NMBROOK

I got a new toy yesterday, so today instead of working on getting the guns rigged so that I can actually make some forward progress, I made a side-trip to shaping the bowsprit.  Well, when I was done I decided that it was terrible, because the grain in this 'beech' dowel was just huge and terribly obvious.  So I made a jaunt down to Lowe's after determining that I didn't have any wood on hand that would work as a replacement, and I purchased some poplar dowels and square stock both.
 
When I got them home and really took a good look at them in the sunlight, I decided that the best piece with the best color and lightest grain was one of the square stock.  I cut a length off a little long, and chucked it up in the new toy and began turning the square wood into round wood.
 

 
Here you can see how terrible the kit dowel was (grain is huge) compared to the rough shaped replacement I made from poplar.

 
And I stuck it on the boat just to test fit it.

 
Next, I guess I'll get back to those fiddly little blocks, since there is no point in finishing the bowsprit since I need to get all the deck work done before I mount it.

Took a break from tiny little blocks tonight, and gave the captain a way to steer his ship.  Seems like a reasonable thing to do, given that she has a rudder and all.
 
I did not replace the cast wheel with anything aftermarket, as all of the wood wheels I've seen are really 'fat', and I don't think they look right.  I have read several articles on scratch making wheels, but I don't have the right equipment to use any of those methods yet, so I just painted the kit one and used it.  Not sure the color is right, but I don't have a lot of brown paints, so this is what I ended up with.
 

Moving forward with gun rigging, I made a breaching line and put it on a gun to test fit it.

 
Oops, way too long.  Need to pull almost an inch out of this rope I think.  
 
Surprisingly, I got the smaller rope I needed to rig the guns today (thanks Chuck!), so I had to charge forward and rig up a pair of the single blocks so that I could make my first gun tackle.

 
And of course I wanted to see how it would all look, so I plopped it on the deck.

 
Unfortunately, I got a bit overzealous tightening the tackle on the right side, and while it's sort of hard to make out in that last photo, I broke off the hook that attaches to the bulwark, so I'll have to redo that side again.
 
Also need to be careful of which way I have the hooks pointed when I rig the tackle, as that left side shows, when they are 180 degrees off from one another it doesn't look so great.  Not a big deal I can just pull the rope out and re-rig it.
 

Pretty sure I'm going to like the results of replacing the kit blocks with hooks, blocks, and rope from Syren.  If working with these doesn't make me go blind first.
 

 
The two on the far right were stropped with 28 gauge wire.  The wire was a pain to work with and the block are so small that they are quite easy to crush, so I switched to stropping them with .08" rope.  I think they look better, and it lets the hooks 'float' much better as well.  Very time consuming though, I'll be working on these for a while, and will probably work on other stuff rather than just sit down and try to finish all the blocks at once.  The single blocks are barely more than half this size, so they should prove pretty interesting, since I also have to attach a rope to them!

Making more progress, although it's small stuff.
 
I got the holes drilled for the eye-bolts in the cap rail, and trimmed them to size and placed them.  They are chemically blackened, so don't show up in the pictures very well at all, so I didn't bother why photo's specific to them.  I still have the eye-bolts in the outside the the hull to place, and the ones around the base of the mast.  I am going to wait on those until I have the mast made and can test fit it so that I get the bolts placed correctly rather than relying on the plan location.
 
I permanently place the eye-bolt with rings on the deck for the gun haul-in tackle.
 
I stained the cleats with red oak stain, and placed 18 of them on the bulwarks and bow cap-rail.
 
I opened up the bow-sprit opening to fit the bow-sprit, and to do that, I cut down the dowel for the bow-sprit to the proper maximum diameter where it goes through the hull.
 
I cut the hawse holes, but still need to paint them.
 

That's a most excellent idea, now that I've gotten all 30 of them done.  Hahaha.. 
 

 
The best part is, that I just spent the better part of a day making cleats that when the ship is done, will almost all be mostly hidden under rope coils.  
 
I plan to stain these a darker color so they don't stand out as such light wood against the walnut, black, and red.

The boat progress continues to be very slow, I've been spending way too much time playing Fallout: New Vegas again after watching the FO:4 trailer.    I may be old, but I guess I'm still a computer nerd at heart.
  Finished all the pintles & gudgeons to mount the rudder, and then glued them into the rabbet's I cut for them in the rudder. Then I used a small drill and drilled indents into the brass to put tiny drops of glue to simulate bolt heads.  

