Rudolf

To get each stanchion the correct height, the best way is to mark it in place. I use the Xacto blade to make a cut in the edge. Sometimes it needs a touch of sandpaper to fit, but mostly it goes right in. Then hold it with tweezers while you apply a drop of thin CA glue.

 

And now the port side is done. Next up is the pinrails.

Pinrails - as promised. Now it occurs to me that I didn't have to be so precise about fitting the stanchions - the tops can't be seen!
 

Over the w/e I started the poop deck railings. The kit provides several lengths of cast stanchions/railings. These have to be bent to fit the curvature of the stern I decided to bend them upside down, to get a more accurate curve. Then they will get painted and installed.

And here's two of the 3 pieces glued down into their many little holes. There will be puttying to do to get a smooth railing at the transition point.

Meanwhile, back at the pointy end...............

 
We have installed the knightheads, catheads, hawse lips, spray rail, and some eyebolts.

Continuing the build, with the planking complete, next came the beak head. I made the cheek knees in two pieces. I traced the profile from Sheet 1 onto  wax paper and transferred the image to a piece of stock by using a pointer to mark the outline in the wood. I marked the outline with a pencil and then cut the shape with a coping saw – this worked out well. For me, the head rail knees were the most difficult part. I decided to partially paint the wales, black strake, and outboard bulwark plank at the bow before placing the cheek knees. I made the fore tack boomkins, timber heads, and knight heads. The timber heads, and knight heads are intricate. The cat heads were from laser cut stock. I was experimenting with gold gilt and decided to try it on the beak head - looks good so far.


The fashion piece at the transom was a bit of a challenge because of the angles but, once I figured it out, with some filing and shaping it looks natural.

Next up, the quarter deck fancy rail, stanchions and cap. The stanchions are intricate. I didn't dowel them. I carved the hance from stock. So that I wouldn't have to carve two, I carved one block to shape and cut it in half to make the two hances.  This worked out well and saved some time.

Good Afternoon to you all
I'm still working on the Deck rigging, here is a piece i built this weekend.
Thank you 

Hello:
A small step. I have cut the keel, the stern, the rudder and the stem.
a greeting
(Hola:
Un pequeño paso. He cortado la quilla, el codaste, el timon y la roda.
Un saludo)

Hello, continue, slowly, with the deck. A greeting

Well, I've finished with the deck of the deck, I had to rebuild part of the gunwales by a small accident to scrape the deck, but the truth is that you do not notice the arrangement.
A greeting
 
(Bueno, ya he terminado con la tablazón de la cubierta, he tenido que reconstruir parte del trancanil por un pequeño accidente al raspar la cubierta, pero la verdad es que no se nota el arreglo. 
Un saludo)

Thanks, Johann
 
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And a little speed update: the hawse pipes were made from some 2 mm x 0.5 mm brass tube. First the angle with the hull was cut and then an oval ring from 0.4 mm copper wire was soldered onto this surface. The part was then taken into a collet on the watchmakers lathe and drilled out to 1.7 mm ID. Finally, the funnel shape was formed with diamond burrs and polished with silicone burrs. The hawse-pioe then was cemented in place and the end above the deck ground down in situ flush with the deck. The cover on deck is an etched part I made already several years ago. It was cemented on using CA and then another funnel was shaped with diamond and silicone burrs.
 

Hawse pipes ready to go on board
 

Hawse pipes installed, but still some cleaning up needed

Now that the ramp assembly was dried, I tuned it upside down and trimmed all of the excess projections off with a plane and sandpaper.  On the top of the ramp I took a No. 2 pencil and ran it along the scribed lines on the top planking to make them stand out better.  I did the same to the joint between the planks and the retaining walls.  This is the result here.

    The sides of the retaining wall also needed some indication of individual timbers, so using a long metal straight edge three joints were drawn parallel to the top of the ramp on both sides.

    That same long metal straight edge was now aligned with the marked line and clamped to the sides.  To ensure that the resulting scribed lines were very pronounced and straight, my small back saw was slid back and forth with a light amount of pressure along the edge for about a dozen strokes. 

     Making sure that the timbers appeared to be individual lengths, I made some tic marks on the individual timbers at a maximum scale length of 24 feet with joints offset by 4-6 feet from layer to layer.  Going back to my scrap pile, I made a small wooden square as shown below.  The square was set perpendicular to the top edge of the ramp and using a No. 2 blade those joints were scribed in.

