightness of the hull. Usually the seams are caulked - filled with hemp or other soft material, impregnated with resin, shooting range or other similar substance, and poured on top with resin or a special composition of a mixture of harpius, tallow and sulfur. Thanks to this, the seams “play”, but the waterproofness of the case is not compromised.

On wooden ships, the boards of tongue and groove belts, belts in the waterline area and frames were made only from oak, the remaining belts were made from oak, elm, pine, teak, etc.
The size of the original boards used for cladding ranged from 6 to 8 meters and were laid with a certain layout.
Until the end of the 17th century, the width of the boards was chosen between 33 and 45 cm (older - wider), in the 18th century - 28 - 35 cm, and in the 19th century - an average of 30 cm.
The thickness of the boards ranged from 7.5 - 10 cm on the bottom, to 13 - 15 cm in the velvet layers.
The extreme ends of the belts went into the tongues of the fore- and stern-posts and were fastened with dowels made of galvanized iron or copper. Iron dowels were driven into the skin, as well as into frames, without first drilling holes in the wood, while copper dowels were driven into pre-drilled holes, with inside they were flattened on lining washers.
The usual diameter of the dowels was 4-5 cm. Metal nails had a head measuring 1.6 cm. The bolts used to fasten the sheathing usually had a head with a diameter of 6 cm and a height of 0.6 of its diameter. The washers used with the bolts had a diameter equal to 1.25 of the head diameter.
To fasten thin skins, conical tenons made of oak or acacia were usually used.

At the moment, a very practical and simple cladding method has been adopted in modeling - double cladding. On the one hand, this method requires doing the sheathing twice, but on the other hand, it helps to do the sheathing elegantly and neatly.
The first stage of this process consists of applying a layer of relatively thick (about 2 mm thick) strips, 4-8 mm wide, to the entire prepared frame of the model body.
After applying the strips to the entire body and pre-sanding them, wood filler or putty is applied, followed by sanding again. This process is repeated until all irregularities disappear: scratches and dips in the joints between the planks, depressions and protrusions on them.
At the second stage, finishing trim strips are glued onto the body, which are prepared in advance in accordance with the scale dimensions, a material is selected that matches the texture of the scaled real one, etc.
Thanks to carefully calibrated and prepared primary “rough” cladding. The “finish” skin after gluing only needs a final fine sanding.
After installation of the sheathing is completed, grooves and joints are marked on it, as well as nailing, which gives it a finished and realistic look.

On the 1:115 scale model of a two-masted schooner, the role of the primary “rough plating” is played by a hull blank, originally cut from a wooden block.
We glue the “finish” skin from a strip, which we cut from veneer from a “fruit” basket. We cut the rail into a width calculated in accordance with the scale of the model. You can cut a strip of relatively thin veneer with a modeling knife, using a ruler.
To speed up the process of slicing, you can use a homemade multi-blade knife.

How to make such a knife is shown in detail in the video. "Knife for Strips (Modeling Tools)"

The process of gluing cladding slats of the same width itself is not much different from gluing deck slats. However, there are several nuances that you should pay attention to.

First of all, we need to adjust the thickness (protrusion above the surface) of the velvet, which we have already glued to the body and which will give us the direction for gluing the cladding strips.
It has already been said that velkhout is also a sheathing board, but thicker (1.5 - 2 inches). Therefore, when placing a sheathing strip next to the velkhout, we mark the height of the strip on the latter, mark along the entire length of the velkhout a height exceeding the marks to the thickness of the sheathing strip and remove the excess with sandpaper. Finally sand the velhout.

We glue the sheathing strip from the velhout down (to the keel) and up (to the bulwark). We press the first strip closely to the velhout, each subsequent one to the previously glued one. The slats should be glued either first on one side completely, and then on the second, or by sequentially gluing one slat on each side. This allows you to maintain the symmetry of the location of the sheathing slats on the sides.

