Erik W

Fred, I'm not sure how I missed your Cheerful build. As others have said, you did a great job! I'm part way through planking my Cheerful's deck now. Your build is an inspiration. Erik

Glenn, Thanks for the feedback. I used photos of Chuck's deck as my main reference, so in person the deck has the same flowing curves as his. I located the separation between the two planking belts in the same places as he did, and the scarph joints are located in the same spots (using the deck fittings and gun ports as reference in where to locate). Also, I used Mike's (Stuntflyer) overhead photos for reference. The curve is understated in my photos compared to how it looks in person for some reason. Also, the main reason I drew in all the planking was as a double check of my tick marks. I'm glad I did since by doing so I caught a couple of places I had misaligned them. Erik

I thought drawing in the tick marks and drawing the placement of the hook scarph joints wouldn't take too long. Well, after about 12 hours over the last week, I'm finally happy with the way everything looks on the deck, and I'm ready to proceed with the deck planking. Getting the drawn-in planking to look and flow the way I wanted it took so many adjustments and needed to be redone so many times I actually had to go out and buy more erasers! The last redo was actually after these photos were taken. I moved the rear of the aft scarph joints back a bit after viewing the photos, in order to have the taper of the outer 4 planks better match the inner 6 planks aft of the skylight. I also tweaked a couple of other areas after viewing these photos. Since I've never planked a deck before, my goal was to spend as much time as necessary to get the planking drawn in on the deck. Sort of the planking version of adding training wheels to a kids bike, or having bumpers in the gutters when kids bowl at a bowling alley. I'm trying to minimize my chances of screwing the deck planking up since it will be a very visible part of the build. The saying, proper planning prevents poor performance, comes to mind. One note when looking at the photos - since the plank lines were drawn in straight lines between the tick marks, it doesn't flow as smoothly visually as the actual curved planks will. Erik

Here's my latest progress. I have the five center deck planks installed. These were straight forward since they're not edge bent or tapered, but they took time none the less. As always, the process is going slow and test fitting, then sanding a bit, then test fitting, then sanding a bit, and repeating over and over again until a tight fit is achieved. I'm looking forward to planking the rest of the deck . . . but I'm also looking forward to having all the planking finished and behind me! I did a first sanding after getting these planks down. So if they look rough, that's why. I'll do the final sanding when the planking is finished. Erik

Thanks for all the 'likes" folks. I spent the last week building the companionway, so I'm now finished with the deck fittings that will be placed along the center line before planking the deck. For the companionway I used pencil to darken the board seams. I also slightly beveled the edges of where the companionway lid and doors are hinged. I applied several layers of much thinned red paint that allowed the board seams to show through. After painting was complete, I used a pin wash made of black oil paint thinned with Turpenoid that I applied to the hinged joints in the lid and doors, as well as around the bottom and side edges of the doors. Annnnnnd . . . . you can't really see any of all that effort in the photos. Super frustrating! I must've taken 30 photos of the finished companionway, with different background colors, and lighting and lighting angles, trying to show the board seams showing through the semi-opaque red paint. What you see is the best I could come up with. The funny thing is the board seams are so pronounced when viewing in person that I had seriously considered painting one more coat of red over the whole thing, particularly on the lid (which you don't see any seams at all in these photos). And I was worried the black wash was too pronounced. None of which you can see in the photos. Can you tell I'm still annoyed? Haha. At any rate, the next step is gluing all these deck fitting on to the deck. Some other Cheerful build logs have good advice on getting these aligned correctly. After that, it's on to deck planking. Erik

Mike, My plan is once I fasten the skylight in place and begin the planking around it, I'll make the final call at that point. Obviously, if I chose to, repainting the corners will only take a few seconds. Erik

Over the last week I finished the larger grating, the small coaming for the galley stack, and built the skylight mini kit. I got the idea to paint the inside of the skylight black, as well as the framing underneath the skylight below the false deck. Once complete, I didn't like the completely blacked out interior though. It made the skylight look like the glass panels were painted gloss black rather than being clear, since there was absolutely nothing visible inside. So . . . I painted the interior of the skylight wood color and will put a small planked section low down in the framing underneath the skylight. It's a subtle thing that no one will consciously notice when viewing the ship, but by having something visible inside the skylight area it hints at an interior, rather than a completely black void. Live and learn. Also, I test fit planking around the skylight and didn't like the look of the 90 degree red corners at deck level after rounding off the coaming corners, so I carefully scraped the red paint off. It looks a little funny now, but will look sharp and clean when the decking is complete. Erik

