Brucealanevans

Received my replacement false deck pieces. Really appreciate MS service! Only working on this an hour or two a day due to other projects/interests. Placed the false deck and planked the forward bulkhead and the beak deck. Some rough edges in the doorways yet to be smoothed. Now on to the dreaded cannon port placement.

Yes I’ve used that service many times. Just wondered if I was missing something. Looked thru logs and saw nothing similar so I suspect bad pieces. Replacements requested. thanks for the advice and for the likes.

The fore and aft pieces are on different 1/32 sheets that are a significantly different color. The aft piece midline/division between the two pieces seems off. While the mizzen mast hole is on the midline. the hatch markings are, as seen asymmetric, and the edges don't line up with the fore pieces. Are these faulty pieces? I don't see how I can correct this by messing with the notches without throwing things off. Help please!

OK, Confederacy experts, now I need some help. I tried dry fitting the false deck pieces and it wasn't working. When I laid them out on a flat surface, got this:

And set back upright for the next steps:

Continuing to work at a slow pace, given other activities demanding my time. Finished with the stern structure. A fair amount of fiddling (including correcting things that migrated under clamping while the glue set, and, as is my habit, having to "unglue" and replace 2 pieces I cheerfully put in upside down) and a LOT of sanding. Using a small hand held battery driven Dremel tool with sanding drum to rough out some of that which helps a lot. Here's where things stand, now ready for placing the false deck:

It can be a surprise. I thought I was almost done with my CW Morgan, then it turned out making 5 whaleboats for hanging on the davits at the end took as much time as all the running rigging.

Finished with bulkhead faring. A lot of sanding. I was really quite diligent with this, probably more so than on the previous builds. Also put the shadowbox and its ribs in - again, a lot of sanding to bring it into line with the bulkheads. No surprises or issues thus far, but I'm about to start on the stern structure, the like of which I have not previously done. May not get going on this for a week or two with holiday and other projects. This will be a slow build.

Search hobby world USA for hobbyzone professional building slip. it was discussed quite a bit here a few years back. putting it together from diagram based instructions a bit of a PITA - you need to be very careful regarding part identification and orientation. Originated in Poland I think. there is a smaller one nowhere near as flexible.

Thanks. "More Options" staring me right in the face. Duh.

I've decided to dig into my stash and take out the oldest resident there: Model Shipways USF Confederacy. This is going to be a slow build, because I only have a couple of hours a day to devote to it; too many other kinds of projects going on. Since there are a very large number of both old and new build logs of the Confederacy, I'm not going to post a blow by blow description. Plan on periodic updates and asking advice for problems encountered since many have built this model. I was relieved to find the kit had the good plywood, and there was no warping despite its period of neglect. I dusted off the snazzy build board I bought primarily for this build once I determined that this big mother would fit. The building "board" is amazingly flexible once you figure out how to arrange all the bits depending on what you want to do. I just moved the model up from the base clamp once I finished placing the bulkheads, filler blocks, stern and bow fillers, and fitted balsa blocks at the bow. So, ready for faring. The board apparatus allows for rotation of the model, and some clamps (visible in the photo below) holds it rock steady together with the fore and aft clamps. I've got it turned to work on the starboard faring, and will start that soon. It looks like I will have plenty of clearance for constructing the stern pieces, and other than rotating from side to side I should be able to do all of the upper planking at least with the current positioning of the attachment points. Pretty neat. Planning pretty much an out of the box build, perhaps except replacing the cannon with Chuck's. I wish he still had replacement figurehead though. That's all for now.

OK maybe I'm missing something obvious, but when I click the gallery tab I see "recent" images but see no gallery specific search function or any way to switch to a list view. What obvious thing am I not seeing?

As I recall the rudders are missing or at least very hard to find in the instructions (no longer have). Worth investing in Kurt’s cd of his magazine series. (See further up here)

Going to take a break for a bit. The house is filling up with ships. I think I’ll eventually be diving to the bottom of my stack and take on the Confederacy. I need something that will take a while to do well and I’m still not anxious to take on a big rigging job. I do wish Chuck still had some of the nice figureheads....