We glue the rail with cyano-acrylate adhesive gel. This is a departure from traditional technology- “welding with an iron on PVA glue”, but it avoids the need to pre-bend the slats for curved areas of the body surface and significantly speeds up the process.

When working with cyano-acrylate gel, you should not forget about the working rules:
- apply glue not to the entire workpiece at once, but in parts, as it is glued;
- after applying the glue, hold the workpiece for 20 seconds, and then press firmly to the surface to be glued;
- do not apply a lot of glue so that after gluing it does not squeeze out from under the parts being glued;
- remove excess glue without waiting for it to set.

The specificity of the surface of the ship's hull is that its underwater part (especially closer to the bow) is spherical. The sheathing strip in this place has to be bent in two perpendicular directions - along and across the fibers.
If on a large-scale model, using relatively narrow slats, it is quite easy to go through a bend, then on a small-scale model, difficulties may arise. In particular, “pockets” may form - part of the lath does not adhere to the surface and does not stick due to the internal stresses of the wood. Using CC glue allows you to quite easily solve the problem of “pockets”.

We cut the strip in the “pocket” area, insert glue under it and glue the resulting valves. To avoid unnecessary overlap of the valves with each other, we trim their edges as they are glued.

When the glue sets and the former “pocket” is sanded, the valve joints will be invisible. If the gap between the valves is wide, you can glue a piece of the same cladding strip into it.

Having not brought the skin of the underwater part of the hull 3-4 rows up to the keel, we begin to glue the slats from the keel upwards - this will ensure that the tongue and groove belt of the slats is parallel to the keel. We fill the resulting spindle-shaped area of ​​the surface with a batten so that the ends of the battens of the same width approach the stems. At the same time, if necessary, we narrow the slats (forming the so-called “losses”) or glue wedge-shaped elements in the places where the seams widen between the covering strips.

The ends of the slats should fit closely to the stem. on the sternpost, it is permissible for the glued slats to “fly” over the edge of the stem (the excess will be carefully trimmed off when installing the sternpost).

This simple web page is used to visualize your joystick buttons and axes.
Yep, there are only a few widgets, but the layout still may be complex enough.

There is direct link to the preset shown above:

As it utilizes javascript Gamepad API, it can support up to 4 devices.
It"s highly recommended to use Chrome-based web browser since Firefox doesn"t see all possible axes.

Important notice. The Joystick Visualizer does not store your personal data, nor uses cookies. All presets you"d made are stored at your web-browser local storage.

The visualizer was (in primary) created for using while playing Elite: Dangerous. Of course, it may also be used in other various simulator games. My friend CMDR requested visualizator that is as much flexible as possible to freely support his 2 joysticks with throttle and pedals setup.

This visualizer is good at use as a "Browser" source in OBS application.
I asked CMDR to give me a sight on his experience of using the visualizer with OBS. Here is his comprehensive answer:

Using Joystick Visualizer in OBS.

Step 1. Configure widgets.
- go to a.site/joystick/
- double click anywhere to add widget. You may use buttons, hats, labels and single or double axis widgets.
- configure widgets. Double click on widget, set label(s) and joystick(s) and axis number(s). These numbers you can find using the "Joysticks" menu.
- configure general settings like shadows, colors etc.
- save your settings.

Step 2. OBS.
Well, you will need to experiment a bit with settings to achieve decent results.

Disclaimer: These are mine personal recommendatons. They work for me, your mileage may vary.

At first, choose a proper color for your chroma key background. The usual acid green is not always the best option. We"ll need a bit of theory here.

