ccoyle

Welcome aboard, Pat!

Congratulations! She's a beauty.

Very nice! The booms for the lines give these boats a lot of visual appeal.

The stern structure is now complete. Next up will be the amidships upper bulkheads.

We need to be mindful of certain things when determining whether a kit is truly copied or not. Depending on what source materials are used, we would not necessarily expect the models produced by two different kits to look different, even if they are at different scales. They are, after all, modeling the same ship. This is a point that James and I were careful to make in our Anatomy of a Knock-Off article. Where the copy-cats have cut corners is on designing internal structures for models. There we definitely would not expect two designs to be exactly the same, as they were for the kits examined for the article. Personally, I have not been keeping a close eye on ZHL of late, so I can't recall whether we delved deeply into the provenance of their Surprise kit -- there are already enough blatant examples for making the case against ZHL.

A bit more progress . . . There's a series of filler "blocks" at the bow and stern. Instead of being the typical balsa or basswood blocks, the filler is built up from multiple layers of laser-cut plywood pieces. Three such pieces are provided at the stern, each marked with beveling lines. Once those are glued in, the gaps are filled with scrap plywood. A channel for the tiller must also be drilled out. In the next image, you can see how I penciled the edges of the laser-cut pieces so that I wouldn't remove too much material from the filler pieces when sanding them down to the correct (hopefully) shape. The counter is soaked in water, bent, and glued into position (there's a notch that fits over a nub on the profile former, enabling proper positioning). The counter must be tacked into place until the glue sets. While that sets, I decided to skip ahead a little and work on the bow filler pieces. No difficulties there. You might notice the number "29R" on the top piece. It's nice that the parts are marked L and R on the plans and instructions, instead of L and P as in Polish kits, which takes getting used to. Lastly, there is a beam to install right before the first quarterdeck bulkhead. This will support the aft end of the main deck. Once that's glued and clamped, some waiting is in order to allow everything to set. I have half a mind to fire up a card model to work on during the intermittent waiting times required for this build.

Welcome aboard, Travis!

Extraordinary result, Rick! Your skills are top-shelf!

That's correct! She knows I have started a new project, but she hasn't let on whether she comprehends exactly what it is. Every time I start something new, she usually comments on my lack of display space -- an issue I choose not to tackle head-on. 😁

Darn work! I know how that goes. 😅

Welcome! We've actually had at least one model displayed here that was built from Legos. Some Lego ships are quite impressive. I think it'd be quite the challenge to find just the right combinations of bricks to create a ship's many and varied structures.

Can do!

That is true. 1/48 does mean more materials and therefore most cost. The 1/64 scale Indy is pretty large for the average modeler's display needs, and 1/48 will of course take up even more space. That's one reason why I selected a 1/72 scale brigantine for my current project. The admiral is still not fully aware that I have started it. 😏

Moin, moin! Glad to have you aboard.

Got the rest of the bulkheads installed. The next steps involve flipping the hull over and adding the upper structure (in progress). My cutting mat is eleven inches wide, so you can see it's not a large model. Cheers for now!

Agree!

I have the Seahorse 1/100 scale card model version of this pretty little ship in my stash.

Very nice!

You have to use the edit option in post #1. I'll cover this one for you. Congratulations on your fantastic model!

Welcome aboard!

Beautiful model, Dave!

Welcome aboard, Chuck! With your background, I hope we may see some exciting display options for your models!

Welcome! Excellent work on the pinnace!

Welcome aboard, Drew!

So, sweet Keeva is off the hook now. To effect the repair, I first needed to get the main hull plate and profile former assembled. Here's the plate with its beveling completed. After gluing those two pieces together and letting them cure, it was time to 'fix' the broken bulkhead. It turns out the damage was not as catastrophic as it looked at first glance. The main part of the bulkhead was broken in half; after beveling the two halves, I glued each in separately. The bulkhead had a long stem that fills most of the remaining slot. The original stem was munched beyond repair, but it was a simple matter to make a replacement from scrap plywood. All done! Now there remains a lot of beveling and gluing of the remaining bulkheads. I probably won't post another pic until that task is done.