Sunday 15th February 2015

While I find the guillotine style cutters as I have used for cutting the deck planking I find that on thicker pieces of wood the thin blades have a tendency to "wander" and do not always produce a neat squared end. Therefore for these thicker sections of wood the best choice of tool has to be a mitre bow. (nothing stopping you using the "chopper" style cutter but if you have to square up the ends its possible you will shorten the piece you are working on.

There are many options available but for parts of this size you really do need a fine blade. In my case I have used my photo etched blade (JLC unit)

Adding these parts with the decks loose was very easy and allowed a very neat finish to be achieved. Having added these parts we will see they eventually get covered over with the deck grill surrounds As well at least I know they are there.

Sunday 15th February 2015

So the next stage is to glue the decks onto the false keel. Nothing really to note here other than to point out that when putting the ribs and mast supports in place during the first stages of the build you need to remember NOT to glue in the stern mast support at this stage as the rear deck has to be fitted first.

The only part I will not be gluing at this stage is the Bow "Beak" section as I do not want to damage that when fairing the hull ready for the first planking.

When trying to clamp the decks I found that the curve of the hull ribs meant the clamps slipped so to overcome this a couple of lengths of scrap birch I had laying around solved that particular issue.

Sunday 15th February 2015

Well having now secured all of the decks (apart from the Bow Beak as mentioned) I need to decide how to best finish the deck cabin bulkheads. In the instructions they would have you plank these exactly as you have the deck but to my eye this just does not look correct.

I feel the planks would look best laid across these areas horizontally rather than in vertical runs.

I will probable stick with the 5mm x 0.5mm maple for these areas but think they would look better coloured. I have a few wood stains and dyes so have tested some on some offcuts of the maple strip to see the effects. Not a very good picture but you get the idea of what I am trying to achieve in putting together a colour chart before committing to the model itself.

Well that's it for this time. The next stages will involve finishing the cabin bulk-heads then the fun begins with the first planking stages

Looking good Tony I like the idea on the wood staining.

Hi Tony!
A perfect job you made, respect!!


Regards, Bernd

Coming along nicely T

Sunday 15th March 2015

Well it’s been a while since I last posted - a combination of too much work and then to top it all a bout of illness.

While I have made some progress with my build I have been slowed down somewhat with a number of issues both Historical (which I will cover in a later post) as well as some fit problems with the kit, and finally trying to decide on how best to represent certain areas of the kit.

Let’s see if I can explain where I have got too.

1. Looking at the kit instructions they would have you complete the deck bulkheads using exactly the same planking technique used for the decks themselves. To my eye it just does not look right.

Just to show the areas we are talking about have a look at the following picture:

2. One of the options I considered was just to add horizontal planking across these areas which would certainly make the job of adding the fittings a lot easier as this would result in a nice flat surface.

However having spent some time researching ships of this age (and in particular the replicas of the Golden Hind) I have found that ships of this age tended to finish these bulkheads in a "Shiplap" planking method with one plank overlapping the next.

Image 2 from the following link will give you an idea of what I am trying to achieve:

http://www.britainexpres...ons.htm?attraction=3226

While this may cause me some regrets later in the build its the option I decided to go with.

To ensure some sort of accuracy I decided to build myself a small jig to get the planking nice and even.

Sunday 15th March 2015

The First of the Fit Issues to Resolve

With this kit the gunport areas are provided for using diecut ply that is affixed to the side of the ship, which in later stages is then planked over.

This is an excellent inclusion in the kit as it will save a lot of time in measuring and cutting these openings one by one which can be quite difficult to do and achieve an accurate finish.

And its this area that I have encountered my first problem.

Despite making sure all of my bulkheads are at true 45 degree angles and everything is nice and square and true I found that one of the gunport overlays has been gun approx. 1mm short.

Interestingly all of the other overlays fit with no issues what so ever so a vindication that its my build in error.

The following picture shows the issue I found with this part.

Sunday 15th March 2015

Preparing the Gun Port Overlays

1. Some of the gun port openings are "below decks" and therefore will house a dummy canon barrel rather than a fully carriage version.

To fit these dummy barrels it is necessary to back the below deck openings with parts B13 that come in the kit.

WORTH NOTING AT THIS POINT

Each of the gun ports on the overlays has a small square of wood to be removed. You have to remember that some of these "wood scraps" actually become the gun port lids as part E55 so make sure you do not throw these away. I have put mid in a zip lock plastic bag and put them in the kit box so they do not get lost over the coming weeks.

2. I did consider replacing the backing pieces B13 with a larger piece of wood as the area that will get glued is not a very large surface at all. Concern being that pushing in the false barrels at a later stage could see these backing pieces coming adrift.

However in the end I opted to work with the supplied parts.

3. The fits stage in preparing the parts B13 is to pencil in a cross from corner to corner. This has 2 functions. In the first instance we find the centre of the square backing plate that will allow us to drill an accurate hole to accept the dummy canon barrel.

Secondly having the cross in place will allow you to accurately line up the small square backing plate evenly when gluing it onto the overlay piece.

Very nice Tony, lovely work being done here....

Regards

Alan