The ChromaKey technology works as a dynamic mask determined by the color. This color is filtered out by software during the video processing and all areas of that color are considered as transparent.
This works very well with sharp-edged objects, where we have a distinct border between the colors. But if you have any kind of antialiasing, shadows or edge feathering involved, things are more complicated because of the process called "color spill" which is basically a blending of the colors at the edges of an object. To minimize this effect you need to choose the chroma key color which is:
a) opposite to the color of the object
b) not very bright
Some numbers to illustrate this:
Every color is composed from 3 basic color channels - Red, Green and Blue. In 24 bit color palette each color value can be from 0 to 255 (or from 00h to FFh in hexadecimal notation)

#ff7100 - this is the code for orange color of Elite Dangerous. As you can see, it consists of 255 (FFh) Red, 113 (71h) Green and 0 (00h) Blue. Since orange this color does not contain Blue channel at all, a kind of blue chroma key color will be easiest to remove and is the best choice for orange widgets. Also, it should be not too bright, because the dull colors "spill" less. The shade of blue with code #000080 shoud work just fine.

Chroma key color should be set in "Settings" menu of Teall Joystick site. Save your configuration and then use "Export" in the "Save" dialog. You will see the "Direct link" option, copy that link.

Now we need to add this to OBS.

In OBS add new "Browser" source.
Insert the link that you have copied from the website to the "URL" field and set desired browser window size. I recommend to start with the size of your video frame and than reduce it to the minimal required dimensions later. When you click OK, you should see your widgets in the OBS along with chroma key background. Now we need to remove it.

Right click on browser you have just created and choose "Filters". Click on "+" an add "Chroma Key" fiter.
Set "Key Color Type" to "Custom" and choose chroma key color either by using palette\number fields or color picker.

Now is the time for fine tuning.
Set "Similarity", "Smoothness" and "Key Color Spill Reduction" to minimum.
"Similarity" is how close to the base color you want OBS to remove. Adjusting this slider will allow OBS to remove wider chroma key color variations of the screen. Make sure not to increase this so much that some parts of your widget is being removed too.
Adjust "Similarity" so you can see the widgets clearly with minimal residue of chroma key color. It should be small value in our case since we have very uniform key color.
“Smoothness” works in tandem with “Similarity” in trying to make sure that the filter isn’t too harsh. You shouldn’t have to move this to a large degree. Use it to hone in on the perfect amount of what’s left on the screen.
"Spill Reduction" applies to the edges of what the filter is and isn’t removing from the screen. If you"re noticing some key color residue on the edges of your widgets, move this slider to remove it.
Most probably, you will need to disable shadows in the website settings to get better results. This largely depends on the color schemes used though.

Step 3. Final adjustments.
As the last steps, adjust widgets placing (you will need to save new settings and apply new URL to the OBS browser) and OBS browser overlay size. After the overlay size has been roughly set, you may crop the overlay instead of resize by holding "Alt" key while adjusting overlay borders.
Please note, that chromakey processing is a tough computational task, so you will need a computer with a decent CPU to avoid lags and framedrops.

As always, Joystick Visualizer is completely free for use and copy. If you like it, feel free to donate =)

A rather tedious, labor-intensive and long process is the finishing of the hull. Unlike the deck, it will always be visible; the perception of the model largely depends on its execution. Potholes and bumps are unacceptable. All belts should be smooth. Any break, even a small one, spoils the impression, so we must strive for perfection!

So that's how it went for me. At the very beginning I wanted to make the separation of colors with wood. Perhaps this is the most the hard way, which you can imagine...

Place the body on a horizontal surface. I had to raise the bow - my trim is about 15 mm. Using a thicknesser we draw the waterline.

Then we divide the underwater part into two halves. I took the last belt that didn't go through the waterline. The line turned out to be quite complex. I took measurements from the side projection, marked control points with a thickness gauge, then pinned a strip along them with paper clips and drew them.

Everything is smooth!

We put this part, the keel and the sternpost in place. The keel is just a block with some room for processing. Experience shows that it suffers significantly during sheathing. We make approximate markings of the casing. There are no “losses”, but the board amidships is 5 mm wide, narrows towards the bow to 2.5-3 mm and widens towards the stern to 6-7 mm. We put two lower belts.

