I have seen that before but have no clue as to why it is done. It is the ghost of the bow pre-cut out.
I'm interested in building a Province to add to my fleet. It isn't going to happen this year. I've got to get going on the Mutsu this summer. It was supposed to be last years project but rebuilding the shop ended up taking priority. If you get serious about a fiberglass hull, I'll probably go for one. I've got almost everything French so far. I may also build a plug for the Algerie since it doesn't look like it will happen any other way.
Yes, I will be going with a fiberglass hull. I have already redrawn and printed the ribs to 144 scale. But I am still mainly working on Tirpitz. I am looking forward to seeing the Paris sailing with a red and white flag flying from the stearn.
In the old days (before computers) hull lines used to be drawn full size from the designers offsets table included with the drawings (in the very old days the measurements would have come directly off a half-hull model). This was called lofting and the name came from the term "loft" which was typically the largest enclosed flat area at the shipyard (typically built in an overhead area). When the designer designed the hull, to achieve that holy grail of ship design, a fair hull, the hull would have been designed without any cutouts initially and the offsets derived from that. The dashed "ghost lines" in the Courbet drawing is an example of the hull lines as originally designed. They would have been left in the drawings to help in the lofting process at the shipyard which involved plotting hull points on the loft floor and connecting the dots using flexible wood battens to achieve fair curves. Steve