    Setting the ramp on the building board and placing the ship where it would be sitting on it, I located the position of the two hull braces.  I marked the two notches for those 3/8” x 3/8” grade level long cross timbers on one side.  The ramp was placed upside down in my carpenters vice and using my back saw the saw kerfs of the notches were cut down to the top edge of the marks.
    Using my wood square, those kerf lines were extended over to the opposite side of the ramp.  Setting my back saw blade into the kerf on the near side and lining it up with the new marks on the opposite side, I had somewhat of a miter saw setup that ensured the kerfs would line up across from each other.  A chisel and scalpel were now used to clean out the waste from all of the notches. 
    The entire ramp was given two heavy coats of Minwax light oak to give it the appearance of weathered oak timber construction and set aside to dry overnight with it as it stands now below.

 

This log entry will catch me up with the actual construction before I get back to it tomorrow.  Sometimes a medical timeout can work to your advantage.  Since I was unable to actually work on the ship for a while, I could still use the computer to do the log.  (No strain, no pain.)
    The cut components for the ramp had been stained and dried so all of the keel block support beams were glued down with wood glue and the current status of the ramp is as shown below.

    Rather than glue them down and waste time waiting for the glue to grab each beam, I made up this spacing tool to speed things up a bit.  As you can see it’s just one short piece glued to a longer one that has a total width of four feet to scale.

    Here is a short review of the process.  Holding down the beam just glued down with my thumb and three fingers of my right hand, one other finger was used to hold the spacer in place.   The next beam in line had glue applied and was held in place with my left hand as shown.

    Now with my right thumb, I slide the spacer forward until it releases.  All the time through this procedure, pressure needs to be carefully maintained on the beams to keep them from shifting out of position until the spacer is released. 


    Then it’s on to the following beam.  I placed all 26 of the beams in about 30 minutes, so my system worked just as planned. (Imagine that!)
 

Just before my little internal misfortune, I had decided to do a few things before continuing to work on the pintles and gudgeons.  Since the hull coppering needs to be painted before installing the rudder fittings, I would be doing that, but I also needed to construct the model stand to keep from damaging the paint job once that is done.
    I have decided to support the ship on launching ways, so I did a lot of searching for ideas on that.  Having finally come up with a combination of various systems that I came across to accent the model display, I started construction with my excess stock of basswood.
    A long tapered ramp was the first phase to work on.  The design used was a pair of timber retaining walls filled with earth or gravel fill capped with timber planks and heavily braced. (Of course my ramp would not be filled, but rather hollowed out for installing the light switch and battery.)  Keel blocks were set on timber beams spanning the timber planks.  Two long cross timbers were run on grade through the lowest retaining wall timbers and projected well beyond the faces of the wall.   A pair of heavy diagonal braces was anchored on top of it to brace the hull of the ship.
    The first step was to make the side retaining walls by taking two 24” lengths of ¼” x 1” basswood and marking the taper from ½” at the lower end to 1” at the upper. The taper was then cut just short of the drawn line with my band saw and then trimmed to the line with a small block plane.
    Now taking a 24” long sheet of 1/16” x 3” basswood that was prescribed with ¼” wide planks, I ripped it down to 1 3/4” for the timber planking on the top of the ramp.  A homemade sliding cutoff table was put on my Micro Mark table saw with a stop clamped to it for cutting 3/8” x 3/8” basswood strips into 26-1 ¾” lengths for the timber beams that would span the timber planks on the top of the ramp and provide support for the keel blocks.  This photo below shows the setup for cutting all of the various timbers to length, with the stop clamped to the fence.  