Last time I steamed all the slats and bent them on an iron. This time I used a hairdryer. There is no need to steam it, the wood is dry and the edge does not suffer. We place the belt along the geoline. The bottom part begins to fill.

The main difficulty is that each belt needs to be cut into the stems. It consists of two slats meeting in the right place (the position is taken from the drawing).

With the last boards in the “section”, of course, difficulties have to be tediously adjusted.

The lower part of the bottom is completed. The lower velvet is installed - a hefty strip 7 mm wide and 3 mm thick. Bend is a blessing, but the hairdryer did the job.

Having closed the waterline, we outline it again along the finished skin. We delete what is unnecessary.

Side view. The waterline when viewed from the side is horizontal.

And here comes the hardest part. Separation of colors. Since I'm doing the wainscoting (picking up the joints of the boards), it feels like one board painted different colors. The main trick is to go from the bottom up.

Black hornbeam has a lot of advantages. It bends easily, is intensely black, with an interesting texture. But also the dirt from it...

It turned out even better than I expected.

I remember that for several days I could not tear myself away from contemplating such beauty (gee-gee).

There are fewer belts in the nose, but due to their strong narrowing there was more torment.

But everything ends someday.

The aircraft in the port area did not cause any particular problems.

It is not always convenient to pin/press the rail.

The stage ended with this look:

A month of work is behind us, and the nailing of the body looms ahead...

On sailing ships Two cladding methods have long been used.

Sheathing "covered"
Most ancient way cladding of a type-setting building, known in Egypt and Phenicia since the third millennium BC - “overlapping” or clinker cladding, when one belt of cladding boards overlaps the adjacent one and is fastened with nails.
This is how most ships were sheathed until the end of the 15th century.
To this day, clinker lining is used on boats and similar small vessels.

Sheathing "smooth"
This type of plating, which is more technologically advanced and has better seaworthiness, completely replaced clinker plating on large ships already in the first half of the 16th century.
On relatively small ships, single-layer sheathing was used, and on larger ships, two-layer sheathing was used, in which the seams of the outer layer were offset relative to the seams of the inner one.
The length of the cladding boards was 6 - 8 m, the width was up to 10 inches or 25 cm (1 inch = 2.54 cm), and the thickness was up to 6 inches (16.5 cm).
The sheathing was secured with iron, copper or wooden nails(dowels).

Veneer selection
Choosing veneer for hull cladding is probably the most organizationally difficult part of the work - everything will depend on what you managed to get. Therefore, it is quite difficult to recommend anything specific here, and I described the basic requirements for veneer at this stage in the first chapter.
There I said that distinctive feature Russian school of ship modeling There was a desire to use the natural color of wood as much as possible, matching it as close as possible to the painted original. If you want to work in this technique, you need to take this into account when choosing veneer colors.

What a fragment of the hull of a battleship made using this method might look like can be seen in the photo on the left.
But the hull of the ship "Ingermanland", a fragment of which is shown in the photo on the right, is made of plain veneer with a decor of colored paper and black velvet.
For covering the upper part of the side, which does not have a curve at the bow end, in principle, any veneer of the appropriate color and texture is suitable. You just have to avoid a textured pattern that is too large - it will look a little awkward on the model. And, in addition, such wood often has a very large-pore structure, which in the future will not allow achieving a high-quality surface. When choosing veneer by color, keep in mind that after varnishing it darkens significantly. What it will become after this can be checked by wetting its surface. With the plating of the lower part of the side, and, moreover, the underwater surface, everything is somewhat more complicated.

