EdS

Nothing new on the build itself but I thought I would share a few photos I found of the original Norske Love drawings. I plan on scratch building some the elements found in these drawings into my build, especially the galley stove. Cheers

Planking the lower gun deck went faster than I expected. I was going for a three butt pattern but screwed up my measurements and end up with a two butt pattern (if there is such a thing). Used an ordinary pencil to mark the sides of the planks and a set of dividers to make holes simulating tree nails. Had to get creative in "clamping" the planks, surprisingly there were both mostly full. Because I used pencil on the planks to simulate the caulking and the tree nails I was leery about sanding the deck too much and getting a lot of smearing. Luckily I kept my cabinet scrappers from when I had a wood shop, they did a fairly decent job of getting the planks to the smoothness I wanted. I didn’t plank the whole deck just the parts that will be or might be visible. Ready for stain but haven’t decided on the right colour yet. The instructions call for mahogany stain but I think it would be too dark.

Interesting build, here in Halifax we have her sister the Sackville, the last surviving corvette. https://hmcssackville.ca/ Looking forward to see how it goes.

Started planking the upper gun deck, this will be a slow tedious process I think. I am using 1/32 X 3/16th basswood strips and dividing them into three lengths, 40mm, 80mm and 120mm. As mentioned in my last post, Billing Boats are light on instructions and the only direction for planking is this image: There is no indication in that diagram the very tip of the bow is to be planked but on the 1 to 1 diagrams it is shown as planked. When building a billing kit one must read, reread and study all diagrams to find out how things are suppose to go. And when that fails there is always google. I built a simple planking jig to speed up the cutting process but still have not made much progress so far. I lay about four planks to each side of the king plank at a time. I know I could speed this up quite a bit by laying more planks at once but the other project in the ship yard eats up the rest of the time I have to work this hobby. Hope to make the next update once the upper gun deck is fully planked and ready to move on to the next step. Cheers

I have decided to start this build log because there is not a lot of information on the Norske Love out there. I have spent hours crawling around the web looking for a completed build log and was only able to find one. It is not just information on the model ship kit that is lacking but also acquiring information about the real life ship has been challenging. The up side to this is I’m working with pretty much a blank slate. I bought this kit online from Great Hobbies PEI, Canada in July 2019 and it has been sitting on my shelf as I completed other projects. This will be my second Billing Boats build so I am very much aware of the lack of instructions common with Billing Boats. However the detailed one-to-one drawings are a definite plus and require careful study to figure out where pieces fit. Right off the start the lumber provided for the keel was twisted. I tried to straighten it by soaking it in warm water overnight then clamping it to my build board. No good. I ended up cutting the keel from one of wood panels that contained the laser cut bulkhead pieces. Made of plywood instead of solid lumber it is dead straight and true. The notch at the bottom of some of the bulkhead pieces was only 7mm so they had to be carefully braced while fitting. Placed a one Krone coin on the keel for good luck. The first deck required a little tweaking to get it fit but the two sections lined up pretty good. The instruction called for the deck planking to be drawn on with pencil but I am going to use wood stock so I used nails to secure the deck to the bulkhead frames. So that is the start, I still work full time so this will not be a fast moving build. I hope to complete this project within three to four years but we shall see. Also my math skills are better than my english ones so grammar police take no offence. Cheers

Thanks for the welcome, got a feeling I will be needing help sooner than later with this planking business. I am at the stage to start planking but need to read up more on it first. Cheers

Hi my name is Edward and just started modelling, needed a hobby I can do from an apartment. Like many others here I am starting with the HMS Bounty Jolly boat for my first project and hope to build up skills to be able to tackle the HMS Surprise. I have read lots of good tips located on this site already and look forward to the support if I get in jam during the build. Cheers Edward