Dear Mr T, having completed issue 16 - at long last - I am currently painting the lower gun deck dummy gun port area, and I am wondering: should I be painting the underside of the middle gun deck as well? Will that be visible when the gunports are eventually cut?
I have two other related questions. (1) All the good early illustrations (the Boston draft of 1635, Payne 1637, the Van de Velde pen drawing &c) show a forward gunport on the lower gun deck in line with or in front of the catheads. But this doesn’t appear in the model built by G Mazzini (see publicity pics), and in fact it might clash with frame 2.
Similarly, I notice that the lower gun deck dummy area only goes up to frame 26. However the sources listed above and the Mazzini model all show an extra lower deck gun port further aft. Is this something we shall hear about later?
Sorry to bother you when you are so far ahead.
cec

Dear Mr T,
Thanks. That's much clearer. Evidently the Italian modeller opened up the final port and put in a dummy gun. But he would have had to plan this in advance because of the extra frame (49) between 27 & 27. I wondered about this when we were told to cut off the ends of the dummy gun port strips aft of frame 26. Similarly part 12 attached to the forward face of frame 2 would be a problem if one want to insert an extra port just here, though adding a lid might be easier. (Just thinking.) Thanks anyway. CEC