ccoyle

The putty typically used in wood models is wood filler. But regardless of whether you use wood filler or drywall compound (spackle), it's essential to get most of the hull form in place beforehand -- fillers and spackles are not intended to fill in large areas. Your idea about using paper strips is a good one -- if you check some of the card model builds, such as those featuring Shipyard kits, you'll see how paper is used both as the outer skin and for forming an underlayment, or base layer. Paper is a very versatile medium -- don't be afraid to experiment and see what works well for you.

Yes, that's correct. Those years include the period generally considered to be the Golden Age of Piracy.

Yep, this I knew -- we call them "zip ties" in these parts. I thought about these many times while twisting various wires. Of course, using them would have required drilling out all of the holes larger.

Ugh. Tightening the stitches has so far been much easier said than done. First of all, I have broken a fair number of stitches during the process and had to replace them. Second is the issue with getting panels to seat into their rabbets properly. Here's one side of the canoe showing properly seated and stitched panels. The exact opposite side of the boat refused to cooperate. I eventually hit upon a solution, but it involves removing about a half-dozen stitches and re-doing them. The unstitched panels want to create a roughly 1" wide gaping maw between them. I can squeeze the panels together -- I just can't stitch them at the same time! Which is what I attempted the first time around, and of course it didn't go to plan. To finish this correction, I'm going to have to wait until an extra pair of hands becomes available this evening. Much of the problem with the bending is due, I believe, to the stiff 1x1 rub rails. In retrospect, I think it may have been better to stitch the panels first, then install the rails, but hey -- I followed the directions. Cheers!

Very nice -- congratulations!

Everything wired together. Next step is to flip it over and tighten all the wires. You may notice some red and white wires -- the bare copper wire supplied with the kit ran short by a substantial amount. I made a trip to the hardware store, but the only 18 ga wire I could find came in the form of two-strand thermostat wire. Happily, I quickly discovered that I only needed to remove the outer covering from the wire and not the individual insulation on each of the two inner wires, hence the red and white bits in the photo. I actually like the insulated wire better, because I find that it twists together easier and more neatly. The top panels with the pre-glued 1x1 rub rails are under a considerable amount of tension. I hope the epoxy will hold everything together! 😬 The instructions called for wiring the ends of the top panels together, spreading them with a temporary spacer, and then slipping the pair onto the hull before wiring. I tried this, but found it incredibly difficult to subsequently bring the bottom edges of the top panels together with the lower panel to wire them together. So I disassembled the top panels and stitched them on separately. I still needed some extra hands (one set for bending, one for wiring) for the part of the process, but it worked out.

So, when we last saw Mr. Coyle in action, he had just finished reinforcing the temporary bulkhead that he'd inexplicably managed to somehow break. Here's the repaired bulkhead wired in place (again, done with no help, since my "extra hands" always seem to have an excuse for why they can't come at the moment). This, on the other hand, is one of the two permanent bulkheads wired in place. These will form compartments to create some reserve buoyancy. They will also have drain plugs installed. Construction proceeds with stitching the side panels together. The whole thing begins to more and more resemble a giant porcupine. So here we are with the bottom panels, bulkheads, and first pair of side panels wired in place. Onward!

Check your local fabric store for any material that might be passed off as netting.

Very nice indeed -- congratulations!

It won't -- it's only a temporary frame. 😉

Gallery images uploaded.

Disaster struck! Well, a little one -- manageable, too. While trying to tie in a temporary frame, it cracked. What to do, oh, what to do? Happily, I had two pieces of 1x1 cedar strip leftover from trimming the ends of the rub rail I glued up yesterday. So, I made a brace for the cracked frame, glued it in place, and clamped it. As a prophylactic measure, I made one up for the other frame so I could glue and clamp both at the same time. Hopefully the only pain this causes me is a slight production delay.

A fabulous model and a testament to some real perseverance!

