Jonesey

Mark, your health is far more important than building a ship!

Get yourself well before you even set foot back in the shipyard

The pink tube you can see in the vice is from an old vacuum cleaner.

I cut it down, applied a dozen or so layers of gaffa tape on the end to seal it, put red hot water in it for plank softening

I can't believe it's been so ling since I posted, or indeed worked on the model

Anyway, I've reached a milestone of sorts - the first layer of planking is now  complete

The hull is riddled with errors & mistakes, some avoidable, some entirely of my own making and some due to a total lack of experience

This is my first ever attempt at planking

See what you think

And as luck would have it, my usual supplier - Cornwall Model Boats - are out of stock 🥺

Thanks all.

Looks like I ordered #1

Can someone tell me what the difference is between these 2 blades? 

I need some more of the larger ones, but the ones which arrived are the smaller ones

Thanks

I believe you make these from one of the rounded dowels, cut in half and the centre portion cut out (it alludes to this in the diagram)

Hi Eugenio

Progress has been very slow this last year - work & life always get in the way

However, I've moved the shipyard from the garage to our old kitchen area which doesn't get any use and intend to carry on in the warm throughout the winter.

My first layer of planking is progressing - I'm hopeful this is the most complex part of the build, but time will tell!

Yep. Corel instructions leave a LOT to be desired.

It's sometime quite unfathomable exactly what you're supposed to do and crucially, in which order

Personally I think you'd be better off planking the deck yourself

Colour one long edge and one short edge of each plank with a black felt tip (one that doesn't run!) to simulate the calking before applying glue

Looking good David!

Patience is definitely the key

Yes, regarding that Elmers link on Amazon UK, it says "product currently unavailable" which is a shame

Your build looks absolutely fine so far, well done

I'm delaying the option to fit copper tiles until I see how the first layer of planking turns out.

I'm more or less at the same point as you on my Corel build but the really challenging parts are up next - lower hull/stern/bow

I'd post some pictures but I'm currently soaking up the sun in Gran Canaria 😎

Had a bit of an accident tonight.

I snapped off the top of one of the bulkheads 😕

After sanding the edges down there was a gap of about 2 mm which meant the piece I intended to glue back on was 2mm lower than it should be, so I had to make a small filler to raise it back up

If it all sticks ok, it shouldn't be a problem as the top deck isn't glued down yet and the offending piece will be hidden on the outside by the hull planking and on the inside, it's covered by the top deck

Set me back by another evening though. 

Thanks for the pictures mate, just what I was after

Looking good mate.

Next time you take some photos, could you do a couple looking at the stern?

I'm curious as to how it all fits together back there

Hi DA

Regarding your plan to glue whilst the wood is still wet - don't forget the wood can/will shrink when drying and the last thing you want is for unsightly gaps to open up on your hull

Best to dry fit and shape whilst wet, let dry, then glue.

Had a break from stern fillers today and did some other stuff

Finished installing the gun port backings and painted them black.

Cut, shaped and dry fitted the deck beams part 28

Tested the fit of one blank without bending, just to get a feel for how much bending is required

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed today's efforts

The lower deck I've attempted to age it. I applied some walnut stain (which comes out black) then scraped it back to reveal the original surface.

The walnut has really penetrated into the deck but looking it closely, it's left some lovely black lines in the grain after scraping

I'm not worried about some of the blacker areas towards the front & rear of the deck as these areas will be hidden by the main deck

Of course I don't mind. Great to have you on board my friend

Just as I'm following your build 

Plenty of dry fitting to come!

Thank you Sea Hoss (great name & avatar)

Nice insight Phil. 

I did manage to look at a couple of pictures from Challenger's build and they show about 80% of what I'd like to see, but I think a germ of a plan is forming inside my less than stellar mind - so I'll let it runs it's course and see what it comes up with

Thank you

Thank you Vane for your kind words of encouragement

I must admit it's a bit disheartening to ask questions which seem to be ignored by members of the community

All I'm really trying to avoid is making mistakes but with some of these issues I seem to be literally making it up as I go along with little or no guidance

I will keep on muddling through as best I can

I'm so glad I found this thread.

I'm having the same problem with the stern fillers as Rob was having way back on page 1

Beautiful build by the way. Looking forward to planking now and hopefully getting the hull finished

Which brings us to my issue.

Looking at the plans, plates E & F show the placing of the stern fillers

I'm concerned about how these actually get shaped into place

Looking at the diagram in E, you can see the original piece supplied by Corel mounted on the frame.

The piece shown on the right of the figure shows a dotted line which is meant to be carved out.

So far so good

Now compare it to the diagram labelled F

looking vertically down, the piece is shaped with a nice curve where it attaches to frame 14

But in E, it's shown as a straight cut which doesn't make sense.

Likewise, the taper of the bottom of the piece in F again shows a curve, but in E there appear to be more material left than is carved out in F

Totally confused by this. I don't want to remove too much material as correcting this afterwards would be a major pain and I want to try and get this right.

so, any ideas dear people?

Hi all

It's been a while since I last posted so a quick update followed by my current problem.

Work has been slow just having evenings & weekends to work in the shipyard, but I've done the lower deck planking, fitted the bow filler pieces, installed the gun port backing on the starboard side and have started work on the stern fillers