Hello again,
Good progress this weekend. Finished up the planking on the bottom of the gallery. I'm really pleased with how it came out. With a bit of sanding and some filler this should look very sharp.







Edit - sanded and filled




My other goal was to finish the 2'nd deck planking. After several aborted attempts and different technics I went with using construction paper as grouting. I tried Sharpie first but wasn't happy with the result. Perhaps if I had a square nosed tip I would have had better results but the round nose one I had was not very consistent. Attempt #2 was cutting thin strips of construction paper and putting them in between the planks as I went. This was way too fiddly for my old shaky fingers. And it would only work for planking over a false deck which would have been fine for this deck but will not work going forward. Plan C was to stand the planks on edge and glue them to the paper, then cut the planks apart with a razor blade.







As with all things trying something new takes a bit of trial and error. On the first try at cutting them apart I started with the paper up. As you can see from the last picture that didn't work as well as I hoped. Having the paper side down on your cutting mat was the ticket and the results were spot on

A couple coats of matt varnish and this part is done. Next up is mount the gallery and then onto deck #3. Oh yeah, and a bit of housekeeping, finishing up the gun ports for the first 2 decks. Stay tuned...

Lovely work, very nice progress...

Regards

Alan

Hello again,
I was able to get a lot of housecleaning done, finished the first row of gun port frames, which lead to finishing the hull fairing below the gun ports all the way down. Still have a bit to finish up the transition to the transom, that's just a whole lot of shape in a small area. I have the feeling I'll be shaping it still as I lay down each row.
Finished the reinforcing walls in between decks 2 and three. Cut all the deck 3 supports to length but did not glue them down just yet, they're not done yet.



Dry fitted the false decking #3. Even though I don't plan on using these that doesn't make them useless.





I decided to do some experimenting with plank bending. I've found very little instruction on how to actually do it. The electric plank bender came with little instruction... Soak and bend. Spent a lot of time Googling and You Tubing with not real information. Sooo, lets just go ahead and try it and see what happens. Somewhere along the line I read of someone using PVC tube for soaking. I was initially thinking a pan of some kind but then they would float. Going vertical seems a better way to go. The only problem I thought might come up is if the plank dried out before I was done, I couldn't get it back in the tube.

I set up my bending station and gave it a go.



I soaked a bamboo strip for about 10 minutes (I'm not very patient ) and gave it a go. I was able to get more bend than even the bow will need!! Very pleasantly surprised. So then I tried to see just how much bend I could get. Using the tightest curve on the bending mandrel I got this.



And that was bending pretty much dry. So what I read somewhere is true, soaking is not required, it's just supposed to make it easier. Since I already made a soaker I'll continue to use it.

Next up is blacking out the first 2 levels of gun ports and planking deck 3. Stay tuned..

All looking good!! She is rally taking shape now... Lovely work!!

Hello again,
Progress being made on several fronts. As you've seen linear building is not in my wheel house . Lets start with a little painting. First outing with the airbrush. I was pleasantly surprised with the precision it has. I had done some masking before starting but realized right away that at least for gun ports it was not needed. The dual action trigger needs getting used to, but I quickly went from terrible to just bad





Back to deck 3 construction. After fitting all the deck supports I plotted out the deck profile for all the ribs that will be planked with a curved profile and printed them out scale 1:1



Now to cut a 1/8" x 1/4" piece of balsa to match the length.



Glue them together



Cut out the rib profile from the printout and glue it down



The Dremel came with a router attachment, I took a piece of sheet metal to make a table of sorts and super glued it. Clamped the Dremel in a vise with the business end pointing up and now I have a vertical sanding/shaping tool. After letting the rib dry overnight I gave it a go.





Now that I have proof of concept time to get on with the rest. Ribs 5 thru 21 will have this profile.





The first rib I did, #5 I smoothed out after shaping by hand clamping it in a vise. For proof of concept that was ok, but after rough shaping 5 ribs today I was looking for a more consistent technic for the finish shape. I thought double sticking sandpaper to a 6" flexible steel rule would work better but after only 1 or two strokes It was still basically hand sanding. I decided to clamp the rule to a steel parallel to get a square angle to the table top. It's still sanding by hand but now getting a very square and consistent edge.





After refitting the finish shaped ribs lets start glueing them down.



That's as far as I am. Need to step back a bit and give a lot of planning for framing grating and mast holes in the deck. Also coming up planking the hull around the first row of gun ports.. Stay tuned

That is a very neat idea with the dremel accessory. Just wondering if dremel themselves might see this and introduce what looks like a really good accessory.

Interested to see how your deck curving plan works out. Its certainly a very technical looking upgrade you are making and very skilfully as well from the updates.

Hope it all continues well.

actually they do sell this accessory, it's quite nice, about 30 bucks. Much nicer than mine. But I made mine, and it was free

Hello again,
Work continues on deck 3. With all the deck ribs mounted I went ahead and airbrushed the tops of the curved ribs for fairing.



After that the next step is to fill in the sections in between the ribs all the way out to the hull. You can see above my first attempt at this which was not great. The grain was going the wrong way which made it weak and the matchup with the ribs was purely eyeballed. So out with it. I hate going backwards..

The second try was much better. Turned the grain parallel to the long axis for one. Extended the width inboard for better alignment. I'm now able to clamp a flexible steel scale to each section which allows matching the height at each rib and also to continue the angle of the ribs outward.





I'm very happy with the results.









After fairing the ribs a decking plank lies naturally across all ribs. Rib 13 is the lowest and widest part of the deck with a consistent rise fore and aft. Love it

So after a nights setting time take it out in the shop and more fairing.





And with this done I can start to frame gun ports for deck 2



I will still be using the aft third of flat decking. I clamped one side in to see how things look. I like how the height of the outside edges of the flat and curved decks are matching up





I'm getting close to some actual decking happening Still sketching out how I'm going to do the grates. Speaking of grates, I was not impressed with how the grating came out so I ordered up some grates from Modelers Central and I am very impressed with these.



Talk about night and day. These are a much harder wood and fit and finish are perfect. I also picked up a couple different style doors for later on. These look to be quality items as well.

Well that's it for now, stay tuned :)

Its very interesting to see your build progressing.

Looking forward to seeing your decking start to go down.

Very nice update to your build.

Your gratings have turned out very well.