      My SOP for short cutoffs is shown with my right hand holding a block to hold down the cut off end (to spare the fingers) and the left hand (well away from the blade) is shown holding the other end of the timber to be cut.  The table is pushed well beyond the blade before the saw is turned off and the two pieces are removed.  Pulling the table back, the timber is advanced to the stop to repeat the process.
    Once those beams were cut, they went over to my small belt sander to round off the tops of their ends.  Looks like I need to adjust my dust pick up fitting, as even with my dust mask on and the room fan running, there was quite a bit of dust on the loose during this operation. Even though the ends were now rounded over, some hand sanding was still required to ease the corners and sand the surfaces.
    Now the cutoff table was employed once again to cut 26- 1” long pieces of 3/16” x 3/8” basswood for the keel blocks, which of course also needed some finish hand sanding.  While the cutoff table was still in place I cut some scrap basswood into several 1 3/4” long pieces for blocking for the interior of the ramp.
    With the majority of the parts cut, I moved onto the actual construction of the ramp.  The 1/16” basswood sheet was placed with the scribed side face down on the building board.  The two tapered retaining wall sides were butted up to both edges of the sheet and several of the pieces of blocking were set onto the backside of the sheet.  Two small bar clamps were put into place to hold the assembly in position for alignment.  Once satisfied, I tightened the clamps and placed the remaining blocking in place.  Three more clamps were placed and the ends were filled with some 1/16” planking sheets.  Once more, the alignment was checked and adjusted.  The assembly now appeared as shown below.

    Wood glue was spread along all inside edges and the assembly was set aside to dry overnight.

                                                      

Still not sure about the knees, but on to something else for now.
    One reason that I decided to make a grating for the lower hatch was that my kit for the MS Phantom had precut grating strips that, @ 1:96 scale, were overlarge for that kit.  Since I was working now @ 1:87 scale, I thought they would be a little closer to scale size for this ship. (Maybe?  Maybe not?)

    At any rate, I wanted to try making some grating anyway.  These were intended to be assembled by overlapping, but I thought that the thickness would still look too much out of scale.   Cutting off some lengths close to the required finished size, I took them once again to my square sanding jig and sanded one end square. As the nubs were very fragile, I was careful to only sand toward the guide or risk snapping them off!


    Needing a surface that was both flat and that my carpenters glue would not adhere to, I found a framed picture with glass of our favorite neighborhood dog Chester. (He passed several years ago, but I didn’t think that he would object to helping me out.)  Anyway, the frame corner was square so it would also serve as an assembly jig.

    I took one strip at a time, and with a tooth pick applied just a small dab of the glue to each of the nubs. Then they were butted into the corner and against each other briefly to let the glue grab hold.

     This was repeated for each piece until the assembly was wide enough for the size of my grating.   I took a scrap of basswood with wax paper on the bottom, laid it on top of the grating blank with a size D battery on top to make sure it remained flat, and let it dry overnight.

    While this method allowed me to have enough material to make the grating and make the thickness more to scale, I was thinking that those minuscule dabs of glue wouldn’t be sufficient to hold it together.  As it turned out, I was right, the assembly was very weak and kept separating when sanded.  I applied some medium CA to the backside of the joints which helped some, but I decided to add a frame around the grating to add some more strength to it.  I ripped down some 1/32” strips of 1/32" maple for this frame.  The grating still needed some downsizing on the long dimension, so I cut the frame pieces so the ends would overlap and glued two pieces to one corner with more CA and put aside to set overnight.

             
    Next, I took the assembly to my disc sander and very carefully trimmed the long end of the grating down to match the length of the long frame piece.
                                                                                                     
    Here, the remaining frame pieces were glued on with AC and left to set.

                                                                         
    Once it was dry, I sanded the faces of the completed grating flat by hand, as I still had my doubts about its strength.

 
   I decided not to stain the grating frame, so just two coats of poly were applied for my finish to leave a little contrast between the grating and the frame.

 
    I plan to leave the grating off to the side of the hatch as the ship will be displayed in the act of loading a cask of oil down into the hold.  So, now to figure out what comes up next.

I decided to install two orange flickering LEDs in the lower deck.  One to be placed one frame from the hatch toward the bow and the other one frame from the hatch toward the stern.  Here you can see that the beams at the hatch have been reduced in depth closer to scale.


     For the one at the bow frame, the wires had to be run between the inner and outer hull sides as shown here.

    The one toward the stern was offset slightly to avoid the main mast.  The LEDs were glued in place with some medium CA.

    I drilled a 3/32” hole (large enough to pass the four wires with the shrink wrap) in the bottom of the hull on the port side which will be the side of the ship against the wall when displayed and thus less visible. The excess wire was coiled and taped to the hull for now.


                                             

I set up this drilling jig with rubber cemented scraps and mounted it on my Proxxon X-Y table as shown.

    The knees were all placed in the jig as shown to place the bolts consistently.  I drilled the holes clean through for a .023” x 1/4” steel brad in each leg.
  
    I soaked the brads briefly in a full strength solution of Brass Black and let dry.  The brads were then pressed through the legs of the knees.