 
I forgot to take pictures of the in progress of that part, but it's not very interesting anyway. Today I mounted the rudder to the hull. It actually turns!      Next I move back to the deck, but before I can finish up all the various things that go on the deck, I need to mount all the eye-bolts and cleats while there is nothing in the way. The kit supplies white-metal casting cleats, and they are kind of ugly and I hate working with them, so I decided replace the cleats with the boxwood ones from Syren.   I have finished one of them, and I haven't counted, but I think I need 30+, so this will take a while. They aren't terribly difficult, just time consuming. Each one has to be filed to final shape, then have a tiny hole drilled into it to place a short brass rod to make them stay in place on the ship, since glue alone wouldn't work and they'd get knocked off the instant I started tying off rigging to them.     These things are pretty small, those squares on the cutting mat are 1/2". I hold them with jewelers needle nose pliers and use a small file to shape them. I then use a #72 drill in the mill to drill the tiny hole, and I'm using the small brass nails that I used for nailing the planking on the Carmen for the brass rod. I can get two of these out of each of those little nails, and I have a bunch of them left over.   The mill is pretty great for this, since the top to bottom thickness of the cleat is only 2.3mm, so the mill lets me get a very nicely centered hole and not accidentally drill all the way through the cleat when working with such a small piece.  

This wooden boat hobby has changed my definitions of what is a 'productive day', as the time frame for finishing a project is so long.  I consider today to be a productive day, and I may actually go back and do more before it's over.
 
First I finished up the rest of the guns, and did some touch up painting on all of them.

 
Next I tackled the rudder.  I completely forgot to take any pictures of this in progress, but it starts out as a laser cut walnut piece with no taper.  To make it into a proper rudder, first it has to be tapered front to rear (it's about 1/2 the thickness along the back edge as it is at the front), and rounded at the front.  Then the lines have to be measured out and etched.  This is to simulate the fact that a real rudder wasn't a single piece of wood, it's built up out of multiple timbers.  In this case 4 pieces.   Next I have to cut recesses for the pintles.  This was accomplished with a very sharp, small chisel.

 
Next up, I got to learn something new!  Soldering.  I've soldered a lot of electronics before, but by before I mean 30+ years ago.  Soldering brass using flux, silver solder, and a torch is all new, but for my first effort I think it came out ok. 
 
I made the pintle - brass pin soldered to the strap that will go into that recess I cut into the rudder.

 
The plans make the gudgeon (the strap that the pintles drop into on the ship side) by simply using the brass strap, and letting the pintle drop into it.  I decided to solder a tiny brass tube onto the gudgeon to make them work like a real one would. 

 
Tthe pintle is too long currently, it will be trimmed later.

 
Now i just need to make two more sets of pintles and gudgeons, but my eyes are bugging me so not sure I'll get back to it today or not.

Thanks for the comments and likes!  SalD - I will be taking most of my vacation this year by going to the conference at Mystic.  Really looking forward to that.  In the mean time, I'll take a few days off here and there.
 
The learning trials of ship-building continue.  Each little gun carriage gets 5 eye-bolts, which means I have to drill 5 little tiny holes (#78 drill).  I started with a pin-vise and I discovered rapidly that the boxwood which these carriages are made out of is a LOT harder than the basswood I've been drilling before, and it took 10 minutes to drill one hole through the side of a carriage, and I had 29 more holes to drill.  Ugh.  Then a lightbulb went off and I remembered that Mahuna had gotten me this really awesome collection of little drill-bits that were very sharp but needed to be used in a press, since they are very hard/brittle.  Well, I don't have a drill press yet, but I did just recently get a little Proxxon mill, so I chucked up the #78 bit, and then clamped the first carriage in the tool-bed vise.   So awesome, got the 29 holes done in less time than the first one, and they are much more precisely located than they would have been.

 
Next up, I cut down the eye-bolts and glued 3 of them into each carriage.  The other two for each carriage get a ring that the breech line will go through later on when they are rigged to the deck.  These eye-bolts and rings are tiny and I ended up doing all this work wearing an optivisor magnifier thing.

 
I assembled all of the rings to their eye-bolts and used a tiny drop of CA glue to join the ends of the ring.  Probably didn't need to do that.  Then I decided to just finish one gun assembly because I wanted to see it done.  I used very small strips of manila folder to form the trunion caps.  These were supposed to be made out of brass, but I made both brass and the paper ones, and the paper look better as I can't seem to get a nice smooth curve out of brass at this small scale.  I put in the eye-bolt / rings on each side, added a handle to the quoin, and painted the rims of the wheels black to simulate iron bands.  I was planning to add some more bolts and other details, like the retaining pins on each axle, but these things are so small that I decided I wasn't up to the task, so I think this is how the guns will all be completed, other than some clean up and touch up painting later on.  

