Working aft, marking out the guide lines.

Completion of marking out for this section on the starboard side stern.

Some very accurate and neat work.

Its all going to look amazing under a paint layer.

Hope it continues well.

Excellent work as usual, you must dream about rivets..

Mark

Glad to see you back on her Phil more rivets too come hmmm regards Phil

Superb job with the riveting Phil

Al

Good evening from 'The Dockyard'.

This week's update continues with riveting the stern section of my U230 U-boat build log.

Before I could start the next section I first had to mark out where the stern draught marks were located.

Studying photographs and reading Dougie Martindale's article on the subject, I could mark out to the correct scale.

The 'zero' marker on these U-boats [Type VIIC's] worked on the system that it was 50 decimetres from the bottom of the keel [5 metres]. There were three sets down each side of the boat; two, port and starboard bow, two, mid-ships and two on each side of the stern.

The bow and mid-ships draught marks started at 'zero', with nine underneath and so on until it reached one. 'Zero' being 50 decimetres and nine, 49 decimetres etc.

The stern draught marks still had the 'zero' marker at 50 decimetres, but descended down to four and also ascended up from zero to four. This was to keep a close eye on the sea level as the stern sat very low to the water line.

I only used the number four once, on the ascending run, as i wouldn't have had enough to complete the mid-ships draught marks if i followed the pattern exactly.

The attached photo shows the port side draught mark locations beings marked on the stern with tape acting as a rule with 2mm intervals to indicate the number positions; the 1/48 scale equivalent to the 10cm spacings on the real U-boats.

Port side draught marks completed on the stern.