I also made a jig to cut out my deck planks. I'm however not happy with it at all. I've decided that today i will be building a micro table saw using what else my dremel tool. I will be posting as through out the build.

Nice work Ruffnite

Any chance you can reduce your signature down a little bit, its taking up a lot of space

Yes of course I can shorten up my signature. I'm just at work right this moment I'll get it knocked down by tomorrow. Sorry about that guys.

This right here is absolutely the most important tool you can own for building this ship.

http://www.harborfreight...n-belt-sander-60543.html

Just be careful with oiling the wood. It will make it a lot more difficult to get any glue or adhesives to bond parts to the deck. You might want to consider using a very thinned out stain if you wish to add color.

Keep in mind on the real decks, they were constantly holystoned .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holystone

This basically means they were sanded down on a regular basis. Probably not a bad idea if you were running around the deck with bare feet.

What I did on mine was run a single coat of clear sealer on to fill the pores of the wood to help prevent warping and shrinkage (you'll get some anyways)then sanded the deck down. Then I rubbed in some ground up pencil lead to make it look a little bit dirty and worn in the high traffic areas. Just run a pencil on a piece of paper, rub it with a rag and then rub the rag on the deck.

I pretty much have "weathered and worn" everything down so far so it looks like it's been out to sea for around 6 months. A new ship that is a bit tattered. It looks way better being a bit beaten up anyways.

As to the sander, that's basically all I used to do everything on the model. I even used that with my hand drill to Lathe" down my yards. Very effective and inexpensive. The belt sander is invaluable for tapering hull planking and basically cutting and trimming anything to shape. Every single piece of wood on the ship I rough cut or snipped and then sanded and squared to length.

Another hint: If you look at my model you will see that I used square aluminum tubing to make the Cannon port frames. Much easier than trying to build them out of wood. I rough sanded the outside edges to give them a wood grain and then once they are painted they look like wood. If you look around the net you can find the appropriate size. I just cut them to length first with a table saw and then belt sanded and jewelers filed them to shape.

Also, pick up a set of jewelers files. They will be extremely helpful for cleaning up the cast parts as they are pretty crappy straight out of the kit.

I am curious, in the audio books are Stephen's endless moralizing as annoying as in the printed versions?

Hi Ruffnite. Enjoyed your build log especially the pics. I an not very IT minded and wonder if you could help me with how to take pics of my build (do I need a special camera? Can I use my phone camera? Once I take a picyurte what then? Do I need to get it developed? Can I download it to my PC? If so how do I do it and do I need any special program or devise? Once on my PC how can I attach it to my log so others can see it. Sorry to be so lame but I am a hunt and pecker when it comes to IT and I really want to get my Surprise log up and running.
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