JeffT

Very nice!

Thanks George

Planking is definitely one of the more challenging aspects of building a ship. Yours looks good so far.

That worked out well.

Thanks Mark. I assume the pencils are used to hold the PE parts? I think I will try the varnish first.

Progress update. It looks like I'm a little behind on my build log. I finished most of the main hull work, just have to put the photo etch details on. Here is a couple of pics of the progress. I wanted to show how I'm assembling the ladders. I was struggling to get them squared up properly. I used an angle block to steady things up (shaky hands). Here I clamped one side of the ladder to a machinist square and lined up the slot just a hair above the top of the square. Then I glued the ladder step on with just a tiny bit of CA glue to be sure it didn't stick to the metal. This worked great to make sure everything was square. The ladder step sits flat on top of the square and I used the back of the square as a reference to line up the step. I did one step on both sides of the ladder on opposite ends and ended up with this. Then I glued both halves together and finished installing the steps. I reinforced the steps with glue on the back sides of the steps. Current progress. I really struggled with getting the quarter galleries built but it turned out okay. I had to scratch build some of the parts as the kit parts just wouldn't work. I really screwed this up somehow. I also had to butcher one of the lower pieces of PE to get tit to fit below the lower rail. Not sure why it turned out that way. I'm not sure how I will approach the PE along the port and starboard. A couple of pieces are pretty long and somewhat easy to distort. I don't know yet how I will put them on the model. I may separate them into smaller pieces. I painted the top of the channel knees black to cover up the char that remained. Stern view. The PE on the right is slightly off target and may have to debond and fix it, or not. The stern and the rudder were both kind of like little models all by themselves. I enjoyed the process of completing them. The bow. Not a great picture but I painted the inside of the bow parts blue to cover up the char. I started assembling some of the deck components while I think about the PE. I chose to have the hinges and the door handles face outwards on the forward bulkhead. I just think its a nice detail to not hide. I had to make some adjustments to the deck beams as they were a little too wide. Probably because I couldn't use the jigs after I broke all the tabs off (accidentally). I test fitted all deck beams and most needed some adjustment. Of course that means the deck itself will need some work to get a good fit 🤔

Looking good!

I order directly from AK.

Looks very nice. The colors add life to the model.

Looks like you got this.

Best hinges I've seen to date.

Good to see. Laser char is a pain on fragile parts.

Can the digital version of the magazine be downloaded?

Glad to see you got it sorted out.

I do have some concerns about this style of building jig. I can add this to the list. I agree you shouldn't have to go through all of this.

Sorry to hear that ir3. I haven't started to assemble frames yet, so feeling a little worried.

Looks great. I do like the way the stern galleries go together. I has some troubles getting the Sphinx galleries lined up correctly.

I think I would widen the slot.

Looks very good.

Hello Andrew. It looks like you had two logs for this build. I removed one of them so post your updates here.

Nice planking, looks really good.

Very nice. I do like to color of the wood.

I've used balsa and it works well