Looks great Mike! And yes, you've definitely reached a milestone. Erik

As always, thanks for the 'likes'. Those always help keep me motivated. Over the last week I've been working on the gratings. The small ventilation scuttle grating towards the stern was straight forward and quick. The other two larger gratings have taken some time. Chuck's grating mini-kits make the gratings themselves easy to reproduce. The coamings though were a bit finicky. There are several surfaces to pay close attention to in each lap joint to get a tight fit. As always, taking my time was what was needed. Chuck's instructions for making a right-angle jig out of 3/64" thick sheet (the thickness of the deck planking) was brilliant. It sure made rounding off the corners of the coaming easy while leaving the 90 corners at deck plank level looking crisp and 3/64" thick. I darkened the lap joints and the joint between the coaming and grating with a pencil. I'm still working on the larger coaming. And though you can't tell from the photos, all three gratings have the camber that results from using the Syren min-kit. The last photo has the gratings just set in place on the deck for the sake of the photo. Erik

Thanks for all the 'likes' folks. This week I finished the margin planks/waterways. These took some time. Those scarph joints aren't easy to get clean and tight, but by the last one I had a system down. The 1/32" x 1/32" waterways were straight forward. The only real challenge there was making them 1/4 rounds. I did that by holding the square stock at a 45 degree angle on my cutting mat and running an emery board over the edge. I'd do a few inches at a time, and lightly sand back and forth about a dozen times as I worked my way down the length of the wood strip. I repeated this process two more times. I'm excited to move on to building the deck structures now. It will be a nice break from the various planking tasks I've worked on for the last couple of months (fancy molding, bulwarks, cap rail, margin planks, waterway). Erik

Druxey, Thanks for the kind words. One thing I like about the manual low-tech approach, being relatively new to the hobby, is it has helped me really understand the strengths and weaknesses of the boxwood I'm working with, and what it can and can't do. There really is something special about working with wood, as compared to styrene, plastic, resin, etc. It's hard to put into words, but there's an added level of enjoyment that working with the wood provides. Erik

With the holiday thrown in, my time to work on the Cheerful over the last week has been a bit limited. I did make some progress though. I'm part way through fabricating the margin planks. The 5 short planks across the stern were a bigger pain to get correct than I expected. I wound up scrapping 7 by the time I was satisfied with the 5 good ones you see here. The port side margin planks were slow going as well. I first made a 1/4" wide paper template in order to get the inner bulwarks shape correct as well as the location and basic shape of the scarph joints. I made a card stock mock-up of a scarph joint from Chuck's plans that I used to transfer the shape of the joint onto the margin planks after they were formed. As of now, I have all three port side margin planks complete, I just need to glue them together and attach them to the model. I added a photo of the tools I used to fabricate the margin planks. This photo actually shows about 90% of the entirety of the tools I've used to build my Cheerful. Not pictured are more files, sand paper, more emery boards, and some clothes pins and clamps. This project is very much a manual and low tech process for me! Erik

Thanks for the kind words and input guys. I appreciate the feedback! Erik Erik

I feel like I reached a bit of a milestone on my build today, so I have included a ton of photos in celebration! While being a perfectionist, things frequently don't turn out quite as well as I'd like, but I'm happy with the build so far. And it's turning out pretty well considering it's my first major wooden ship build, after my Model Shipways longboat project many years ago. Though there is still quite a ways to go on the project, with the exterior painting complete, there is a certain finished look now. I really like the lines of the Cheerful. I spent the week painting the cap rail, repainting the wales, and spending much time doing the final sanding of the hull and tweaking the finish (after viewing these photos, I cleaned up where the black paint meets the wood in the stern area). Now on to Chapter 7 of Chuck's monograph, and adding the deck fittings, and planking the deck. I have a couple of questions for you folks. I used Wipe-On Poly back on my longboat build. Applying it to the hull, and then applying any paint to those areas that needed it afterwards. On my Cheerful, I applied WOP above the wales way back when those were planked, but have since sanded it off as I cleaned up that planking in preparation to add the fancy molding. I never applied WOP anywhere else on the model. Now, as you can see, the hull has painted areas amongst the bare wood. I'm thinking I might not apply WOP at all. The hull has made it nearly 7 years with temperature and humidity fluctuations without any noticeable signs of aging. My questions then are, is it really necessary to apply some kind of protective coating to the wood? Has anyone here not applied WOP, or similar finish to their build? And if you did apply WOP to a model with areas that you already painted, how did you go about applying the WOP (apply it carefully around the painted sections, apply it to the painted areas also, etc)? Thanks! Erik