Work continues. All strakes glued together and joints sanded. The camera makes the joints look messier and rougher than they actually are. Except for the bottom planks, each plank has a rabbet cut into it. The gain, or taper, at each end of the rabbet must be created by removing some wood with a rasp & a sanding block. To add some rigidity to the floppy top planks, the outboard rub rails are attached. They must be bent as they are clamped along their length. The instructions say to brush the epoxy onto the rail and then clamp it to the plank. This seemed to me to be a potentially very messy way to do it. Instead, I dry-clamped the rail to the plank and then ran a pencil along the joint to mark the width of the rail on the plank. I removed the rail, brushed the epoxy onto the plank, and then clamped the rail back on. This went well and didn't make too much mess. I also pulled this task off by myself, even though the instructions recommended having a helper. 😁 That shot shows every 2" spring clamp that Home Depot had in stock on the day I made my supply run. I'll have to do the other side tomorrow. I started stitching the bottom panels today, but no pic. That's all for now.

I remember reading an article about a vacuformed Arado in a modeling magazine around forty years ago.

Does anyone know what name nitrocellulose goes by in the US (other than gun cotton)?

Nope. In fact, we strongly discourage third party hosting. You can upload your photos here, insert them into your post, and resize them as necessary. Cheers!

I took a slightly different tack with the other half of the strakes and hope that it produces acceptable results. I made the epoxy slightly runnier to lengthen its working time, and I applied the epoxy to all the puzzle joints first before putting them together. This time around, the process went much faster. Here's a shot of the strakes atop my temporary workbench, consisting of a sheet of plywood screwed down to two 2x4s laid across a pair of saw horses. A nice thing about the plywood is that I can clamp the glued pieces by screwing down a 2x4 strap across the stacks of strakes. I will need to glue the outboard rub rails to the top strakes before they can be stitched, but they other four sets should be ready to go for the weekend.

Yes! Absolutely necessary, otherwise the paper wants to crease. I soften the fibers for shaping by lightly wetting the back of the paper with water -- it doesn't take much.

The wherry is a real eye-pleaser. I would need some storage space and a trailer in order to have one about, so that's not looking like a possibility for the near future.

Yep. Looks like glued wood. The instructions said not to worry about the mess, 'cause it's all going to get epoxied anyway, so I will try not to. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the rough epoxy was to knock down with a sanding block -- the instructions led me to believe it would be something like concrete after it set. I hope to be able to finish gluing the strakes before the weekend, so that I can start the stitching process.

Learning as I go... Lesson #1: Two-part epoxy mixed with filler to a "jam consistency" pretty quickly progresses to "modeling clay" consistency. Lesson #2: The working time for mixed two-part epoxy isn't very long. Lesson #3: The amount of two-part epoxy needed to glue up ten planking strakes has only enough working time to do five strakes. Ask me how I know. 😬 Lesson #4: My hands must be size extra-large -- large-size latex gloves barely fit. Lesson #5: Disposable latex gloves do not breath, like, at all. When I took them off, sweat literally poured out of them. Can't wait to see what I learn next! 🙄

Yep. Yes, I can, but can you provide a link rather than have me hunt it down? Thanks!

Okay, far enough along to justify an update. The build sequence for most card model airplanes starts with the cockpit, but for some reason this one starts with the wings. First, the internal formers. You might think that laser cut parts like this should fit perfectly, but they usually don't. Some minor trimming here and there was necessary. The key is to get the dimensions of the internal structure matched to those of the skins before one starts gluing the latter parts on. Skins on next. Each is one large part, so there's a lot of glue that must first be applied, followed by quickly positioning the part. This is helped out by forming the sharp curve in the leading edge before attaching the skin. Now comes the cockpit. Internal formers and seat come first. There's a rectangular part with four holes in the middle of the seat back. I have no idea if it's in the correct position. The diagrams were unclear on this bit, and I couldn't find any P-36 cockpit photos online that showed this particular part (even if one does find such a photo online, there's no guarantee that the seat in the photo is either period correct or correct for the H-75). Interior cockpit skins with their various bits -- radio, throttle quadrants, etc. Right skin on. The control stick consists of 14 separate parts -- bleah! And finally, a couple of shots of the finished cockpit. Unlike many kits I have worked on, this kit did not include optional parts to allow for glazing the instrument panel. It does, though, include parts for building the two fuselage-mounted .30 caliber machine guns, but they are pretty basic structures. I'm going to omit them. That's all for now!

The phrase "model ship" is a little vague -- the kind of model ship your dad saw may help determine what sort of model would best suit your purpose. Can you tell us more about what you're looking for?