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By trial and error I’ve come to use a standard method for building hulls. I have cut the frames for the underwater hull about 1mm undersized and then used double-thickness card to build the hull back up to specifications with T pieces and a primary hull skin. In this case I’ve used 160 gsm card that my printer handles well, laminated to 200 gsm card stock using a glue stick. The result looks pale because I at this stage I used toner-save mode.
After sanding smooth I then apply the final hull skin – using doubled 160 gsm card and my best print quality, although there is often a slight colour variation to be seen between parts from different pages. I use a glue stick to apply these parts in order to avoid softening them with the white glue. By keeping them stiff any minor blemishes underneath will not be seen at the surface.
Usually ships of this type have a relatively flat bottom, but the Jeanne d’Arc has a raised keel which made it more of a challenge to butt the sections together neatly, so it’s not the best hull I’ve ever put together. However, the seven sections of frame that I drew up myself slot in nicely and the overall lines are good. Soon this hull will be turned up the other way and set into a cradle so that a lot of this work will not be visible anyway.
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