 
The paint looks really rough zoomed in this close, but even 6" away with my naked eye it looks smooth.  Macro photography is both a blessing and a curse.

Ahoy mates!
 
I know it's difficult to believe, but I really didn't fall off the face of the earth, rather life just sometimes gets in the way of hobbies, and I had a stretch of work where I was working 70+ hours per week (went 6 weeks straight without even a day off), and then I went on a short vacation/road trip to a track event at Miller Motorsports Park.
 
I thought the work stuff was behind me for a while, but then my manager announced that I was in charge of the June release and oh, by the way, she was off to India for a month+ so not only was I in charge, but surprise, she wasn't going to be here to show me all the stuff I needed to do (none of which she has documented of course), so I was sort of muddling through on my own.  Then, her boss says "Oh, by the way, I'm on vacation for the next two weeks".  
 
Cool.  So the person who normally does it is in India, and the person who used to do it is gone on vacation.  Wee..  
 
In any case, I've actually gotten back to a little bit of ship-work in the last couple weeks, but it's been rather slow going.  Slow as in I've been working on gun carriages, and getting one of them done every few days.  So really really slow.
 
First I assembled one to make sure that the slightly larger than the kit carriages from Syren would work ok.

 
Looks fine to me!  Of course after this it occurred to me that a smart person would have painted the parts before assembly.
 
I finally got an air compressor, so I laid out the rest of the parts and primed them.

 
I then painted them all, but didn't take any photo's, and began assembly.  Late in the assembly process I did snap a couple pictures, but they are mostly pretty boring.

 
Tonight I got carriage #6 done finally, so I figured I'd stick them on deck and see how they look.  No quoins, so the barrels are a bit high in the gun ports.

 
Lots of work still to do on these, I have to respray them to get the parts without paint covered, make the quoins, add all the eye-bolts, then make the caps to hold the guns on, glue all the various bits in place and do paint touch-ups, etc.
 
Oh, and I also need to complete the finish on the hull & deck, right now there is only a single coat of poly on everything, and I need to buff that and add another couple of coats before I start putting stuff on the deck that will make it difficult/impossible to do later on.
 
But, it's good to see at least a tiny bit of progress after the almost 2 months since I finished the poop deck.

Been a little while, thank you for all of the kind words and likes.
 
Work has been extremely busy, so I have only spent a very small amount of time here and there on the AVS lately, but this morning I decided to make a few hours of time to put the poop deck to rest.  I started trimming the planks for this part weeks ago, and just couldn't seem to get the time to finish.
 
For anyone else building a model with tapered planks like the poop deck of the AVS, I found a very simple jig in another AVS build log that works quite well for making the planks so they don't have to be done completely by hand, 26 times.
 
First up, I cut 28 pieces of plank to the appropriate length.  I use a simple jig that I made to cut the hull planks to 4", and just measured and cut a new slot for cutting these planks:

 
The angle jig is surprisingly simple, but I don't think I would have thought of it if I hadn't seen it in another build log.  I apologize for not giving proper credit, but I can't seem to locate it again right now.
 
The jig is made up of a 1/4" piece of wood that the deck plank lays against, 2 x 1/4" end pieces which are cut to length (sanded to final length after glue is dried) to give the proper taper, and a couple pieces of .030" (deck plank thickness) of planking placed to hold the deck plank in place, and also to support the straight edge used for cutting.

 
Place the plank into the jig, hold a straight edge up against the end 'stop' pieces, and then using very light pressure on the blade, simply cut along the straight edge to make tapered planks.  I used a very thin steel straight edge for the actual cuts, the clear plastic one is for the photo only to show how it rests on the support planks.

 
Then, start placing planks!

 
Didn't take any other in-progress shots, it's just normal planking, but care must be taken to bevel the edges, as the curve of this deck will cause significant gapping if the planks are left straight edged.
 
Once complete there is a ledge left at the front end of the deck.

