desalgu

Thank you for going into a lot of detail on how you built and rigged the tiny pop-gun cannons. I struggled on Syren, and I can see part of the problem was doing it with the cannons already glued to the deck. Much easier to do as much as you can before mounting. I'm one of those that needs some lessons in tying knots. No fishing experience, and I've seen the standard knot diagrams which I find a bit confusing. I can see quad-hands is very useful for this, and I'm sure many other things, so will get one of those. In general, I've gotten frustrated doing knots, so invariably resort to simple overhand ones. Unless you take closeups, it's often hard to tell the difference, but I'd still like to learn how to do it the correct way. There's always a reason why certain knots are used. I've used weathering powder a little on model airplanes, there are many brands. On Syren I used some on the white hull of the long boat to dull it slightly making it look not quite so clean white. Also used it to darken or take the shine off the tan rigging line a little by rubbing line between by fingers with weathering powder (this was with model expo rigging line included in the kit). Some of the airplane guys do incredible weathering on their models. Might be something to think about on future model ship. I'm always amazed at how good your work looks in closeup photos!

This is really looking nice, beautiful work as always! You're making great progress, and I like the tree nails on the keel. I guess I'm a little confused about what was inaccurate about the hull plans. Is it just the plans that aren't right, but the bulkheads are shaped correctly? Or did you have to modify shape of some of the bulkheads to get the "right" contours?

I removed the strengtheners and bulkhead tabs along the bulwarks and cleaned them up with little chisel and sanding. I had no problems doing this, and the mini chisel made smoothing things out easy. Now I have a clear sub-deck.

Since I've been thinking I'd not paint the hull below waterline white, I wanted to see how it would look stain and with coat of wipe-on poly. I used a "golden pecan" stain which is not dark. From tests it's not much different than using wipe-on poly without stain. Here's some pictures:

And here's port side.

Finished planking hull! I enjoy planking until I get about halfway, and then it starts to get old. I've never been too good at repetitious stuff. Here's pictures of starboard side. Closeups always look worse than it actually does, but show where I need to do more sanding, and perhaps a little filler, although I'll go real easy with filler.

I bought Shapton ceramic sharpening stones from Lee Valley. Probably overkill, but they should last for a long, long time. Both sharpening stones and Krell honing guide have been recently delivered, but haven't tried them yet. Looks like they will work great. I like Derek's idea of using wet or dry sandpaper (I have some 600 and 1500 grit) on glass. That's a great idea and would have saved some money buying stones. Oh well! I'll certainly use chisels when I start cutting bulkheads along inner bulwarks, and I'm sure I'll find many other uses.

Also ordered Veratas mini chisels and they look very useful. For some reason I was surprised at how small they are, but perfect for building models. Also ordered Richard Krell honing guide and a couple of sharpening stones which I should get before too long. I learned about these tools from reading build logs. Many thanks to everyone for writing them!

I haven't posted for a while, because I haven't been working much on the Duchess and it's just planking. I finally got one side planked. Fitting in the last ones was a bit tedious. I ended up needing a drop plank, but didn't realize it until it was too late to do it the correct way, so I improvised. I made one plank transition into two planks near the bow. I'll probably be the only one that knows (and now you all, ha!). Here's couple of photos of current status. I have the lower section of starboard side left, plus a lot of sanding.

I agree, excellent explanation of your technique. I found it very interesting, and I like the idea of using wood battens. For some reason I never thought about that. Seems to me like they would lie on the hull more smoothly and more like a plank than thread or tape (I tried tape and ended up sketching line with pencil based on tape...it was not very precise). Thanks for taking time to write it up!

Your planking is looking awesome to me! Planking around gun ports looks very clean and neat. You could certainly give me a lesson or two! I agree with all the comments above about small differences between the two sides. It would take strips of wood cut to extremely close tolerances to get both sides the same. Only way to have a chance of doing that is to cut your own. But I don't think it will matter for reasons pointed out above.

And here's photo of planking in what I'm starting to call the dreaded stern area. I suspect this is more difficult for me because this is the first time I've planked this type of stern. Like anything, it obviously takes practice. I ended up having to put a tiny piece of filler wood between two planks about where the stern post and bottom of counter meet. I needed a plank with a sharp edge bend and was unable to make the bend without cracking the wood. Later on I realized I probably could have tapered the adjacent plank more to avoid as sharp of edge bend. And of all things, I've had a little trouble fitting planks in the stern post rabbit, which I thought should be easy. I'll think I have it fitting good, but then apply glue, and hold it in place, only to find out I didn't get it positioned exactly the same way. I'm using medium CA glue, so there's only a few seconds working time. I should know better than to think something is "easy"! I'm hoping with adequate sanding I can get it to look decent. At least it's in an area that won't show too much when the boat is finished. Of course, I'll know it's there. I get to repeat this process on the other side of the hull, so hoping I can do a better job.

