Eric S.

Shortly after my last post I broke one of the floor boards while sanding and couldn’t get the rudder/ gudgeon/ pintles to work and got frustrated and set the model aside for a while.  Built an rc car kit and a couple plastic planes and came back to this earlier this summer.  Crafted a new floorboard and soldered the rudder assembly together and am back on track. 

Thanks for the helpful replies!  I decided to sanded the hole slightly larger and to let the mast rest on the hull.  I put a thin piece of scrap on the hull to reinforce it.  

I broke the mast step and noticed others have had this happen as well.  I built a new one from a solid piece of scrap wood and have a couple of questions.

• Should I err on having the mast hole slightly too large or too small?  I don’t seem to have a drill bit exactly the right size.
• The step sits inclining upwards - should the drilled hole also have a slight tilt so the mast is straight up and down?
• As others have noted, both mast step pieces have holes.  Is a solid bottom piece needed or does setting the mast on the hull work?  Seems like the extra distance to the hull would stabilize the setup a bit.

Thanks for any suggestions.

The experience with the Dory led to a relatively more confident process planking this model, but it is still quite challenging and there are so many times that I’m frustrated with the result.  Lesson from the previous build is to keep going and it seems to end up ok.

Finished building the Dory and it’s on to the Norwegian Sailing Pram

Replying to Lessard from above, I found this project after a couple of missteps.  I tried building a couple of kits, the 18th century longboat and the Phantom NY pilot boat, and they were beyond my skills.  I ended up throwing them out .  But I was still interested in building a wooden model and I noticed the Grand Banks Dory and the progression of kits in a Model Shipways advertisement and decided to give it another try.  Really happy I did so and am now on to the Norwegian Sailing Pram.  The Dory is a very nice intro kit.

I seem to have stopped taking pictures at this point, but did get a few shots of the final product.  On to the Norwegian Sailing Pram.  Thanks to Model Shipways for a fun project that has me excited for the next model in the series.

There were a number of times where I felt like the planks weren’t lining up and I couldn’t figure out a way to tie it all together, but I stuck to it and eventually got the boat planked up.

I felt frustrated to not be able to line everything up but found that a bit of patience and some sanding takes the imperfections out.

The instructions are clear and it wasn’t long before I found myself getting ready to set my first plank

Hi – I’m Eric and this is my first post to the site.  I’m primarily a plastic modeler – boats, cars, armor, airplanes – but have long had an interest in wooden boats/ships.  I fell prey to buying a couple of kits that were way beyond my abilities before deciding on a kit that was more appropriate and bought the Dory.

I meant to create a thread while building the model but only took pictures and did not post any updates.  I got so much help from the completed builds, however, that I felt that I wanted to share some of the pictures of my Dory build.