From my own experience, I can say that the best chance of choosing a suitable species will be among the light varieties of mahogany. Unfortunately, I don’t know their exact species names - tropical species have dozens of them, but in our country they are all known under the name “mahogany”. The simplest way Determine whether the piece of veneer you have chosen is suitable for this - cut a strip of approximately 5 mm wide from it and, carefully but firmly, pressing with your fingers, try to bend it around the ribbed plug from the “Moment”. It may seem incredible at first, but ideally a strip of wood from some species can be wrapped around a cork without breaking. The ribs of the cork will slightly break the fibers of the inner surface, making bending easier, and its sufficiently large diameter will not allow the strip to break.
If you succeed, consider yourself lucky - such veneer will fit perfectly. If not, try taking some kind of cork with a similar surface, but of a larger diameter, and try rounding the veneer on it. If this doesn’t work, and there is no other choice of veneer, you will have to soak the veneer strips in hot water, give them the required shape, dry them and only then sheathe them. I have not successfully resorted to this method, so I will not give recommendations based on personal experience. I will only say that after drying, veneer warps and it becomes more difficult to work with them, but in extreme cases, such a way out is possible.
We will assume that you have decided on the choice of veneer, have a sufficient supply of it to be able to afford to ruin several sections until you acquire the necessary skill, and are ready to start working.

Cut the veneer
A plastic ruler is best for cutting strips. Wooden is completely unsuitable - after a few inaccurate movements, cut areas and nicks will already appear on it. The metal one is also not good - here you can accidentally ruin the knife. Ideal option- a ruler made of transparent plexiglass, so that you can see what is under it - sometimes this helps a lot in your work. If it doesn't have holes at the ends, drill it - it will come in handy.
It is most convenient to cut on a strip of plywood into which three nails are driven. The ruler rests on two of them, the distance between which should be greater than the maximum length of the strips when cutting, and the third passes through the hole in the ruler and prevents it from moving along the cutting line. It is more convenient to drive it in from the right.
You need to make some kind of backing for the plywood on which you will cut. It can be linoleum, PVC tiles or just thick, not necessarily thick, cardboard. I use backings made from double-glued cardboard from milk cartons. It’s never a pity to throw away the cut one and make a new one. Fortunately, the material is always at hand. The backing does not need to be attached to the plywood; it is better that it can be moved and the cut will go to a new place.
You should not try to cut veneer by simply pressing a ruler with your hand, as when drawing. The knife is so persistently trying not to go in a straight line, but along the line of grain, that it still won’t work. Even just the first two of the nails mentioned do not always help: if the wood is hard enough, when you press the knife hard, the veneer will “crawl” from under the ruler along with the plywood.Therefore, take a few minutes and make the above device approximately as in the diagram on the left.

The same diagram shows how best to position the veneer sheet when cutting. Pay attention to the direction of the fibers - they should move slightly, just a little, away from the ruler in the cutting direction, and not go under it. Otherwise, the knife will try to “rip out” the veneer sheet from under the ruler, and in the end, sooner or later it will do this. Otherwise, the knife will simply go up along the grain, leaving the veneer in place. Such a “failure” is much easier to correct.
When cutting, you should not try to cut the veneer in one pass. Wood fibers need some time to deform, so when you press hard on the knife, there is a greater likelihood of an advanced crack forming before cutting edge, as a result of which the fibers will break before the tip of the blade has time to pass through the veneer and, accordingly, the cut line will be less smooth.
As already noted, veneer has a front and back side. Accordingly, the back will be glued, and the front will then be sanded.
Before cutting strips for covering the freeboard part, it is necessary, using the drawing, to calculate their width.
When cutting, due to the wedge-shaped shape of the knife, the fibers of the upward-facing layer are wrinkled quite noticeably, and the fibers of the lower layer are simply cut. As a result, the cross-section of the strip has a trapezoidal shape, as in Fig. right. Naturally, when gluing veneer on the bottom (according to the picture) surface, due to crumpled fibers, significant gaps will remain between the strips, and when gluing on the top, the strips will lie almost close to each other.
From the above it is clear that when cutting, the wrong side of the veneer should be facing upward. How to determine it has already been said, but having done this, you should immediately shade the sheet, so that later, after cutting, you can immediately see which side of the strip to coat with glue.

