Good find with the balsa, Gibbo. Did the beer come with it
You really will have your hands full with this one, but off to a good start

Actually Chris he made the patterns and sent me his originals .

Thank you very much for all the great comments it's much appreciated, thought i'd come away from the teeny tiny Victory for a bit and deal with some big stuff, i started out by marking the outside of the ribs with a big black sharpie so that when i come to fairing it should make it a bit easier, then the deck was dry fitted and i found the i had to take off a couple of mm here and there so that it wasn't force fitted, the ribs i know are square to the keel so i didn't want to push any of them out of line, the deck was then marked out along each rib and pilot holes drilled for planking pins, it was then glued and secured with pins from bow to stern and left to cure overnight.

Ooh, i forgot to mention i cut the balsa so the grain was running fore and aft so it will be easier to plane and sand down to the final finish.

Yes Trev indeed i am, that's where all the off cuts are going, just put in the big blocks so far, i want it as smooth as a babies bum before i start planking.

You work is immaculate and the build is coming along very nicely. Really enjoying following your progress.

The first stage of shaping the hull has been done with a handheld multi tool, this took around 40-45 minutes so was quite quick to do, the challenges with doing it this way is around the bow and at the stern, with the bow there is a danger of just flattening it off between the ribs so it's bit by bit and leave everything slightly proud, with the stern it is concave so is difficult to get in there with this type saw and you can't really shape it with this, i took off as much as i'd dared and the rest of the stern will be done with a large half round file, a word of advice, if you're not comfortable with large power tools then do it a different way, large power tools and small ships don't generally go hand in hand and can all go horribly wrong within the blink of an eye.

Thank you Troy, don't want to scare you too much mate but i started shaping the hull with a massive orbital sander to bring it down a bit but a little bit of that later, for the last three weeks i've had the mother of of all colds and it just totally floored me, over the last 60 years i've had a few sniffles here and there but it's never stopped me doing stuff but "wow" this was another level, anyhow, in the last few days i've been able to work on the ship so i could sit it on the keel with just a couple of brackets, or turn it upside down as when i needed to too make life easier, this was done by where i put the spacers where the nuts are in the hull to eventually display the ship, and butted the balsa up to them, this created a gap in between the keel and the balsa to slide in the supports, i'd like to say planned it this way but no, i just got lucky, so i got rid of a couple of brackets and had to move couple, i put together the stern assembly as per the magazine-ish, there was a lot of of filing and fitting and shaping because i wanted to create a chemical bond rather than a mechanical bond with the Aliphatic Resin, so could put it together in one go to make it stronger and level, my plan is to complete the balsa and start working on the planking above the first deck to give the ribs extra strength before turning it over and start working on the planking below the waterline.

Continuing with the hull the second bit of hull shaping was done with the big sander ( try not to quake too much Troy ) and a round rasp file for the stern, the third bit was done with a bow sander that i made from one of the magazines but i found this left indents in between the ribs so i ditched that and just carried on by hand, it was then filled with wood filler and final sanded, well i say final, those indents although small and unimportant are still in my eyeline so i might go back to them, next up was fitting the two lower decks as per instructions with a little of making a few of the slots a little wider, the only extras were reinforcing the deck braces along the centre line, then it was glueing and weighing it down to turn it into into the supply ship HMS Heinz.

Hi,

That`s all looking very good, WTG.

Should you have any issues with the ribs above deck level (like I did) then to avoid undoing what`s been done the link below may help. It works on misaligned ribs and can also be used for broken ribs to strengthen repairs.

https://forum.deagostini....1649234303.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)&__utmv=-&__utmk=83542229


Regards
delboy271155
(Derek)