BobG

You are doing some very nice work on this wonderful sailboat. John Earl built a beautiful model of the Smuggler and you can see it on his website: http://www.modelboatyard.com/smuggler.html I remember him saying that this model was deceptively challenging for him when he built it and it took him much longer than he expected. He builds gorgeous models with meticulous detail so it's not surprising that it took him quite a while to complete it. I'm looking forward to following your progress on this build. Good luck!

I use isopropyl alcohol also for PVA glue and CA Debonder for super glue (cyanoacrylic adhesive). Give them time to soak in and then carefully pry the glued piece with a sharp knife to help lift it off. You may need to reapply if the piece is staying firmly attached. Work with it and avoid using too much pressure or you can break the piece.

Thanks, Kevin. It took me a long time just to do the joggles in the king plank and I skipped doing them in the frames around the hatches. Take a look at Harry's (hof00) build of the Pen Duick. He was braver than me and cut joggles into the hatches and the king plank.

It looks excellent, Kevin. I sure wish the AL Pen Duick kit had the joggles already laser cut. My deck would have looked better.

Everything in model ship building takes me much longer than I expect it to take! Now you're making me want to go back and watch the whole Game of Thrones series again too!

🤣 That's funny. Glenn, and a great post with lots of good advice to boot!

Looks great! What is BECC?

The Vallejo Gray Surface Primer went on the hull so smoothly that I barely needed to sand it. I went over very lightly with 400 sandpaper and it is silky smooth. The difference between using an airbrush to apply primer versus a rattle can is like night and day. I'm really excited to learn to use this airbrush better!

Yes you do but there is also something therapeutic about seeing the airbrush lay the paint down perfectly without visible brush strokes and lap marks too! I have always loved to paint things. For example, I've painted our house twice and all the rooms and woodwork inside several times over the years. I like being part of the transformation that takes place before your eyes and how clean and sharp it looks. I also like the fluid movement of the paint strokes and the challenge of keeping a wet edge going in and effort to avoid lap marks. I'm certainly not done with brush painting. I'm just adding another skill to the arsenal. In model painting, however, I won't miss the frustration I feel when my I'm not pleased with my paint job because of lap marks and inconsistent coverage. I'm sure I'll find ways to mess up airbrushing at times but, so far, it's been great.

I think these joggled decks are beautiful. I recently cut joggles into the mahogany king plank on my Pen Duick build. It was difficult since the mahogany was hard and brittle and had a tendency to tear. It was also challenging to maintain symmetry from one side of the king plank to the other. In order to do that reasonably well, it was imperative to take quite a few measurements from the edges of the faired bulkheads to the the edges of the king plank and sand, if necessary, so that they were equidistant on both sides of the king plank. I believe that the joggles are already laser cut in this kit which would make it a whole lot easier than having to cut them out yourself. Starting the planking from the inside edge of the plastic hull should also help to maintain the symmetry of the decking on each side of the king plank since it shouldn't have the variation of shape that a manually faired hull might have. However, any variation in the width of the planks could cause some problems with them intersecting the king plank accurately though. As we all know, little errors in planking tend to build as we continue along and get magnified. It will certainly be a beautiful deck when Kevin finishes it.

The Vallejo Gray Surface Primer went on the hull so smoothly that I barely needed to sand it. I went over very lightly with 400 sandpaper and it is silky smooth. The difference between using an airbrush to apply primer versus a rattle can is like night and day. I'm really excited to learn to use this airbrush better!

Thanks for the likes everyone and thanks for coming by. I didn't thin the primer. I just used it right out of the bottle. The paint is supposed to be about the consistency of milk and the primer seemed to be about like milk. Let's hope I can do a nice job painting the 3 colors on the hull. The primer was just opening act. The main event is yet to come!

Thanks for the informative reply, Carl. I can tell that I need to practice quite a bit to get more familiar with competently using my airbrush.

Well done so far, Jeff! You chose a great model to build and saved yourself a lot of confusion and frustration by starting with a model that has instructions that are as good as they come. The best piece of advice that was given to me when I was starting out was to slow down, take my time and enjoy the building process. To that I'll add, read ahead a few steps in the instructions so you can better see where your current step is taking you and refer often to your plans for measurements and further understanding of what you are doing. I look forward to seeing following your progress.

Well I tried out my new airbrush for the first time today and it's awesome! I had previously sprayed a filler primer on the hull and sanded it a bit. Today, I decided to use my airbrush to spray the hull with Vallejo Gray Surface Primer and it's much, much better than using a rattle can. I started off with my small cup with 10 drops of paint in it and quickly found out that I needed to switch to my largest cup. I put 30 drops of primer in it and added 3 drops of Vallejo Flow Improver to it and it seemed to work fine for me. I'll most definitely try out my larger fan nozzle the next time I prime a hull. The small 0.3 mm regular nozzle had too small of a spray pattern and it took a lot of passes to get consistent coverage. I don't know if I needed the Flow Improver but I had read good things about it where people saying their nozzles don't clog when they use it. So I decided to give it a go. I don't know anything about what pressure to use so I just used the compressor as it came out of the box. It showed about 22 PSI when I was spraying. The video that came with the kit said it is capable of up to 65 PSI. I also took the airbrush apart and cleaned everything. I know that I need to at least clean the cup and spray cleaning fluid through the airbrush until it is clear but I'm not how sure I need to do the complete cleaning. It was pretty simple to do so I figured it would be a good idea. I may never use a rattle can again!

