gsdpic

Looks like you are pretty well along in this build. There is (at least) one other build log of this kit here, by @Greg Davis. It is a bit hard to tell but it looks like he glued the control wheel to the inside of the frame instead of over the frame. Look at post 100 on page 4.

Are you attempting to upload an apple HEIC file? In the past, it was possible to upload those files but the forum software would not display them. But it seems like some time recently it changed so that the upload was blocked with "error 200". I've not experienced this but it came up in another build log I follow. You need to either convert the pictures from HEIC to JPG or change the setting on the phone to take JPG to begin with (the setting is something about using most compatible picture format).

Thanks Glen. I guessed you'd like it, given your soft spot for penguins appearing in build logs! And yea, it is just two pictures of one penguin, not two penguins. It is destined to be a birthday gift for a dear friend who is a fan of penguins and who is in the process of moving away from Texas. Your comment helps reassure me that she will like it. I'll find out in about a week.

And again, a bit more progress. I now have those 8 planks that I tapered attached to the hull, four on each side. So I now have done a total of 6 planks on each side (not counting the garboard and broad strakes) with 9 more to go. I re-evaluated the tapering and things still look mostly on track, though I might need to taper slightly more than I have been from the last bulkhead to the transom. Also, from the stem, the space remaining on the starboard side is ever so slightly greater than on the port side so I need to compensate for that as well. I have not been doing any soaking or steaming of the planks, though I have been using a heat gun/hair dryer to apply a little bit of edge bend to the front 6 inches or so of each plank. A few planks, especially on the starboard side, still have a fair amount of "clinkering". I hope I am not depending too much on filler and sanding to get a smooth hull, we'll see. Here's what it looks like now. Obviously I will clean up the junction of the planks with the transom, maybe put on some sort of "fashion piece" to hide the end grain. That's it for the update on the sloop, though I mentioned another project. I am quickly approaching a milestone, the second anniversary of my retirement. If, like me, you watch too many youtube videos about retirement leading up to that milestone, you will surely hear the phrase "retire to something, not from something" as well as the related idea that the "to something" might be many different somethings that you want to try out to see if you have a passion or aptitude for that something. Anyway, for me, one of those somethings is wood carving. It is not clear yet if I have passion or aptitude for it, but I've now completed 5 or 6 carvings, mostly little dogs or birds. Below is the latest example. Most people realize that Texas is a vast and varied landscape, with many, many different geologic features and climate regions. However, most people, including most Texans, do not realize that out in the vast, sparsely populated areas of west Texas, there are.......penguins! Yes, that's right. Below is my depiction of the extremely rare Texas penguin. And yes, just like with ship modeling, the macro photography and bright lights reveal some places that need a bit of touch up, sigh. I also realize now there is no indication of scale here....he's about 3 inches tall.

Yes, some, if not all of the AL kits have all the documentation on a CD. You should also be able to download it from their web site. Go to the main page of MSW, to the list of sponsors, including AL. Click on their logo to go to their site then search for your kit and look for a link to instructions, which should also include a list of parts. When I built an AL kit (the sopwith camel) I copied the instructions to an iPad and used that to look at them while building. It was still a bit awkward, always fearing that I had glue or paint on my finger before touching the iPad, but I can certainly understand why they do it. Good luck with the build.

Nice start, I'll follow along. I have this kit in my stash. I was inspired and very impressed by @Katsumoto's heavily bashed build of this kit and knew I wanted to try it some day. Then late last year I realized that this kit was no longer shown on OcCre's web site, as if it had been discontinued. But I found that Ages of Sail still had it in stock so I bought one for the stash. Not sure when I will attempt it. As for the deck, maybe it would work to first just glue and nail down the center line of the deck along the spine. Then once that glue dries, work from the center out to the edges. I know you said you tried something similar but you did not mention any glue or letting it dry. Putting nails into the edge of plywood is not the most secure way of fastening something, as you found out when you tried to bend the edges down.

Wow, very neat and tidy results, especially for a first boat, though I presume you may have other modeling experience. Hope to see you take on and document something more challenging. Any plans for what's next?

