Cathead

Pops, thank you, I went and looked at your log after posting that last comment, should have done so before. I'm tempted to try that (building my own transom) as I like the look much better. On to the forms and keel, which I decided to share photos of because I think I set these up a little differently than other logs I've seen. As I do a fair amount of home carpentry and woodworking, I have a ton of clamps and squares and such around. Here the keel form is held vertical with a rafter tie (on the left side of the image) while the cross-form being glued is held perfectly square in all three directions with two solid corner squares. Taking a page out of my experience building Guillow balsa-frame planes, I mounted the keel plan on a sheet of wood, covered it with tracing paper, then used sewing pins to hold the keel exactly in place while gluing. The instructions say to ensure that the inner curved surface is exactly in line with the plans, never mind if the rest of the joints or surfaces are slightly off, so that's what I did. The joint surfaces themselves were slightly off, such that if you clamped them together the keel twisted slightly. So I used paint bottles to weigh down the assembly, and inserted more pins at shallow angles to hold down the pieces (since I couldn't get bottles right on top the joints with other pins sticking up there). Closeup insert at lower right shows this. I've since taken the keel off and it's perfectly flat/straight. Next update may be a while, as I'll be slowly clamping and gluing one form at a time, and we all know what that looks like. Will be carving the rabbet in the meantime, and we all know what that looks like too unless I do something especially right or wrong.

Two (somewhat weak) arguments against flipping: TRANS may still be visible since it's an open boat, and the laser-scribed fairing lines on the outside of the transom would be hidden and I'd have to either transfer them to the opposite side or just eyeball it. Which could be done. On planking it over, are the kit's planks long enough to accommodate the extra thickness of the transom in that case? It sounds like it would look better than a solid sheet of wood anyway, but I'd hate to do so and then find that the planks end exactly at the original piece? Also, in that case, would I use the same width planks as the sides? And should they be trimmed as they go down to keep seams matching side & stern, or should they stay full width and have the seams not match up?

Like so many before me, I am entering the world of wooden ship kits with the Model Shipways Bounty launch. This is not my first ship model, I have scratchbuilt 3 before this first attempt at an actual kit, but I am still mostly a beginner. Two questions have arisen right away that I am hoping to find advice on. Here is my workspace, just getting started with the sheer tabs glued on and the keel pieces laminated together. You may notice I've already stained the keel; I want to do the whole model stained, not painted. It makes more sense to me to stain ahead of time, before assembly, but this leads to my first question: (1) If I pre-stain the planks, will it be a problem for soaking and bending? Will the stain run or be otherwise affected by soaking and using a plank iron? The image below illustrates my next question: So it's quite annoying that MS laser-burns "trans" onto the outside of the transom, I guess just assuming that you'll paint over it. I thought I had sanded away the word before staining, but lo and behold, there is the little bugger. Guess I didn't look at the piece in the right light angle. So the question is, (2) Now what? I can't hardly sand this away, can I? Should I just turn the transom around and hope it isn't visible from the inside? See if I can find a piece of scrap basswood big enough to cut a duplicate? Thanks for any advice, I hope this log is worth following even though the kit isn't very unique.