Hi,

I am slowly making progress on my Sovereign of the seas (using in rehab for recovering from nerve pain) and have just laid down my deck plates as described in Issue 11.

I have not glued them as yet as I cannot get them to align correctly without applying some pressure.

The four end decking boards can be aligned with a small amount of pressure but I cannot get the two centre boards to align at all.

During construction of the keel and gluing of the ribs, I was careful to ensure that everything was square but it would seem that during drying, something has happened to affect the alignment.

I also built and used the suggested keel rig and rib support outlined in the SoS magazines.

Any help in correcting the problem would be appreciated.

Hi Darren, great to hear from you and from what I can see I would say you are doing a very fine job. Rob is correct where he says you need to ensure the mast holes line up perfectly and the use of the correct size dowels will help you here. Main thing first of all is you say you are applying some preasure to the deck plates in order to get them to fit. If you are applying preasure then that preasure will be on the ribs themselves. Care needs to be taken in applying any preasure as you do not want to chance breaking any ribs in the process, they can be quite delicate. Looking at it I would say these 4 deck sections line up very nicely. The problem is not a big one as your center line looks to be running true, firstly I would gently file a little off the rib slots in the bow and stern sections until you get them to fit without any preasure and keeping everything, including the mast holes aligned. Not a difficult job but take your time, remove a little at a time and check the fit often. Once happy with the fit move onto the centre sections and again gently remove a little at a time from the rib slots until you get the fit... Don't remove anything at all from the edges running down the centre line and use the dowels as mentioned. I think you will find it will all slot together quite nicely. Hope this helps but if you are unsure of anything at all then do get back to me.

Regards

Alan