Ok, time for my weekly "I got a little bit done" post. I've actually been working on a separate project involving wood and am nearing completion on that. Perhaps I'll show it here when done. And in another week or so I should have more free time for about two weeks. So, I hope that progress speeds up at least for a little while. I am still a bit puzzled by the tapering of the planks. As mentioned the instructions give some measurements to use for tapering but as far as I can see, the table does not indicate which end of the plank is for the bow and which is for the stern. I can guess, but am not certain. I also measured the bulkheads myself to get an idea of the tapering but with so few reference points/so few bulkheads, it leaves a lot of uncertainty, especially regarding the amount of taper between the stem and first bulkhead or between the last bulkhead and the transom. So, I've mostly just decided to wing it. One other note.....the kit provides a thicker basswood transom piece and a thinner mahogany transom piece, both laser cut to the same size. If I were doing this kit again, I'd cut about 3/32" off of the sides and bottom of the basswood piece and then mount the mahogany piece on it, leaving a bit of an overhang to butt the planks up against. Ok, so the bit of progress....first, a picture of tapering the planks. I just clamped together 8 planks then used a small plane to shave off some of the edge on both ends of the planks. The planks start out at one quarter inch wide and by my measurements need to be about 0.2" wide or slightly less at the ends. The next picture showing that I've attached the two full width planks below the sheer and one tapered plank on one side of the boat. I'll keep alternating from side to side with these 8 tapered planks and then reassess where I am at with the tapering requirements before tapering another batch of planks.

Look for photography "CTO filter film" or "CTO filter gel". CTO is (I think) color temperature orange. You can get it in varying strengths (1/8, 1/4, 1/2, full, etc) to adjust how much affect it has. In photography, it is used to warm up the light from flashes and strobes. Here's an example from amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Lighting-Transparent-Photography-Colored-Flashlight/dp/B0DB8CV8MY/ref=sr_1_10?crid=1TLZ9JT93EEHP&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.x0wTrENnH-2vuwJlVYDhS-un3odqtXIV6wNY_PGochC0diU2uC8BKnx_arZWnWG9Q91MmggcYRwC9q_pKqp4Ad3slkOlV8g8u32aGBXO9q0MKtS2QS1bMHQs0usGxOFc4RIUbNlxfZAzGvZ_BXFNmdHZ2UfMJgiFAMIWmkepIQPgfhQIJ0tqkA2XvGO4yAW1U2Fu7H6OHAmA0V1TkvZa4krowKNwvpIgb2xiT-t_6io.K5-wDVyk_QTNtgA3r_Y61cJ0wnFNE2dasjN-ShlLgWA&dib_tag=se&keywords=cto+filter+film&qid=1740919732&sprefix=cto+filter+film%2Caps%2C189&sr=8-10

Wow that is a lot of very precise cutting to fit those planks between the grates. Very nicely done!

Wow, looks great! Did you do all the sanding and polishing by hand?

Sorry for not updating in a while. I've been distracted by some other projects. But I finally got back to work on this build a little bit today, placing one plank on each side at the sheer. I've not yet glued them to the transom as that will take some creative clamping. This plank and the next are both full width but subsequent planks will be tapered some both fore and aft.

Or you could add lots of splatters of oil and blobs of rubber as if it just finished a long race.

Looks like a Barred Owl to me.

Oh man, that is sad to see. I think I’d let the clear dry then try to carefully sand off the blobs then do another coat or two of clear. Good luck with whatever you try; we have faith that you’ll overcome this challenge. If you get to the point of binning the kit, don’t do that, send it to me 😎. Just kidding I am sure you can recover from this.

I have put on the two laser cut planks on both sides now. Just above them are two planks that are 3/8ths inch wide, while the rest of the hull is planked with 1/4 inch wide planks. I've put on those two 3/8" planks and also glued on the transom, as can be seen in the pictures below. Though obviously I still need to cut the planks to meet up with the transom. The instructions suggest switching now to work from the sheer down with the 1/4" planks. The instructions even give a small diagram and table suggesting how to taper the planks. e.g. plank #7 is tapered 1/8" over 7 inches on one end and over 9 inches on the other end. Unfortunately, I don't find anywhere that indicates which end of the plank is which....is the 9 inch taper at the bow or at the stern? It is also a little odd that they have the planks nearer the keel tapered more than the upper planks. I'll likely just measure things out and do the tapering on my own.