Thanks for the kind words and likes folks! This week's progress was getting the fancy molding on the edge of the cap rail. I used the same method as I did creating the other fancy molding, but once the profile was scraped in I sanded the back side down to reduce the 1/32" thickness so it wouldn't add too much to the overall cap rail width. My next task was making the stern gun port lids. Back when I completed the planking on the stern, the gun port interior framing did not line up correctly with the stern planking. A bit of an irritant, but I knew with the port lids modeled closed, it wouldn't be noticeable when all was said and done. The top photo below show the misaligned interior port and planking. The port lids pictured below are the 5th and 6th ones I made. I wanted to get the exterior planking lined up correctly as well as the lid interior level and lined up correctly also since you can see the individual boards under the slightly opaque covering of red paint (hard to see in these photos). The port lids are a bit Frankenstein-like, but look correct from both the interior and exterior. The port lid hinges were ordered from Chuck 7 or so years ago (it looks like he has updated those hinge kits since back then). To simulate the actual hinge I used .030" styrene rod painted black along with the hinge straps. The rings at the bottoms are made from the .016" wire that came with the port hinges secured with a small loop of .010" brass wire. Erik

I was out of town visiting family in Annapolis, Maryland, for a few days this week. While there, I went to the US Naval Academy Museum. Not my first visit there, but always a fun outing. And grabbing lunch downtown afterwards is a must as well. On the 2nd floor, the museum houses the Rogers Collection of wooden ship dockyard models, as well as newer built models from all eras of naval history on the 1st floor. If you haven't been to this museum, I highly recommend it. I did manage to make some progress on my Cheerful. I added the cap rail. The cap rail is 7 pieces cut out of 1/16" sheet. One piece for the stern, and 3 for each side. I have quality digital calipers accurate to .0001" to measure with, so getting the rail to a uniform width was easy enough, it just took some time to sand down. The cap rail measures in at a bit under 5/32" wide. I also fashioned the hawse plates out of 1/32" thick sheet. This was pretty straight forward with first cutting the plan out and then transferring the lines to the wood sheet. Drilling the hawse holes in the hawse plates and bulwarks was pretty easy as well. I had an issue with drilling and filing the bowsprit hole though. While the hole was aligned properly, parallel to the keel and level with the keel, I got a bit carried away with enlarging the diameter up to the final bowsprit diameter. When I inserted the a 5/16" drill bit shaft to double check the diameter, there was a little slop as it passed through the hawse plate. I did that thing where I tried to convince myself I could live with it. I couldn't. So, I pried it off and fabricated a new one. This time though I deliberately left the bowsprit hole a smaller diameter than what the bowsprit will be. I figure it makes the most sense to tweak the hole diameter when I have the bowsprit made, so I can adjust it to the actual diameter. Live and learn. Erik

Thanks for the likes. My progress this week has been to get the bulwarks painted. I used Vallejo brand Flat Red 70.957. I can't recommend Vallejo paints enough for brush painting. The pigment is extremely fine, and they're easy to apply without any visible brush strokes. I used a new 3/16" wide flat brush to apply 6 thin coats of paint. Every handful of strokes I dipped the brush tip into water to thin the paint, and then applied the paint over several seconds with around half a dozen strokes in a given area. It's important to stop brushing over the area before the paint starts to thicken (thickening causes the brush strokes to be visible). I didn't worry too much about how well each coat covered the surface knowing that I'd continue to apply more coats until I achieved a solid coverage. The important thing with each coat is even coverage with no visible brush strokes. Erik

Over the last week I planked the port side bulwarks. I spent a few hours today doing the final sanding of both sides of the bulwarks which included thinning the areas of the bulwarks tops that were thicker than the others in preparation for adding the cap rail. I carefully thinned the 1/32" thick spirketing to a thickness somewhere between 1/32" and 1/64". I then rounded the edge of the top spirketing plank a bit. Lastly I softened the edges on the stern frames to reflect the look of Chuck's visible stern frames on his Cheerful build. Erik

Mike, This looks great! It seems like you have to put a ton of effort into making sure the frames are level, centered, 90 degrees upright, etc. Erik

