usedtosail

I cleaned up the hull using compressed air and mineral spirits. I ended up giving the decks another coat of oak stain and wipe on poly after I cleaned up the scratches from opening up the gun ports. I bent two pieces of 2mm square basswood for the upper rails and glued them on. The instructions say to put on two more rails like these but the AOS Beagle book shows wider and thinner wales where the third rail should go. I have bent some 1/4" x 1/32" basswood to use for these wales but before I put them on and the middle rail, I am going to mask off and paint the white strip since the middle rail and wale are the boundary between the white stripe and black upper and lower sections. I can get a much better transition line if I add the rail and wale after painting the hull and I can paint them off the model. The other change I am going to make is the cap rail between the fore and stern decks. The kit came with sculptured laser cut wood to use that is supposed to look like hammocks, with two square pieces of wood next to it on the inside and outside of the bulwark. The AOS Beagle shows a flat cap rail with hammock cranes, which is what I am going to make. I have a piece of 1/4" x 1/16" basswood to use for the cap rail but I have to make the hammock cranes. I have gone through a search on MSW and came up with a plan to make them using 0.7mm brass micro tubing and three eye bolts. Here is the prototype dry fit together. I had to order more tubing so I can make all 20 of these that I need but I am going to experiment with either soldering or gluing these pieces together while I wait for it to arrive.

I always use Pre-stain on basswood before staining. You put it on, wait 10 minutes, wipe off the excess, then apply the stain. I think the color comes out more evenly this way. I only use the pre-stain before the first coat if I apply multiple coats of stain.

I fit the stem, keel and stern post and did some more sanding of the hull to get them to fit well. I then bought some thin wood filler, which is very creamy. It goes on orange but becomes natural after drying. I coated the hull below the bulwarks on both sides. I sanded most of it off and it left a very smooth surface while still showing the individual planks. I then repeated the process on the bulwarks. At this point I think the hull is ready to move on, after I clean up all the dust.

I agree with you @brunnels. Way too easy to sand right through it. Basswood isn't the best wood to use as the top layer but the planks supplied are nice and thick but sand easily. If I was going to leave the hull with a natural finish I would have used pear or yellow cedar for the planking. I have finished planking the rest of the hull and opened up the gun ports again. I gave the whole hull another rough sanding and shaped the planks at the stem and the transom. No wood filler applied yet but there are some areas I will be adding it. I put together the supplied cradle which I will use as a working cradle. I did trace the pieces onto a sheet of mahogany, as you can see above, which I will cut out as use as the display cradle. I spent some time cleaning up the transom so that the transom piece will fit without leaving gaps around it. I have cut out the stem, keel and stern post pieces and will be dry fitting them soon.

I did some filing and sanding, and shaping of the planks at the bow and the stern. I am going to add the rest of the planks on the bulwarks and then finish the outer planks and get them ready for painting and copper plating. I am very satisfied with this one layer of planking, since it will be painted and plated. The wood supplied for the second planking is very rough and grainy so I am not going to use it. I will be adding some wood filler and more sanding to get the planks even smoother than they are now, after all the planks are on.

The last planks between the bulwarks and the keel have been installed. I am going to clean up these planks before planking the plywood bulwarks.

That's exactly what I say every time you release a new kit. Congratulations on the new machine.

My wife and I were away last week on an 8 day river cruise on the Rhine but I am now back in the shop working on the hull planking. I have 5 planks left on each side to fill in the gap between the bulwarks and the garboard strakes. As you can see, I haven't gotten the planks to fully bend without having to use clamps, but they are close. I also start at the bow and glue the planks on until the last bulkhead before the transom. I let that dry overnight then heat the aft end of the plank with a travel iron and bend it into place, glue and clamp it to dry. I have some sanding to do to get the planks flush but they are pretty thick so I should have enough wood to work with. There were a couple of spots that would be very thin after sanding, so I glued some 1/32" thick pieces in those areas to give me some more wood to work with. Here is my plank bending set up which works very well. I also have a soldering iron type plank bender that I use to curve the planks to wrap around the bow after this lateral bending. After the gaps are filled I will plank over the plywood bulwarks and cut out the gun ports.

Oh I didn't realize that's how they come out from the printing process. I thought they were painted or stained after printing. Of course that should be proprietary information.

Can you give us a few clues on how you got that color and finish on the blocks? I am intrigued.

The outer hull planking has started, working up from the keel and down from the bulwarks. The planking material is pretty thick but bends well with some water and heat. I am planking as if the first layer is the final layer and not using the instructions that show all kinds of gaps filled with pointy planks. Since the upper part of the hull will be painted and I am going to cover the lower part with copper. I may stop with one planking layer, depending on how it turns out. I also received blocks from Syren that I am going to use to replace the kit supplied blocks. They are much nicer.

I completed planking the inner bulwarks and gave the planks a coat of oak stain and wipe on poly, like the decks. I can now start fairing the hull to get it ready for outer planking.

Sorry I forgot to post the picture of the completed bulwarks on the hull. Since then I have been adding the inner planks to the bulwarks, using the same wood strips that were used for the deck planking. I started with a full length plank, then used individual strips between the gun ports. I then used more full length strips to the tops of the bulwarks. The top strip is about half a plank width, but I glued on a full width strip then trimmed it down with an X-Acto knife and sanded it flush with the bulwark. I am in the process of opening up the gun ports and sanding the inner planks for finishing. I will use the same stain and poly treatment I did for the decks.

I painted hinges and knobs onto the doors. While that was drying I glued the upper decks in place, not thinking that this would make adding the doors more difficult. I found that I could use a small loop of masking tape as a handle to glue the doors in place, so it wasn't too difficult. I then bent the bulwarks to their shape. First I fit each side, adjusting the slots so they both fit nicely. I then soaked one side and clamped it to the frames to dry. The next day I did same for the other side. They held their shape nicely. I did manage to break the small bow section off the port side piece but I was still able to bend it to shape separately. When these pieces were well dried I trimmed the bow sections so they met well at the stem. I glued them on one at a time again starting with the port side. I started gluing from the aft and glued just about a third on each day. I just finished glueing the bow section on the starboard side, so I will take some pictures tomorrow of the bulwarks attached to the hull.

David you are doing such a great job on this build. This is very true. If you go by the rigging plans there are over 30 lines that attach to the bitts, which is what I did. I then in a separate thread asked how to show the tails for all these lines, and was basically told that no lines would be tied to bitts in the first place and I should have added more belaying pins somehow... So I think you are right about thinking of tying them off at the rail somehow.