~THG Kyle September 2022 Update~

Hey folks,

It's been nearly a month since my last update and I'm sure you're all wondering what I've been up to. Initially I was making a bit of progress on the floors (frames) for the double bottom, however I quickly realized there were some major issues with the models I had missed. It happens and I hadn't gotten too far, so I decided to fix them. In addition to that, there were a couple of weeks where I got little to no work done at times due to personal reasons. I decided to take what time I could to refine the blockout of the floors and lightening holes and how I was going to do the majority of the floors in terms of workflow.

Once I figured all that out, work picked up again. Of course it was rather slow at first, but things picked up speed as I moved and I now have most of the inboard tank floors (frames) nearly done with the exception of a polishing pass on the models for UVs and other checks. As I move towards the far ends of the ship the floors get smaller with fewer lightening holes, but the more severe curves involved make the process slower.

The actual process involved starting with a basic floor model, pasting it along adjusting for hull curvature each time, then changing it by deleting or adding lightening and limber holes as needed. These patterns change as you go fore and aft and, outside of the amidships area, pretty much every double bottom floor is unique in some way. I wasn't exaggerating when I said I was starting with possibly the most difficult part of the ship. I imagine other areas will carry their own huge challenges, but the double bottom is certainly time-consuming. Despite that, I expect to be done with the inboard floors relatively soon. Once those are done, I'll move on to some additional shell plating strakes and then the wing tank brackets.

I will be making my own post about the structural progress going into much more detail, so attached to this update is just a selection of images of the double bottom as it appears so far.