One end edge of the sheet on the reverse side should also be clearly marked with a colored pencil or marker. This will then help you immediately, without looking at it, determine which edge of the strip is perpendicular (it remains under the ruler when cutting) and which is beveled. It can be convenient to see all this when sheathing the hull, especially the underwater part, in order to form the highest quality surface, without gaps and cracks.
When cutting, you need to make sure that the marked edge is always on one side. Left or right - it doesn’t matter, but with one. If you need to unroll a sheet of veneer, you should cut or clean off the markings and apply it to the other end.
Starting to cut the veneer, mark the velvet lines on the side surface, and calculate the approximate width of the cladding strips, taking into account the selection of veneer by color. The same markings will help withstand the necessary bending of the strips when gluing.
In serious modeling literature Recommendations are given for simulating a set of sheathing from individual boards. But in our case, due to the small scale, attempts to do this will not give any visible effect, and may even bring a negative result. High-quality solid smooth cladding will look much better.
The optimal width of the strips, which is convenient to work with, ranges from 3 to 6 mm, depending on the curvature of the body outline and the elasticity of the veneer. Strips of greater width usually bend poorly in their plane, although in those places where the continuity of the skin is not important, for example, on the sites of future cannon ports, it is quite possible to break it without compromising the appearance.

Sheathing
Plating the surface of the side usually does not present any particular difficulties. The outlines of the nasal tip on it are close to cylindrical, and covering them with veneer is quite simple. Before starting, mark the center line of the body surface with a pencil. This will allow you to maintain the symmetry of the skin. After this, you can proceed directly to the casing itself.
From my own experience, I can say that it is most convenient to apply glue to both sides at once in strips wide enough to glue six to seven strips of sheathing in one go.
Where the ends of the strips form curvilinear contours of the nasal extremity, after applying the glue, immediately before gluing, they need to be bent using a cork from “Moment”, using the method described earlier when testing the veneer for elasticity. The very tips: about five millimeters - you can even break them additionally to avoid their further peeling off.
It is very important to carefully ensure that there are no areas of surfaces left uncoated with glue, both the body and the veneer. Even if at this stage the incomplete gluing turns out to be unnoticeable, then later during sanding, and especially during finishing, the unadhered sections of the veneer will almost certainly fall away, forming bubbles, “siskins,” as carpenters say, and it will be quite difficult to fix them. It is also important to grind the veneer as thoroughly as possible when facing.
Sheathing the underwater part is somewhat more difficult (it’s good that this operation comes second, when you already have a certain skill acquired in a simpler area!).
Here the nasal tip takes on the appearance of a spherical surface, the veneering of which with flat sheets of veneer will require some experience.
To begin with, I will say that the cut of the strips for this part will be different - it is more convenient to cut the strips not equal in width at both ends, but wedge-shaped. One end is narrow, no more than 1-2 mm wide, and the second is about 6-7 mm.