Well I tried out my new airbrush for the first time today and it's awesome! I had previously sprayed a filler primer on the hull and sanded it a bit. Today, I decided to use my airbrush to spray the hull with Vallejo Gray Surface Primer and it's much, much better than using a rattle can. I started off with my small paint cup with 10 drops of paint in it and quickly found out that I needed to switch to my largest paint cup. I put 30 drops of primer in it and added 3 drops of Vallejo Flow Improver to it and it seemed to work fine for me. I'll most definitely try out my larger fan nozzle the next time I prime a hull. The small 0.3 mm regular nozzle had too small of a spray pattern and it took a lot of passes to get consistent coverage. I don't know if I needed the Flow Improver but I had read good things about it. People saying their nozzles don't clog when they use it. So I decided to give it a go. I don't know anything about what pressure to use so I just used the compressor as it came out of the box. It showed about 22 PSI when I was spraying. The video that came with the kit said it is capable of up to 65 PSI. I also took the airbrush apart and cleaned everything. I know that I need to at least clean the cup and spray cleaning fluid through the airbrush until it is clear but I'm not how sure I need to do the complete cleaning. It was pretty simple to do so I figured it would be a good idea. I may never use a rattle can again!

Thanks Kurt. I'll definitely give that filler a try. If you end up sanding the primer, how fine do you go...320..400...? I was sanding the primer I used up to 600 and it's almost as smooth as plastic. Now I'm wondering if that may be too smooth a surface for airbrushing the paint...?? I have 2 fan spray nozzles for my airbrush also: 0.3 mm and 0.5 mm. I was wondering if you find them useful for spraying larger areas like hulls etc?

Great idea for finding Ancre builds. I think it will also be very useful with other subjects as well. I just received the Ancre Monograph for the Santa Caterina. I'm no where experienced enough to attempt a scratch build yet but I was fascinated with Hellmuht Schrader's build of this wonderful fishing vessel. So I decided to get a copy of the monograph to read and compare their instructional steps with his build as a way of learning more about scratch building.

That's what my experience has been using a filler primer a couple of days ago. I had the hull sanded about as smooth as I could get it before I sprayed it with the filler primer but it did not fill the tiny imperfections very well. I sanded it and sprayed it again and, although there were fewer tiny imperfections, there were still a some after about a total of 6 coats total now. Of course, I'm trying to get the hull glass smooth since I plan to put a semi-gloss clear coat on it after painting it. I think I may try some Vallejo Gray Primer and see how that works.

Does Paul Koos have a website?

She's looking good, Ryland! You did an exceptionally good job on the oar thole pins and it shows. They are much more precise than mine.

I just got caught up on your log, Mike, and she's looking good! I haven't drilled a hole in my finger yet but I've burned myself with a plank bender, sliced my fingers with a scalpel, and pulled little pieces of skin off my fingers when they were stuck to the planks with CA. I dodged a bullet though one day when I dropped my Xacto knife and it feel straight down and stuck in the floor an inch from my bare foot. Now that would have hurt big time!

She looks great, BE. I didn't know that isopropyl alcohol would clean up CA. I generally will immediately wipe off any excess CA and, if a slight stain is there after it dries, I will sand it very lightly and that seems to work pretty well as long as I had wiped it off quickly enough that it didn't penetrate deeply into the wood in the first place. When necessary, I use CA Debonder to remove a piece that has been glued on with CA and I use isopropyl alcohol to the same with pieces glued on with PVA.

I just received the Ancre monograph of the St. Caterina. I have a lot to learn before I attempt a scratch build but your build of this boat inspired me to to buy the monograph and learn more about scratch building. Hopefully, I will become skilled enough to be able to build it someday.

That's a good point about the benefit of airbrushing in retaining fine details. I think that the primers that are made specifically for modeling and can be applied with an airbrush are thinner than the typical rattle can primers so they would not obscure details as much. I'm using a rattle can of Rustoleum High Build Gray Primer on the hull of the Pen Duick that I'm currently building. I had sanded the hull and had filled any imperfections that I could see with Elmer's Wood Filler before I sprayed it with the rattle can primer. I was not interested in preserving any details though. I chose the high build type primer because I wanted it to fill the tiniest of imperfections. My plan has been to prime and sand the hull until it is as perfect as I can get it since I know that the semi-gloss clear coat I will apply over the acrylic paint will magnify any imperfections. I'm not sure that it was the best choice to use a high build type primer. It may have been overkill. We'll see...