    The brads were slightly too long, but rather than trying to cut them shorter and risk having them disappear, I just put them in my vise to file off the excess.

 
    The knees were then glued in place with some medium CA.

    Now I came to realize that the beams had not been sized to scale, as they were originally not going to be visible, but now that this had changed, I thought they needed to be reduced in depth.  You will notice that a line was now drawn on the face of the beams here.

    With a good deal of trouble they were reduced in place with scalpels and chisels.  This also would allow a little more to be visible inside the hull, so I thought overall it was a good thing.  Also, in this view from above, you can see that the bottom of the hull would be visible.

    Taking another section of the pre-made decking, I marked the treenails and plank ends on this sheet.  This was finished the same as done previously.  To make this sheet of planking conform to the bottom of the hull, I made numerous shallow cuts in the backside of the sheet parallel to the deck boards.  This allowed the sheet to flex enough to match the curve of the hull bottom.  The sheet was slid in from the stern, and held in place by using a pencil eraser down through the hatch.  I then dribbled some thin CA down alongside the gap in the hull walls that secured it in place.

 
    The next thing to do now is to set up for the LED lighting.

Now here is my knee production method.  First off, I took a billet of basswood of the desired thickness and cut triangular pieces with the grain running parallel to the long edge.  The remaining edges of these pieces were squared up with my sanding fixture as shown here.

    Then I drew a rough outline of the shape of the knee on all eight triangles to help keep track of their orientation, as one leg was longer than the other. 

    These were grouped in sets of four that were glued up with a thin coating of rubber cement on all the facing surfaces and clamped in place overnight to dry.  The next day I drew the pattern on a stiff piece of manila folder and cut it to shape.  Holding the pattern in place on the face of the glued up blocks, the pattern was traced onto the top blocks.

    I clamped the blocks in my vise and using a small back saw trimmed off the majority of the waste.


    The blocks were then sanded close to the outline of the knees on my 2” belt sander being careful keep the block flat on the table.

    Now, using several grades of sand paper on sanding sticks the blocks were sanded to their final shape.


    Now the blocks were separated from each other with a chisel driven into the glue joint.  Even though I only used rubber cement to join them together, they were still held together surprisingly well.

 
    Now I had the eight knees duplicated to the same shape.

    Using a fine sanding stick, I eased the exposed edges of all the individual knees.


   Here are all the knees cut to final shape and given a coat of stain and two coats of polyurethane.  I still need to add two bolts to each knee, which will be included in my next posting.

Today I cut some white adhesive foil strips on my rotary cutter to give me three rows of planks to fill in the inside face of the stern bulwarks.  Once they were applied I cut out a space for the center stanchion as shown.

    Using thick CA, I attached the center one, clamped it temporarily, and repeated the above steps for the other two.

    The two in the corners were a bit trickier as they had to follow the slope of the sides, but eventually they were similarly applied.  Some watered down white paint was then applied to both the planks and the stanchions and set aside to dry.

    The next deck beam (12) was trimmed down equally from both ends, tack glued with thick CA, clamped in place and given fillets of carpenters glue to solidify the installation. This was repeated for the following beam. (13)

    The next two beams (14 & 15) that were previously ganged together with blocking for the mizzen mast were also similarly installed, although trimming four ends at one time was a lot more difficult to handle.

    When I get back to working on it (hopefully tomorrow), I will continue to trim and reapply the remaining deck beams

After pondering how to fix the misaligned transom for a while, I tried out a few different ideas.  The one that I have settled on is to cover, not only the transom, but the entire wooden portion of the outer hull with the adhesive foil technique that Doris employs.
    The first step was to fit the transom the best I could with some filing to get a better fit.  Once satisfied with that, I clamped it together as shown below.

   I then put a heavy coat of plastic cement on the inside of the stern of the ship as shown here.

    I let this sit overnight before continuing, to make sure nothing would shift on me.  Taking my black roll of adhesive foil to my rotary cutter, I cut a few pieces to match the width of the transom planks.  I applied a few of these strips to the transom as shown here.


    As you can see, the seam was still quite visible and needed some more work yet.  I applied some filler and tried sanding down the seam to allow the foil to disguise it.
 

    I tried applying a strip of foil on the curved portion of the bulwark to see how well I could match the curve.  With a bit of heat applied to the foil, I could see that it might not be as difficult as I first thought.