Before bending the cork, the wide ends must be cut with scissors, giving them a shape approximately as in Fig. left. It is necessary to cut in such a way that when applied to the body, the cut edge will lie close to the strip glued earlier. In this case, the strip is held with the glue facing up, then the fibers will be deformed in such a way that when gluing, a smaller gap is formed, according to the principle described in the commentary to the figure above.
In general, it is better to smear and glue the strips in such a way that their beveled edge adjoins the strips glued earlier - this creates a tighter joint. Marking one end edge, which was mentioned earlier, helps to avoid looking at each strip separately.
Strips are glued, as a rule, alternating such cut wide ends with narrow ones, which can easily be given the necessary bend.
The shape of cutting the wide end is determined intuitively, “by eye”, therefore, until sufficient experience is gained, it is worth cutting some of them before applying glue and, bending it on the cork, attaching it to the body to see how it fits and, perhaps, adjusting its contour .
Sometimes it is possible to apply a strip by slightly breaking it in several places, or by making small notches on one of the edges on the wrong side with the tip of a knife. In the future, when grinding the skin, grinding and finishing, these breaks and notches will become completely invisible, unless, of course, they are abused.
In general, properly selected wood, due to its porous structure, is quite capable of taking and maintaining the required shape, deforming under load, which makes it possible to avoid particularly careful fitting. But only if it is carefully glued. The “Moment” layer when lining the nasal surface should be especially dense, because The loads on the adhesive joint here are quite significant. Therefore, if the gluing turns out to be weak, the cladding may fall behind during further finishing.
As the skin approaches the keel area, it begins to show that the middle part of the hull is somewhat wider than the bow and stern. Therefore, the skin strips begin to bend more and more. To make work easier, some of them can be made tapering at both ends. Again, it’s quite acceptable to break one or two.
It is best to complete the sheathing directly on the center line. As a rule, achieving a high-quality last joint is the most difficult, but in in this case this is not needed because here this joint will later be closed by the keel and stem.
If, despite all efforts, any noticeable cracks have formed, they can be sealed in two ways.
Firstly, you can glue onto the PVA thin shavings of the same veneer cut with a knife as the sheathing itself, then, after drying it a little, rub this place with the handle of a knife, and let it dry completely. The second option is to fill the gap with thick PVA, scrape the smallest shavings from neighboring areas into it with a knife, compact it with the tip of the blade and again dry it well.
It is better to cut off the ends of the strips protruding beyond the transom, leaving an overhang of about 5 mm.. It is not worth cutting them immediately flush with the plane of the transom: this will pose a greater risk of damaging the “finish cut” during grinding.
When the skin is completely ready, these ends must be glued with PVA on the back side along the contour line of the transom to avoid accidental chips during further processing.

Grinding
For preliminary sanding of the skin, sandpaper with a grain size of 10 - 16 according to GOST 3647-80 is better suited. The higher the hardness of the wood, the finer the skin should be. Small sandpaper on soft wood will become “greasy” too quickly, and large sandpaper can leave quite noticeable scratches on hard wood, which will be difficult to sand out in the future.
In this case, the main grinding work will be done on the underwater part, made of fairly soft wood. Therefore, when choosing a skin, it is better to focus on it. When processing the surface, you must try to ensure that the direction of movement of the sandpaper relative to the body coincides with the direction of the wood fibers. I think it is unnecessary to talk about the caution required when grinding. The risk of sanding through the veneer, especially in the bow, is quite high. If necessary, you can check the thickness of the remaining veneer layer by simply pricking it with the tip of a knife.
When sanding the concave part of the aft end of the bottom, do not try to do it completely with just a wheel. It’s just as easy to ruin the surface here. It is better to do this with sandpaper wrapped around a wooden cylinder.
After the first stage of grinding, the body blank is moistened with water, to which about one-fourth to one-fifth of PVA has been added, and again dried well. At the same time, the wood fibers crushed during the grinding process swell, rise, and, thanks to PVA, harden. The surface becomes hard and rough. And now, using the finest sandpaper, grit 4 - 6, the surface is sanded again. Now it’s final.
All that remains is to process the transom. Using a sharp knife, the veneer overhangs are cut off flush with its plane. In this case, all cutting forces must be directed so that the veneer is pressed against the body to avoid spalling. Just like when cutting strips, you should not try to make the cut in one motion: it is much easier to ruin the work than to repair it later.
After trimming, the plane of the transom, again applying force only in the direction of the hull, is leveled with a fine file.
Well, covering it with veneer, taking into account the experience already gained, I believe, should not be particularly difficult.
It is best to remove the overhangs remaining after cladding in two steps - cut off the main overhang with a knife, and then use small files - flat and semicircular (or sandpaper) to finally process the edges.

Well, that's all at this stage!

Let's hope that this, perhaps the most technically difficult part of the work, turned out the way you imagined it, and this will inspire you to continue it!

Author - Dmitry Kopilov
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