Here's closer view of the bow planking. I've just done rough sanding on it. As a side note, I bought the foam soft sanders and find them very useful.

I haven't posted anything in a while. Got a little sidetracked with other stuff, plus I've been going real slow with planking. I think I'm doing ok on the bow, but the stern area has been giving me problems. Here's photo of where I'm at. You can see I did the garboard plank along the keel plus 2 more rows of planks. Then I started working down toward these planks. About 6 more planks should fill in the gap.

I sometime use one or sometimes the other. I usually try the chamfer in your diagram, because it removes the least material. If that doesn't fit and it looks or feels like a bevel might work better, I try that. I try to only take off what I need to. I think it's easy to overdo and take off too much. I think I've done that a few times. I'm learning too on this. I think tapering or contouring the plank is more difficult and critical than beveling. I get impatient and sometimes when I can't get a perfect fit, I glue it anyway. Other times I think I have a good fit, but when I apply glue, it doesn't seem to fit as well as my test fit, and it's too late at that point. I'm better about this now than last time around, but I'm still constantly fighting it.

Glenn, don't worry about adding to my log. I find everyone's comments real interesting. Just wanted to let everyone know, this is what I do also. I only taper the top edge of plank and then bevel the top edge of the entire plank. I'll bevel it a little first, test fit, and then bevel a little more in places, if I think it needs it. It takes practice, and I'm still learning. In general doing better than Syren, but I certainly feel like I could do better. Too often I don't realize it's not quite right until it's too late. I've had a minor problem planking across a joint. Sometimes the plank widths don't match perfectly. I try to sand them to get them fitting real nice, but have missed a few. If the width of the two planks at a joint aren't all but perfect, then the next plank down won't fit right. I've been a little surprised at how "perfect" the fit has to be. It's another of those things that's a matter of feel, literally! And lots of practice.

Here's photo looking straight on from bow. Ideally planking on both sides should match up, but I'm off a little. Tells me I didn't taper planks same on both sides. I used tick marks on hull, but found it difficult to transfer marks to planks, and then cut/sand planks to match the tick marks. So after 2-3 planks I'm off track. I may redo tick marks more frequently as I plank further downward, and of course, try to taper planks more accurately.

Here's a closeup of the stern planking. For a first try at this style of stern, it's ok. I thought I held planks tightly while gluing, but still missed a couple. Either that or a small glue-filled gap appeared after a little sanding, probably from not getting beveling right. I don't see any of this until I take closeup photos and then know where to look. I doubt anyone will notice when finished, but I'll know!

Here's port side bow. I believe I've gotten better bending planks to fit, but need a lot of practice tapering planks.

I'm still planking, so not a whole lot to report. I finished the upper section of both sides of the hull, and did some rough sanding. I wasn't paying close attention (a problem of mine) and randomly grabbing strips of pear wood for planking. But pear has different shades, some strips darker, some lighter. I'll remember next time around to try to use strips of a similar shade next to each other.

Glenn, thanks for the suggestion on build log. I'll try to do that next time. Got pretty carried away with last block of text. I'm kind of bad about writing too much! Started planking upper part of port side today.