Wow Glenn. Your Winny looks superb. It's a very clean looking build. Erik

Ian, Thanks for the kind words! I have had your Cheerful build bookmarked. I like the way your Cheerful has more bare wood showing than most. It looks great! And thanks for noticing my efforts at getting good photos. It actually takes some time to set everything up. Since I photograph on my work surface, I have to move everything out of the way. And I can only really photograph on the weekends when I have time during the day while the sun is shining, as a good portion of the overall lighting is from a window. I added the 1/32" thick planks below the gun ports. I did these as hull length single planks to keep the plank run looking smooth. I also wound up adding a 1/32" x 1/32" strip along the bow area between the 1st and 2nd gun ports beneath the two main planks. This was probably unnecessary, but when I measured the gap it came out to be pretty close in height to what will be the 3/64" thick deck plank plus the 1/32" thick waterway. So, better safe than sorry. I then did a bit of sanding to thin the 1/32" planking as Chuck suggests in his monograph. Once I have the port side planking to the same point, I'll further thin both sides slightly, and round the hard edge a little. I've always found when modeling 2 sides that are supposed to be symmetrical, completing them to 90% or so, while working on first one side and then the other, and then finishing both sides at the same times helps make it easier to get them where they look identical. Erik

My progress over the last week has been to plank the first layer of planks of the starboard bulwark. With my extended time off from this build, 6 1/2 years, I sort of forgot how long it takes to get quality planking done! I had to break out the hair dryer again to get the bends toward the bow in the planks that sit below the gun ports. There was a bigger gap than I was comfortable with between the false deck and the bottom of the planks between the forward two gun ports, so I used 7/32" wide planks for the lower plank in that area. I wasn't too concerned with the finished look of the planks below the gun ports since they'll be covered with a second layer of planks. Once this first layer was sanded smooth, I measured the total thickness of the bulwark at the top. It comes in at 5/32", or a hair less. With this new layer of planking I then painted the frames of the gun ports. This revealed areas that needed sanding to hide the visible seam between the gun port frames and the interior planking. I used a hard sanding stick to do that. Then I applied another layer of paint. It seemed like a good idea to paint the gun port frames at this point as it also gives a good opportunity to visually confirm that the port frames are a proper shape and thickness. The next step is adding the layer of 1/32" thick planking below the gun ports. Erik

Thanks Mike! It's been nice to look through your recent builds. I've enjoyed your Winny, and now the Speedwell. Also, your on-hold Hayling Hoy is interesting. The fully framed builds are definitely graduate level modeling! Erik

Thanks for the likes and nice words guys. And it's always nice to get an 'Outstanding' from Chuck! I installed the false deck this weekend. I used a piece of 24" x 8" x 1/16" basswood. I cut it in half lengthwise and taped the two halves together. I cut the false deck template out of the plans. I then cut all the square deck furniture locators out of the paper plan. I used clear tape to tape this onto the Cheerful (The plan is wavy in my two photos below. It was reattached after the fact for these photos). The clear tape made it easy to locate the center line running through the cutouts. I then followed Chuck's instructions in the Monograph and used masking tape around the edges to get the actual size of the false deck. I removed this carefully and taped the false deck plan to the two basswood sheet halves, again using the clear taped sections of the deck furniture cut outs to locate the center line. Once that was done, I carefully removed the clear tape one section at a time and used the cutout borders to draw their locations on the wood false deck. Reapplying the tape to that square when finished and moving on to the next opening. Once the false deck was cut out of the basswood sheets, I faired the edges to get a good fit. I also wound up adding a thin basswood strip to the stern section of the deck. There had been a bigger gap than I wanted there. I installed each half of the false deck using the visible center of the middle of the five plies of the piece of plywood running lengthwise on the center line as the true center line. Lastly I enlarged the hole in the deck for the mast to it's actual size. I had left it slightly under size when attaching the decks halves, and trued it up afterwords to make sure it was precisely placed where it should be. Erik

I finished adding the fancy molding to my Cheerful. I planned ahead with the lower molding and didn't glue the portion that will be removed for the addition of the top boarding ladder step. I spent a few evenings thinning and fairing the inboard bulwarks. Yes, this was a messy pain in the butt. There was a bit of a learning curve to sand/fair the inside of a curve vs. fairing the hull planking. The bulwarks framing/gun ports measure in at a hair under 1/16" of an inch thick, which is what Chuck recommended in his monograph. I also faired the bulkhead tops so the false deck will sit flat on them. Lastly, I added the keel plates. I still haven't touched up the paint on the hull exterior, so the build still looks a bit rough at this point. I've decided I'll do that after the deck planking is finished. Erik