 
This ledge is a place for a moulding to go, which is supposed to be made out of walnut.  However, I happened to have a piece of swiss pear that was almost exactly the right dimensions to make this moulding, so of course, I had to try it.  I used a heat gun and pre-bent the curve into the wood so that it laid evenly all along the top edge of the deck, and then I beveled the back, and rounded the front.  I also used a very sharp 2mm chisel to fine tune the front edge of the deck until I was happy with the fit along the edge.

 
And finally, I sanded to 320 grit, and applied a coat of wipe-on poly which is currently drying.

 
There are some fitment/gap issues along the top edges on both ends of the quarter deck wall, but I don't really see any way to fix them as they are built into the ship from mistakes made earlier in the contruction, so I'm just going to move on and hopefully they won't be very noticeable after the ship is finished with so much other stuff to catch the attention of the observer.
 
Next I think I need to assemble the cannon carriages.

Few more details added as I continue to put off cutting the tapered planks for the poop deck.  
 
Added the bottom molding and the door handles and hinges for the quarterdeck wall.
 

 
It's amazing how terrible the unfinished wood can look in macro photographs.

Small update.  As most of you have seen, I got a bit distracted by a canoe, and also lots of work, so I haven't had much time to sit down and do any sort of real work on the AVS, but tonight I did get the quarterdeck wall mostly done.  It still needs to be finished and have details added, but the wood is in.
 
I am again using cherry for the door paneling.  I do not have the base trim in yet either.
 

So I've actually accomplished some more things on the AVS over the last few days, in the form of completing most of the quarter-deck.  Today I completed the quarter-deck, and then began drilling holes.  Ended up with 510 holes (I think), and only after it was completed and I was editing the photo's to upload did I notice that I missed a pair of holes on a butt joint.  Oops.  I also managed to knock one out on the quarter deck, so after the poly has dried I'll have to add the 2 missing ones and repair the one that came out.
 
I got going on things and didn't take any in-progress photo's of the quarter deck, or the tree-nailing except for the first shot.
 

Thanks everyone for the kind words and likes.
 
The main deck planking is all placed. I learned a number of things doing this, and in retrospect I would have done a few things differently (where the butt-ends landed, I should have started the hook & scarf at least one, and probably 2 planks earlier), but overall I'm fairly happy with the final results. 
 
Now I need to plank the quarter-deck, and then do a full scraping and get a couple coats of poly down (oh, and open up the holes for mast, stove pipe, etc.) before drilling a bunch of little holes!  I also need to make some small adjustments to the main hatch, and re-poly all the deck furniture which is all still just sitting in place, not glued.
 

The planking continues at a fairly slow pace as I've only had a few hours to work on it a couple nights this week due to work and other draws on my time.
 
Still pleased with the results, and haven't had to remake too many things (yet), but from here on out almost every plank will be hand cut from wider stock, so the potential for terrible results will increase greatly!
 
I hope to cut the margin strakes, and maybe even finish the main deck planking tomorrow, but we'll have to see how slowly it goes as I cut all the custom fit edge planks.
 
Photo's!
 

Thanks for your encouragement and likes folks.
 
Puttering along with the deck planking now, the custom shaped planks alongside the hatches are pretty slow going, especially since I've had to remake 2 of the 3 along the way, but I think the end results will be worth it, I'm really liking it so far, and this holly is just wonderful to work with, it just blows basswood away, even ignoring the 'looks' part.
 

 
I think I'm going to place the margin planks very soon, instead of waiting until after the deck planks are in, as I've decided to go with hook & scarf planking into the margin, instead of nibbing, as that wasn't prevalent in ship building until 40 or more years after the date of this ship (see discussion on nibbing in the planking sub-forum).  Since hook & scarf deck planks don't require the margin plank to be cut into, I think it will be easier to get a neat mating to it with the deck planks if it's in place first.
Thoughts on that?

Thank you all for the suggestion, tips, and likes!
 
So I decided that the advice to go with the outside border on the grating was the way to do it, so I simply abandoned the measurements from the plans, and winged it (shocking, I know)!
 
Instead of measuring anything, I first cut the pieces and built a new grating.  I had barely enough grating material left to make one long and one short piece after this, so I figured that it had better work out!  I assembled the new grating on some reversed masking tape to hole it together for assembly and gluing.
 

 
After finishing the grating and gluing it together with fast CA, to make the coaming I simply used the grating itself to mark the length of the two 'inside' ends, and cut them.  I then glued them to the grating, and after letting the glue set, I sanded the exposed ends until they were perfectly flat with the grating edge.  I then used the new assembly to measure the wood for the 'outside' pieces of the coaming, and glued them to the grating assembly.
 