I had divided the hull into two sections, an upper and lower. I've gotten the upper section of one side planked. I've done a rough sand on it, but it needs a lot more. It looks pretty good, but when I take closeups, there are gaps between planks, and little areas that need a little bit of filler. I'll save some dust from sanding, so I can make some filler with dust and thinned titebond. I'm going to have to use closeups more, so I can see mistakes sooner. l've been beveling the planks, bit it's still hard to get them to sit together with a perfect fit. I've ended up with tiny gaps here and there. I'm pretty sure wipe-on-poly will go in a lot of the gaps and it will look fine, but I don't have much experience at this. I would like some of the edges to show subtly. With pear and being hull planking, I haven't used Chucks pencil on the edges, because I didn't think it would show like on a lighter color wood. I'm hoping the little gaps, when covered with wipe-on-poly, will show the edges about right. I would like to leave the hull "natural" instead of painting it white below the waterline. This is just a personal preference of mine. All that work planking and then you paint over it is a little hard for me to accept even if it's more historically accurate. I feel the same about copper bottoms, and I just like the look of wood, always have. It will make my models a little different from others, the same way when different modelers decide to paint different areas, and with different shades of colors. On Syren, I didn't take closeups at this stage of planking, so nothing to compare to. In general planking this time is going much easier and better than what I did on Syren. I didn't know to edge bend planks when I made Syren, and I kept wondering why I was having to force planks to sit on the hull. I managed, but I knew I was missing something. Edge bending has made all the difference in the world, and I've been surprised at how much edge bending is required. I'm using CA to glue the planks. I'm getting them to lay pretty good along the hull with edge bends and a bow or stern bend. I discovered how good CA holds the planks when I wanted to remove one to make an adjustment and get a better fit. They are on there and not going anywhere! So if I discover an error or little gap, I'll just have to fill it. I believe most of what I'm seeing now can be handled with more sanding. I haven't done that much sanding so far. On the stern I had the planks running off the edge of the hull about an inch when glued them on. I always do this when building models, and try to trim to fit after gluing as much as possible. I couldn't see the joint with the counter, but tried to hold the plank tightly to the hull while the CA set. However, after I trimmed the planks along the counter, I can see I didn't get a couple of them firmly glued down to the counter. I'll use filler to fix this. It's something to watch out for when I plank the other side. I'm a little hesitant sanding near pieces with laser engraving, like the counter, the bow stem, and keel. I'm going to have to sand these pieces lightly to remove some CA fingerprints and get nice joints, but don't want to remove the engraving details. I'll have to be real careful doing it. Not sure how others have handled this. The other area that will need some filler is at the rabbit on the bow stem. I'm ending up with a small gap between the bow stem and planks, probably because I sanded the first layer of planks more than I should have. I don't see this as a huge problem. I'll just have to use minimal filler and be careful sanding. At the stern, some of the planks curve into the bottom of the counter, or at least that's the way I understood it and what made sense. So planks have to fit good at both the bow and stern. I decided to do the bow plank and stern planks first, leaving a gap in between that was hopefully close to 5.5" in length. That way I could cut and bend the bow and stern planks so they fit tight agains the bow stem and counter, without worrying about having to also fit the other end of the plank. It's much easier to get both ends of a plank in the middle to fit right, because it doesn't have much of a bend or taper. So, here's some pictures.

Here's the planking "pattern" I'm using from the Swan book. I found that I could make planks 5.5" full length and go the length of the hull with 3 planks. This length of planks scales to about 29-ft full size, so that's a little longer than the 24-ft minimum shown. As I've worked along, I've tried to follow the pattern, but have made a few adjustments to get things to work out better. And when I first started, I made a mistake and had to work around it. It took me a while to figure out how to do the pattern. With this pattern, one row of planks starts with a very short plank, 1.375". Another row starts with a 2.75" plank. Short planks are tough to edge bend, so I learned to make a plank that was 5.5" plus the 1.375" or 6.875" (6 7/8"). I edge bent this plank and put in the bow curve getting it to fit. When I had it fitting good, I cut it into the two planks I needed. I did the same for the row that starts with the 2.75" plank, but now the plank I edge bent was 8.25" long.

It's been a while since I posted anything, but I've been reading other's build logs, and asking some questions. I really appreciate the quick responses and the effort others have put into their build logs. It's a great help for someone like me just learning to build model ships. I know there are a lot of Duchess build logs out there, so I could skip over a lot of what I'm doing, but I've found it helps to put everything in one place even if it duplicates what others have done. If you're following along and new to this like me, I'll try to put everything I'm doing in this log. First off I modified my plank edge bending "station" to be more like what I've seen on the web. I still glued the bending form down, but after using it a while, I understand now why a lot of people clamp one or more forms to bend against. It does the same thing and it gives you more flexibility curving the plank. I've learned each plank curves a little different, and for me, the easiest way is to make several smaller bends gradually working toward what fits. So it's estimating where to make a bend, making the edge bend, test fitting, and repeating several times. I'm edge bending by wetting the top of the plank with my finger and then applying heat with travel iron (thank you Chuck!). I don't let it cool or set that long, maybe minute or two, and then do a test fit. It's a lot of trial and error, but works good for me. I had no luck trying to figure out what edge bend I needed ahead of time and bending to that shape. I'm sure it can be done, but I found the trial and error method was simpler and faster. At least for me it also gave better results. I'm not too good at cutting parts to close tolerances.

Looks great! I can't get over how big it looks, which probably shows my inexperience.