    Tomorrow I will try finishing the inside of the transom bulwark.

Here and there, I have been able to gain access to my basement model shop for a little work on my Wanderer.  When I left off before, I had just removed all of the deck beams to correct errors in their lengths.  Six of the frames shown in photo below were trimmed to the correct lengths and glued back in place with carpenters glue and put aside overnight to set.

    These six were done first so that I would have easier access to suspend a partial lower deck visible through the open upper hatch.  I sized the lower deck length to equal the distance from one beam beyond the hatch frame to the stern and one beam to the bow.  The width was sized to span across the inside of the hull at approximately a scaled 6’ below the upper deck and still allow some clearance for the lower deck framing. 
    To make the inner deck, I trimmed three left over scraps of pre-made 1/32” thick decking to be applied to a sub-deck of 1/16” thick piece of sheet basswood.  I repeated my earlier method of marking the deck plank ends and treenail impressions.  I stained and sealed them to match.  Once dried, they were glued with carpenters’ wood glue and clamped to the sub-deck.  I first used a vice for the center portion and then heavy weights for the outer portions to ensure a flat deck.



    Looking through my copy of Whale Ships and Whaling by Albert Church, I found an ink sketch of the wooden cooling tank between decks of the bark Commodore Morris that also showed an inner hatch with a coaming.  While not the Wanderer, I assumed that it was probably similar.  So I decided to trim the opening with a coaming similar to the upper hatch for it.  I marked the location and size of the hatch to align with the upper hatch and bored holes in the four corners, and used a fine coping saw to cut the opening.

 
    Once it was rough cut, I took a sanding stick to trim it down to the final size.

                                                                (Opps, looks like the camera focused on the wrong subject!)  
    To suspend the lower deck from the upper deck I took some 3/32” x 5/32” basswood to make a pair of U shaped frames for suspending the front and rear edge of the lower deck.   I cut one piece the length of the deck width for a horizontal beam and glued a pair of 1” long posts vertically at each end of the beam.  These U-frames were set aside to dry.  Once they were set, I sanded the bottoms of the U-frames to allow more clearance in the hull.   
     I cut four spacers to give me a scaled 6’ ceiling space between decks.  The U-frames were glued to the front and rear of the inner deck and the spacers were glued to the 1” vertical posts leaving an open notch for the lower deck and an overlap at the top to be attached to the deck beams above.
    For the coaming itself, I cut some more 3/32” x 5/32” basswood to length for the outer trim and some 1/32” square basswood for the inside ledgers and glued them all in place with CA.


    The assembly was slid in from the stern and past the front deck beam to test the fit and propped in place with a sanding stick.

    At this point it looks good enough to me.

     I masked off the lower deck and gave the coaming two coats of paint and light sanding between.  I took a couple narrow pieces of decking to serve for the interior hull sides and finished them to match the deck.

    The masking was removed and it was ready to install.

    The assembly was slid back in with the side pieces unattached, glued and clamped in place. (I tried with them attached before installation but didn’t have enough clearance to slide the whole assembly in place.)   So, now with a lot of fiddling and cussing, the side pieces were glued into place.

    I measured the hatch opening before installation, as I was not sure if the hatch would be solid or a grating, so I just left it open for now.  As you can see here, the sidewalls were maybe a bit much, as they are not easily seen, but maybe a couple of subdued LED lights would help.

    I’ll give it some thought, as I was impressed with the way Doris did it in her ships.  I plan on installing a few knees that would also be partially visible and maybe an oil cask or two.  So, now that the lower deck is in place it's time to decide what to do with the transom problem.  I will experiment with a couple of solutions and get to it!

I scraped down the decks, put a light coat of Minwax light oak finish on it, let it dry briefly, and ran a rag over to remove the excess stain.  After letting it dry, I put 2 coats of polyurethane over it while lightly sanding between coats with 400 wet/dry sandpaper.  As you can see, the treenail and caulk impressions left showing provided a nice bit of detail even though it’s probably a bit over scale.  Here is a photo of the deck with its finish applied.

                                                 
    Almost forgot to duplicate the fore deck.  Using rubber cement, the plastic deck was glued down to a section of wood decking, carefully lining up the deck seams with the plastic pattern.  I shaped the deck section with my belt sander using the same method that I used to make the main deck.  The center notch for the bowsprit was carefully cut out by hand with a thin fine toothed backsaw and finished off with a fine file and sandpaper while still glued to the plastic pattern.  Very carefully, the pattern was peeled away (at this point it was very fragile) and the bottom side of the decks surface was filed to match the bevel of the bowsprit. 