Excellent small scale work as always. And good plan to escape the winter. When I visit family in Indiana in the winter I always wonder why/how people live there and I am sure Maine winters are worse. Though I admit I've had thoughts of moving back to Indiana. And you've got your glass of red wine. I've always felt that wine and x-acto knives are not a good combo Of course I'm pretty uncoordinated even without the wine.

I should have included this initially....here's a picture of the cockpit of the completed model. You can just see the rudder yoke. I can fairly easily stick my finger in and touch the control stick but no way to get all the way to the rudder pedals.

I was just looking at your review of this kit earlier today and was quite impressed. I'll eagerly follow along to see how it all goes together.

First, thanks for the pointer to my build log. I hope it helps you or others. I'll be interested to follow along this ambitious project. The kit was, at times, challenging, and your modifications will only add to that. I admit though that I was both a bit disappointed and a bit relieved when I realized the kit did not have moving control surfaces as you propose to do. Looking at your plans above, I have two concerns. First, on the finished model, the rudder pedals are barely visible, let alone accessible to move with your finger. So while it might be cool to have the rudder pedals move the rudder you might need some alternate way to actually cause that motion. Second, in your picture of the wings and ailerons, it appears that the control horns are on the top of both the upper and lower wing. I believe that the control horns on the lower wing must be on the bottom, else you would end up trying to move something by pushing the cable. On the AL kit, the lower wing control horns are on the bottom so I assume you would have discovered this at some point but thought it better to point it out now while you are still planning.

Yea these older kits with the bare minimum number of bulkheads can be tricky. Hope I can do it justice. Welcome aboard Glen

They sometimes say to treat each plank as its own little project and that is definitely the case for the first few planks on this model. I put on the port side triangular plank, and then did the starboard side second plank which was also laser cut. I am not quite sure of the terminology here....I am aware of the term "garboard plank" but not sure how it applies in this case with that triangular plank mostly over the deadwood, followed by a plank that maybe fits the term garboard plank better even though it is the second plank up in the stern. The plank is tricky as the bottom edge needs to be adjusted to fit tightly but the plank also needs to twist from near vertical at the stem and stern to 45 degrees or so in the middle. I first attempted doing some paper or card templates to get the bottom shape but it was impossible to do without getting some distortion. I also tried just holding the plank up and marking it but that was unwieldy. I ended up actually cutting the plank in two pieces to make it easier, with the cut being at the second bulkhead. I added scrap wood to the bulkhead to give more gluing surface. Also at the fourth bulkhead the plank is about 5/8ths inch wide but needs to fit into a concave curve in the bulkhead. To help that, I scored the inside of the plank. Unfortunately one of those was a bit deep and the plank ended up cracking there. With all that, I managed to fit the plank and glue them in. On both pieces, I glued and clamped one end of the plank, let that dry, then glued and clamped the other end. In the end, it all came out ok especially considering the hull will be painted. Here's the plank cut in two. I ended up shaving off some of the bottom of the plank in the area of bulkhead three (left edge of this picture) and also in the curve on the right side of this picture. I also angled the bottom of the plank for a better fit in the mid section. The scoring on the inside of the plank to facilitate the longitudinal curve: The scrap wood added to bulkhead 2 to give more gluing surface: The two plank pieces glued and clamped. I had previously glued/clamped the ends of the plank around bulkhead 2. Here I am gluing the opposite ends of the two pieces. And after the glue has set. Yea, far from perfect but as I said, it will all be painted so I can hide some of the seams. I promise I won't keep posting for every single plank.

Excellent and quick progress on this build. Bluejacket lists some brass pedestals on their web site though it appears to me the top slot is too narrow for your needs. Perhaps they might be able to suggest something.

I did not glue on the transom yet, but I have started some planking. The kit includes two laser cut planks per side for just above the keel. I've put on the first of those on the starboard side, which goes from the stern post about half or two thirds of the way to the front. It was a small challenge to get it to fit nicely and to shape it in a pretty good twist. The next plank above it will be even more of a challenge to do, I think.

Thanks for the likes or just looking in. I've been working on shaping the transom. It is much better now but still far from perfect. However, it is not entirely clear what "perfect" would look like. I will probably go with what I have now, do the planking and then perhaps do a trim piece around the transom edge to hide any plank edges, etc. I am thinking I will leave this transom piece unpainted, just treated with varnish or tung oil, so I am hoping for a relatively neat finish.