palmerit

Added ratlines to one side.

I'd go with an airbrush. You can do multiple light coats and the etching on the pear pieces really does come through. You could probably get the same result by thinning down paints and applying with a brush but I haven't tried that on a Vanguard model. I do touch ups with a brush, but I haven't painted a full Vanguard ship with brush paint. I did use brush paint on some of the Model Shipways models I built, and their paint was pretty thick, but it seems to look okay given that these were larger scale work boats. I think at a small 1:64 scale, it would be harder to not show brush lines that would be completely out of scale I think. If you already have non-airbrush paints you'll want to play around with how much to thin them to get the right consistency so that you don't clog the airbrush. I like Vallejo Air paints, which are formulated for an airbrush. I still thin them with a combination of thinner, retarder, and something else - the formula I use is on my Sherbourne log. I have an Iwata Eclipse HP-CS airbrush which is highly recommended. It's not cheap (not the most expensive, but up there). I've seen Badgers recommended that are cheaper. I would steer away from an Amazon no-name when it comes to airbrushes and get a real one from a reputable brand. Airbrushes have high engineering tolerances. You might get luck with an off-brand, you might not. There are tons of good web sites and YouTube reviews on air brushes - what to buy, how to use them, how to clean them after they clog (and they will sometimes clog). I did get a no name compressor. Literally, it's "NO-NAME Brand". https://spraygunner.com/products/cool-tooty-airbrush-compressor-with-tank-by-no-name-brand It's worked well for me. I also got a spray booth so I could spray in the house. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MGGYH2W?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2&th=1 I can't say this is the best version out there, but it works for me, and I when I bought it it had a pretty good discount price on it. I followed the prices for a while to get a deal. I don't have the exhaust vent going outside but into a large bucket with some water and detergent in it. I googled around and found that as a way to spray inside when you can't easily vent outside. I started with a "spray booth" made from a cardboard box in the cellar but then decided to move back into the house. wrt the PE parts, I'd definitely look into blackening. My first attempt I just airbrushed them and the paint peeled right off. Second attempt I used Vallejo primer and then painted and the paint peeled off again. More recent I've used Tamiya enamel thinner in a shake can (I don't want to mess with enamel in my thinner) followed by Vallejo air paints and it worked a lot better doing that with little thinning. A Fine Scale Modeler YouTube video showed different ways to airbrush PE, which is how I found the Tamiya shake can. But since you kind of need to keep the PE parts in the sprues when air brushing, you end up having to file the parts after you remove them from the sprues and then need to try to repaint them, and that's a bit of a pain. If you just take them off, file off the debris, and then blacken them, that's probably the easiest to do (and likely ends up with the best look) - I have to say I haven't tried blackening myself yet. Next model.

It’s also weird that the thwarts have a small notch on the sides but nothing goes through the notches. I’m guessing those should have a side frame going down through them?

Thoughts? Shouldn’t a boat like this have a thin “deck piece” that goes above the side frames? The model has the thin side planking and the side frames but nothing on top of the side frames. Just a thin planking and the side frames with the only decking at the front and back, not along the sides. I googled around and some versions of skiffs have thin decking around the side. I don’t know if this is modeled after a skiff with no thin side decking or if it was designed that way because this is a relatively beginner model. Thoughts?

Note that the order of instructions have you adding the thwarts (the dark wood seats) BEFORE adding the chine battens along the bottom at the sides. The illustration doesn't show the thwarts in the way. But they are. For any future builders, I recommend adding the chine battens before adding the thwarts. I tried to carefully bend the batten under and around the thwarts, but one of them cracked a bit. I don't think anyone can see if but me, but it was still frustrating. Logically, the battens should be added first.

Check out my Sherbourne first planking. It was a complete mess compared to what you did. My second planking was also terrible. Especially if the hull is being painted, it’s amazing what you can do with filler and sanding, filler and sanding. If you treat every opportunity to plank as an opportunity to just leave the planking bare, maybe with some oil or shellac, eventually you’ll develop the skill to want to leave the planking bare with just some oil or shellac.

