Lovely work on the decking, she’s taking shape very nicely.

Mark

What a great job lovely work regards Phil

Great work, looks great after your sanding session.

Chris

Very neat and skilled work as always.

Jeff

Excellent work, having looked at this build I feel like throwing mine in the bin. But I will persevere can't see it looking anything like this though, cant wait for further updates

BRILLIANT JOB

Regards

Terry

Thanks Terry for the compliments, I'm just making this up as I go. There's a strong possibility this may end up looking more like a '69 Camaro before I'm done..

Hello again I'm gonna just get some pictures up and edit in some comments so a bit or work in progress.

Building some support to keep everything together for sanding, painting and what not.





In my previous life I think I built train trestles and bridges.

So onto the planking.



Like I've said the whole reason for making the front section modular was to be able to do all of this off the ship and on the bench.















That's right, I have also laid the first row of hull planking



I have finished up the construction work on the front piece, now I can put finish paint down on it.





This is kinda what the layout will look like.



That's all for this time, stay tuned

Great update, very tidy work.

Mark

Hello again,

So I was working on the foredeck...



Shaped a bit of balsa to match the curve and clamped a bit of the supplied decking as inside planking. Hey, I've got a lot of the decking to spare



Then I remembered I need to use wax paper to prevent things gluing to things I don't want to glue to. Fortunately the first plank was glued to the bulkhead better than the balsa







And I also finish shape sanded the foredeck to the front bulkhead. No, that blue you've been wondering about is not a primer.



It's going to be glorious

Ok from here I've been working on hull planking. Since day one I've had this kooky idea on how I'd do the gun ports. It's really quite simple really. Plank the top and bottoms of the ports with ship length runs and then just fill in the holes in between. I already have the sides framed in between the decks. So, after laying the first run even with the 2'nd deck, the upper ports start 5mm above that. I wanted a square edge facing the inside of the ports but the bamboo is rounded on the edges. I sorted thru the bamboo and found enough strips that were 5.5mm thick, enough to remove the roundness and finish at 5mm.




I lay the bottom run and then using 12mm spacers at each port I make the upper run the length of the ship.





And after that it's just filling in the blanks The ports are 12mm tall so I had to cut down the filler strips to 4mm but I was figuring things wouldn't work out mathematically perfect.





Speaking of not working out mathematically, the lower ports start at 6mm below the top of the first row. The decking I haven't been using is .5 or .6 thick x 5mm wide, I figure I can cut some of these in half (2.5 wide) and glue the 2 together to get an approx. 1mm thick spacer material.



Again, just fill in the gaps.






The nose is always fun. I discovered a neat trick, when I wanted to actually nail all the way down and pin the plank down to the rib, I would use a scrap of plank to help me pull out the nail after. Before, I was just grinding off the heads with a Dremel.



Sanding. OK, the starboard side was first and it was a bit rough. I couldn't wait throwing filler over it just to ease the ugliness.







But I learned a lot. I keep forgetting I've never done this before. On the port side I used the plank bender ALOT more, not just on the nose and got a more consistent surface. My goal for this side was to get what I would call a "paintable surface" from the wood, no filler.












I shot a thin coat of primer and then sanded the high spots down just enough to cleanup 99%











So I guess that's where I'm at. Next level up I'm not sure how that's gonna work but I'll think of something.....