 
I then beveled and sanded the entire new assembly, and then checked the measurement on deck.  It was slightly larger than the original galley hatch, so I used a chisel and carefully trimmed back the already glued deck planking, filed the new edge flat with a riffler file, and then trimmed the final bit needed off of the single plank on the other side until it was a snug fit.  I then slapped on a coat of poly, and ta-da!  Here is the new galley hatch sitting in it's future home.
 

 
Mission success!

So I figured out what is wrong with the galley hatch.  It isn't the grating, it's the coaming itself - it is ever so slightly out of square, and I'm not sure why.  Measured from 2 corners it's square, but from the other two it's not.  I messed up a tiny bit somewhere, but it's enough that my eyeball catches it as being 'off'.  As a result, the planking won't match up correctly unless I fix it, so the next order of business will be making a new galley hatch tomorrow night.
 
I don't think I can make it with the grating having the outside edges like Frank suggests, as the grating material isn't the right dimension for it (works great across the short side, but doesn't work across the long side).  I would have to go off-size on the plans to make that work, so I'm not sure I'm going to try.  I'll take a fresh look at it tomorrow before I remake it to decide.
 
I can't really explain why, but I really do enjoy doing the deck planking.  It's going well so far, and I'm not going per-plan at all, rather I'm sort of emulating stuff I've seen in various builds here.  We'll see how it works out long term, but I like the first little bit.
 

 
The hatches are not glued, they are just being used to the planking fitment, which is why I need to remake the galley hatch now, because I need it to be right before going any further with the deck planking.

Thanks gents, for the comments and likes.  I made the galley hatch, but it looks.. off.  I'm not sure what it is, the measurements are all good, and it's square according to my square, but it's off to my eye.  I may remake it.
 
In the meantime, I put everything on the deck together just to see it, not glued obviously and not even in exactly the right spots, but just for the visual.
 

 
Need to put a coat of poly on the hatch still, but waiting for the glue to dry since the grating is a bit touchy.  In the meantime, I can start working on figuring out the deck planking.  Woo!  

So I have no idea why I thought I'd be going faster once I got to the deck furniture, because this is all new to me, so I screw up and have to remake lots of parts, but I'm learning, and am reasonably happy with the final results.
 
This morning, after working on this all day yesterday (and having started it by making the base some days ago), I completed the companionway.  Looking at everyone elses build logs, this little structure seemed neat, but nothing all that complicated, but after completing it, I counted, and there are 73 individual parts in this dumb little thing!
 

 
Today I hope to get the final hatch completed, and maybe start on the deck planking, which I've really been looking forward to!

Very small update, as I haven't done much work on the ship the last couple of weeks, just had a busy schedule and other things going on.
 
For anyone interested I added an 'index' to the first post in this thread, so if for some reason you want to find a specific point in the build, it should be much easier now.
 
I've gotten the main hatch, and the scuttle port completed - I am using cherry for the planking and the kit walnut for the coaming, I think it makes a nice contrast.  The hardware was chemically blackened.
 

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments and encouragement, and for all the likes.
--
 
I'm done with the sweep ports.  Not because I'm particularly happy with how they came out, but because I kept trying to make them better and was at the point where I think I was starting to make things worse, rather than better.  So I reached the 'good enough this time' point and called it done.
 
A few of them came out pretty good, but there are a number that under the stare of the optivisor or macro lens, make me..  unhappy.  Oh well.
 
Close up of a pair of decent ones, before touch-up painting.

 
And some generic shots of both sides.

 
Now I get to start on what I hope is fun and interesting, building the deck furniture so that I can plank the deck!

I think I may have a new criteria for kit buying.  Does it have odd shaped sweep ports (i.e. not square)?  If yes, run away!
 
The entire time I'm working on these I'm deathly afraid of slipping and making a mistake that will wreck hours or days of work.  I'm halfway home, and managed to get them ok looking, if not great, but also managed to mess up all three colors of paint so more touch-up will be coming down the road.  Shocker!
 
Will finish up the starboard side ports tomorrow.  Here are the port side sweep ports, obviously not painted yet.
 

 
I did these by first transferring the center point for each port by making a direct tracing of the plans, and just taping that tracing to the bulkhead and using a sharp point punch to mark.  I did this while the bulkheads were masked, inside and out with masking tape for doing the black paint touch-up.
 