You don’t have any clinkering - steps in planks or planks that want to pull away - which is nice. Even though you will be adding a second planking I’d probably not hammer in the nails all the way but use them to hold a plank in position then remove them. But maybe it doesn’t matter. The little I’ve watched of the Occre videos they seem to just have planks cover the hull even if it mean adding pointy planks. One potential issue is that there will be some places where a piece of planking ends between bulkheads rather than on a bulkhead. I’d say to just plug ahead to get the first planking done and then look at other resources how how to do planking the “right” way. I don’t think you need to rip out. The one planks need to be tapered, especially at the front end, which is why you ran out of room. The instructions for Vanguard models (which you can download) have some photos showing how to do this. Lots of other great resources out there showing the “right” way to plank.

Is the plan just to paint the interior a matte black so you can have an open door or hatch?

Added shrouds and deadeyes. Have one more pair to go. I know my seizings are too long. I was trying a new approach and once I had the first pair and realized, I didn’t really want to take them out and start over.

More progress on the skiff. Added the deck pieces, interior side frames, and false stem and false sternpost. Lots of sanding.

I have this in my stash too. After the Ranger I'm working on now, I'm doing the Zulu 'Lady Isabella'. Then the Erycina. I got all three of the larger Vanguard fishing vessels during an agesofsail sale last year. The first two are "Novice" boats, the Erycina is "Amateur" - maybe because the Erycina has two masts? It'll be interesting to see if there's anything else on this one that is more challenging than the others.

So I'm continuing to try to understand shellac, staining, and painting. On one of my current models (Chesapeake Bay Crabbing Skiff), I'm planning to use shellac on the interior (it has open interior), trying out a few options on scrap wood. When the interior is done should I apply (1) wipe-on-poly (WOP) or (2) airbrush on Vallejo acrylic matte varnish or (3) Neither? What are the advantages or disadvantages of each - do I need either?

Making progress on the hull.

I know this is a reissue of older Midwest Model kits. The parts are not labeled and the piece maps in the instructions do not match the sheets. There is a piece map in the very front of the instructions. Easy to miss - as I did with a previous Midwest model.

Sanded down the rough edge and cut the hull from the build board.

Maybe trying a model at a relatively larger scale? Olha Batchvarov is doing a group build of the Model Shipways Gunboat Philadelphia at 1:24. It's not a lot of small fiddly pieces. No tiny thin planks. And maybe having the videos may help - not that you don't know what you're doing, but watching someone do it might help remind your hands how to do something. I'm a neuroscientist (not a physician, not a neurologist) and with brain damage from surgery or stroke from my understanding it's trying to rewire (literally) your brain. It's slower to happen as an adult, and may depend on what brain areas were removed and what areas are close by, but other brain areas can sometimes take over lost functioning to some degree, but it takes practice. If you're seeing a physical therapist, especially one focusing on fine motor skills, you might ask them about what things you might want to do to transition back into your hobby. They might even see model building as a form of PT. Lots of people don't do their PT homework - having done a little myself for a relatively minor problem I know doing my "homework" was a chore - whereas building a model is a hobby. Best of luck!

Ok, so as much as I said it was nuts to use CA, I ended up using medium gel CA to attach the plank (there’s a single plank on each side of this model) just to the middle of the base, then when it was set I used wood glue and clamps and rubber bands to attach the plank to the rest of the base and to the front and rear frames (the middle frame is removed). Need to be careful because basswood is soft and thin so easily deformed and dented.

Curtis_Wooden_Shipyard has a nice video on attaching shrouds and deadeyes.

Getting ready to add the mast, start the rigging, and add the sails.

Oddly, the sail size isn’t 1:1 with the plans. I was hoping to use it to determine where to tie on main sail rings. The boom is 1:1. I think Chris Watton said he didn’t use sails from where he got them originally. This was from agesofsail so it could have been an old model from their inventory.

Dyed the sails. Playing around I ended up using a 2:2:1 ratio of RIT Tan : Scarlet : Cocoa Brown. Started with a 1:1 of Tan : Scarlet but that seemed too red. The end result is redder than the others, but I like it, and from what I’ve seen online for ships of this sort there seems to be some variability. I’m also showing some linen fabric I dyed in the same batch. While probably closer than I had used an old t-shirt the shade is a good bit different.

Don’t have either but they seem the same size with Adder possibly having more rigging, at least because Adder has two masts each with double ratlines. Given that they’re the same price I’m guessing Alert has more of something else. On the Vanguard site you can download the instructions and compare to see which seems a better fit. I don’t remember if anyone here has done both, at least in terms of build logs I remember.

