Landlubber Mike

You must not be married? My wife would kill me if she saw me working on a project like this. All kidding aside, this looks like a really epic project. Looking forward to following along (and living vicariously through you)!

Just caught up with your log David. Looks like a fun kit! Nice start!

Looking forward to following this one. I didn't realize Flyhawk did vehicles either.

Very cool subject! Nice start!

Wow Andy, that came out really nicely! Love the color - painting yellow is not easy and you did a fantastic job!

Great update Dan - I'll echo that the landing gear came out fantastic!

That came out really great Andrew! Colors came out really nice and complementary on this one!

Beautiful model Paul!!

Wow, really nicely done!!

Really nice job Joelle! Those 12 pounders look fantastic! I like your use of the figures. I've bought figures from a few different suppliers, and I really like the ones from Ion as well. I haven't used the 1/200 scales ones, but the ones in 1/350 and 1/700 are very nice.

Beautiful work Chris! I've probably said it a dozen times before on your logs, but it's impressive how you can manage the complicated compound curves. This is looking really great! The aftermarket will really kick it up a notch! It's nice that the AM is from 3D printing, as resin parts can add considerable weight. I'm realizing that the nice thing about these card kits is that you can horde them and have a stash 5% of the size of a similarly numbered plastic/resin/ printed kits. On top of that, you don't necessarily need to outfit yourself with an airbrush, compressor, spray booth, etc. - things that take up a lot of space.

Thanks guys! It's been an interesting project, especially with the copper wire tie construction method. Learned something new on this one.

That sliding rowing seat contraption looks pretty cool - he's moving across the water fairly quickly!

I had some time this weekend for a change, and managed to get some good progress in on the wherry: glued the stem and transom in, installed the breasthook and quarter knees, and glued all the strakes together and removed the brass staples The stem and transom were fairly tricky to glue, as the staples didn't necessarily orient the strakes in the right position. For the stem, I found I had to glue them in pairs starting from the keel up to get the stem lined up correctly. Thankfully there seems to be enough material on either side to sand back to get a straight stem. The transom on the other hand gave me fits, as I couldn't seem to get it to sit square with the center line. I found I had to loosen the staples on one side, and hold the transom in position and glue the other side in, then slowly glue each plank on the loosened side in place. I even had to pop the top strake off third bulkhead to make the strake sit better along the hull. Eventually things fell in line, and I was able to proceed with the third step and run a thin bead of CA along the planks from the exterior to lock everything in place. At this point, there's not much more to add to the wherry besides the skeg, seats, and outwales, followed by the sliding seat assembly and the oars. I think I might do a few things out of order from the instruction manual - namely, fill the holes, sand down the exterior and interior of the hull to remove extra CA and have a nice smooth surface for eventually painting (outside) and staining (inside), and then attach those other items. I've tried to be fairly careful with the CA, especially on the visible interior areas, but i'm not exactly looking forward to all that sanding work so i might as well get most of it done in one shot. On a more fun note, I ordered some spray paints for the model. The manual suggested gloss white for the exterior and a varnish on the interior, and semi-gloss black for the sliding seat. I decided to go a little differently, rather than a shiny white accented by a stark black. So, I'm going with an heirloom white (more of an off-white) for the hull, and a charcoal gray for the sliding seat. I have some stains I'll test on the interior, and then will probably go with a semi-gloss finish. Thanks for looking in!

Just caught up with your log BE, really well done as per your usual fine quality of work. Looks like a fantastic kit!