                                                            
    Treenail impressions were made and the deck was finished as shown here to match the main deck.

                                                           
    Now that the hatch and mast partner beams were done and clamped in place, I used plastic cement straight out of the tube, applied it to the keel seem, and set it aside to dry overnight.  Taking the deck pattern in hand, the remaining beams were located, numbered and drawn in place perpendicular to the center line.  Using my rubber cement again, the remaining beam blanks were glued in place on the deck pattern, numbered and set aside to dry.

                                                         
    Once dry, the pattern was flipped over.

                                                         
  Now the projections were marked on the beams which gave me the proper curve going into the hull sides.

                                                       
  By drawing a line inside and parallel to this marked line (to allow for the ledger thickness), the length of the beams at the top edge of the ledger could be followed.  However, with the varying slope of the deck sides to be accounted for, both ends of each beam had to be filed to match. (The cuts were basically a curved compound angle.)  A very tedious business this!  (This was especially true at the three beams at the bow.) Every beam was different and you had to go at it carefully or you could take off too much. 
    After a lot of time trimming to fit, the beam ends were then located with the dividers and marked on the ledgers.  Now some real fun began.  As clamping the beams in place was not feasible, each beam had to be held in place with a locking tweezers while applying some thin CA.  (At times I thought that I could really have used another pair of hands!) While waiting for the glue to take hold was in reality just a few seconds, it seemed to take forever trying to hold the beam steady.
    Most of the ships main deck frames have now been installed, but I am unsure at this point about having the main hatch left open or not.  I am also unsure about leaving the transom as is or removing it and replacing it with wood as you can see here that the plastic seam is a poorly matched fit.

                                                         
   That is why the final three deck beams haven't been installed yet, as I need to leave a little access space to get the lower deck slipped into place and replacing the transom.


 
 
 
 
 

Thanks for your kind comments !
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After weeks and months of drawing parts to be etched, I felt the need to apply my hands to something else then the keyboard. Also, I accumulated lots of little parts that at some stage need to go together. A step that I have been procrastinating, thinking that certain manipulations are easier to do, when everything is in pieces. When building a ship from scratch, deciding on the sequence of assembly can be crucial.
So, the first step was to glue on the main deck, which had already been prepared a long time ago from a piece of bakelite. The holes for the various fittings where marked out over a drawing and then drilled. The translucent property of the bakelite is very helpful for marking out. Once glued on, the deck was carefully sanded to the contour of the hull.
I spent a lot of time deliberating the best way to make the plating of the hull and the bulwark. The shape is quite simple, as the sides are vertical from just below the waterline (probably to facilitate the production of the armour plating that needed to be curved in only one direction). The original idea was to cut the plating in one piece from brass shim stock. This would have resulted in near scale thickness of the bulwark plating. I considered this too flimsy, even if the handrail was soldered on. Another option would have been to use 0.13 mm styrene sheet. Again I considered it too soft. Bakelite sheet of 0.1 mm thickness would have been closer to scale, but rather brittle. For practical reasons I decided to use 0.2 mm bakelite sheet.
The layout of the freeing ports, the location of stanchions, the ash chutes, toilet drain pipes, and port-holes were drawn onto an expansion of the bulwark that was developed from the original drawings. The drawing then was laser-printed onto an overhead projection foil (remeber these ?). This foil was taped to a piece of bakelite sheet and the drawing ironed onto it, using what is called the toner-transfer methodBakelite sheet for the hull plating with layout by the toner-transfer method
 
The plating was cemented to the MDF hull using cyanoacrylate glue (CA). I am not very fond of CA glue, but it forms secure bonds with bakelite.
Hull plating attached
On the prototype, the bulwark plating was attached to the hull by an angle iron (8 cm x 8 cm) running along the top of the hull. I simulated the vertical part with a 0.5 mm wide strip of self-adhesive aluminium sheet into which a row of rivets had been embossed. The horizontal part would disappear under a thick layer of tar-based paint that was mixed with sand and onto which sand was dusted to provide a non-slip deck.
 
To be continued soon ...
 

Have made the blocks . I still have to cover the riggings and finishing setting the ropes .