This is a relatively "beginner" model - doing it because I won it in one of Olha's raffles. But it also is an illustration of what makes wooden model ship modeling a challenge for the beginner - I guess I'd call myself a novice now. It's easy to think that since this is a "kit" all the pieces, if you follow the directions, will just go together. They often don't. It's wood and wood varies in size and can contract and expand. The quality assurance isn't always for all model kit manufacturers as good as it could be - I'm going to chalk that up to this being a niche hobby with not a ton of buyers and so not a ton of room for profit. it just means you need to think about each step of the construction as an invitation to a possible puzzle you need to solve. Once you realize that, a possible source of frustration becomes something else. In this case, I needed to make a keel batten out of strips and glue it to the base of the boat. Easy enough. Sorry, I forgot to take photos of it in my build, so I'm including the illustration in the instructions. Then later you need to turn the base over and fit the keel batten into slots in the frame so that the bottom is also then flush with the remained of the frame. Again, forgot to take photos, so I've pasted the illustration. Turns out the keel batten was slightly larger than the slots. You want it tight, but this would just not fit. So I had to take a file and little by little widen each side of the slot until the batten fit snuggly into each of the frame pieces. You need a nice solid base to attach the building board to (it's just the scrap thin basswood from where you take out the bottom of the boat, so it's not a board itself). It needs to be solid because you'll need to do a descent amount of bending of the bottom around the frames to get all the pieces glued down (you don't glue the middle frame because that's going to be removed), and you'll want to be able to use something like rubber bands that go around the boat and around the solid board. You wouldn't want to soak a thin sheet of basswood like the bottom is made out of because it would get warped. You need something like rubber bands and weights to keep things in place. And you need to make sure the frames, which were glued in square before, stay at 90 degrees. Everything is thin basswood so it all bends easily. The instructions call for using CA glue, which I think is nuts. You need to really do a lot of repositioning to get all the parts to line up right and then you need to get rubber bands and weights in place and things might get out of position and need to be repositioned again. The Midwest kits (this is my third) all seem to love using CA glue. Use wood glue except when you're adding something like metal parts. CA glue cures too quickly (even medium) when you need to do a bunch of fiddling and repositioning in my experience. Then there was the challenge that the ends of the base did not meet up to the ends of the stem and sternposts. Maybe that was because the slots to insert those in the building board (see above) did not fit. Not thinking, I made them larger in a direction that made the stem and sternposts farther apart. I probably should have instead gone in the other direction when I widened the slot. So anyone else building this: If you have the same issue with the slots of the stem and sternpost not fitting, check the length of the bottom to guide you in which direction to make the slots larger. You learn something even from a simple model. Note that the photos are from this morning after I had to reglue one end of the boat and secure it. Last night, there were rubber bands in a few other places and some weights - actually 1-2-3 blocks covered in Saran Wrap - holding everything along the full length of the boat in place. When the glue is all cured I'll have to do some shaping, filing, sanding around the stem and sternposts. The instructions call for some of that anyway. I'll just need to do more than I might have otherwise.

It's so much more helpful having as many build logs as possible. Thankfully, there are a bunch on the Sherbourne that I just completed. I learned something from all of them and I've also popped onto more current ones and occasionally answered a question or even just given a thumbs up. I've never felt like by starting a build log that I now have taken on some responsibility of being a definitive guide to the model. I'm certainly not qualified to be. I'll try to describe challenges I've had. And on some models (not Vanguard's, but others) I've struggled through mistakes in the instructions or the kit parts and I'll describe how I got around them. I've tried to give credit (and links) to places where I found how to do something (which might benefit someone down the road who is starting out and having to rediscover the wisdom on this site and elsewhere). For me, I mainly just like keeping a visual record of my own progress on a model. I do things simple. I take photos on my iPhone and then just upload directly on the iPhone and type in a short bit of text. There are times when I have more to say and I'll still upload photos from my iPhone, save the response, and then hop over to my computer since it's quicker to type from there. I'm sure for folks who take photos with a camera and need to copy from a phone or camera to a computer and then get those photos uploaded to this site that keeping up a build log might be a bit more of a chore.

I saw a YouTube by SeaWatch and the guy with the YouTube video series in Trinidad. They said the TTFM books should be out by the end of the year.