I then made a small brass jig with the center and end holes in it, and then positioning the jig over the center punch marks and drilling the three holes with a 3/64" drill (actually 1.2mm, but that's only 0.01mm off).  I then came back and drilled the center hole with a 3/32" drill.  I connected the holes with a small X-acto saw while it was still masked.
 
After finishing the touch-up work on the black paint, I removed all the masking, and enlarged the connecting line between the holes with a #10 X-acto blade, working very slowly and shaving a tiny bit off at a time, doing first the outside, then the inside, and then working to open up the middle to connect them evenly.
 
The port farthest aft is pretty lopsided, but the rest came out decent.
 

Thanks Ken,
 
The video was kind of fun, but I don't think I'll do more of that, as stopping to get the photo between every little step is sort of annoying, and the result really isn't as cool as I was hoping for since even though I had the tripod location marked on the floor, and the hull location taped off on the bench, there was still quite a bit of movement between shots.  I'm sure that could be adjusted in post by careful cropping, but I'm not a post-processing guru by any stretch, and the time and effort to learn how to do that wasn't something I was willing to do for this.
 
As far a spiling, I guess it depends on how you define that word.  The planks aren't truly spiled, in the sense that they are not individually cut from wider stock in a curved shape like true spiling.  I used the kit .030 supplied planks strips.  I'll see if I can describe my system.
 
First, the hull was done in 4 'bands' which are approximately 4 planks wide at the widest point (not counting the stern).  After masking off the band with tape, I used card stock (manila folders) cut into narrow strips and used the cards to transfer tick-marks from a planking fan to give myself a bunch of reference points for the plank widths needed at various spots along the hull.
 
Here is a zoomed in image which corresponds to the first image in the video showing part of the middle section of the final band marked off.

 
You can see the tick marks that I've transferred to the first layer of planking.  You can also see some lines marked 1 through 4, which are where I planned the locations for the butt-ends to fall for this band.  I plotted them on this band because I shifted them from the previous band so that they would not end up with the same issue I had on the other side where I had a pair of rows where the butts were in the same spot.
 
Except for the stem and stern planks, I use pre-cut 4" plank lengths that I cut in a little jig I made up.  As I got towards the end I ran out of pre-cut pieces, and would just cut another 4" plank length as I went.  Starting with the 4" x 3/16" plank piece, I would lay it on the hull and mark both ends with the nearest tick-mark to get the required taper.  I then trimmed the plank using a straight edge and razor knife and laid it back onto the hull to see how it fit.  If it was reasonably close I would then bevel the trimmed edge to fit up tight against the existing planks using a sanding block with 320 grit sandpaper.  I would sand as needed until the plank edge matched up with all the tick marks along the edge, and then glue it in place.
 
In the middle I had a few planks that needed to be wider somewhere in the middle than on the ends.  For those I marked the wide spot, and then marked the tick marks at each end.  I would trim with the razor knife from the tick mark to the edge of the plank at the middle mark, from both ends, giving me a plank that was wider in the middle at the mark, and then repeat the beveling/sanding process until it fit nicely to the existing planks, and matched up with the tick marks fairly close.
 
Hopefully that's understandable.  I didn't really photo-document that process very well, since it's mostly lifted from planking tutorials here, or practicums like Bob Hunts that give various methods of doing this.  I think my personal system is something of a hybrid between all the stuff I've read, but it seemed to mostly work out fairly well for me.
 
Yesterday I sanded down the final planking until I was reasonably happy with the final finish, and applied a coat of wipe-on poly and let it dry for about 6 hours.  I then buffed that and applied a 2nd coat to let it dry overnight.  This morning I buffed that coat, and after looking at the new photo's, I'll need to re-sand with a very fine paper to remove the light scratches left from using the wrong buffing material, and refinish, but that can be done down the road.
 
For now, here is what it looks like with the 2 coats of poly and a buffing (or scratching in some photos!).

 
As you can see, I failed at the symmetry at the stern, which I'm not terribly happy about, but the rest looks pretty good to me, and I am not going to cover it with paint as I really like the way the different colors of walnut came out.  I'm also happy that I mis-read an instruction and used 4" planks instead of 5", as even though they are fairly short in scale (16'), I think they make the hull look quite nice.  I also used a 4-butt shift pattern for the planking, which came out quite well except for the aforementioned mistake when I laid the garboard strake at the wrong shift point.
 
I've now got it all re-masked for touching up the black paint, and am about to start working on marking the locations for the sweep ports, and making a jig for drilling them.