Richard44

First, thank you to all who have stopped by, reacted or made comments. It is all much appreciated. The coppering is complete. A slow job, but I think worth it in the end. Gluing the card strips to the hull was done with common PVA, grab time was short leaving little chance of repositioning. Also too much glue, it being water-based, would result in the card becoming soggy and impossible to move. A few individual plates had to be cutout and replaced. Some minor touch up with paint was required. A narrow batten will be glued immediately above the copper plates. Cheers

Yeh, me too. Been there, done that, put the model aside for a while, then returned ro it later. My first wooden ship model was the AL Endeavour. Back before the Internet, so no help at all. Second planking was turning into a total disaster, so I let it be for a while, then took a deep breath and ripped it all off. Started again.

I'll try for the wheels down. I can always use the photo copied pages for a second go 😁. Wheels though, not easy to make realistic looking ones 😬.

Nicely done Glenn. Richard

So, on to coppering. My kit came with the copper tape, not the copper plates, and as I have never used tape before, a learning curve will be inevitable. I first gave the hull a coat of poly so as to give the adhesive-backed tape a good smooth surface to adhere to. As the instructions advised, separating the copper from the backing can be tricky, if curling and creasing of the former is to be avoided. With care I managed to get two full runs of continuous copper plates, one against the keel and the other along the garboard strake. I wasn't happy with the result as there was some creasing of the copper, and it being so thin, it showed up every imperfection on the hull. I made a couple of attempts with single plates, but these weren't especially good. What to do - persevere and hope with practice that the results would improve, but this of course would mean keeping the poor results in place or removing these and starting again. After playing around with further attempts on scrap wood, I decided that I was unlikely to get a satisfactory result by using the copper tape. So, I removed the two runs I had done, cleaned the hull where these had adhered and decided to use a method I had used on my Bellona build. This involved painting several sheets of paper with copper paint, stripping the paper so as to give continuous runs of plates and then gluing these on the hull. Once the paint was dry, I marked the short edges of the sheets with tick marks 6mm apart (the width of the supplied tape) and marked the long edges with tick marks 18mm apart (the suggested length of the plates). The sheets were scored across the sheet every 18mm. I used a rotary cutter and pressed lightly, The sheets were then cut every 6mm to give strips scored every 18mm. To avoid any appearance of white paper edges, those were coloured with a felt-tipped pen. The prepared strips are shown in the photo below. Coppering of the hull then commenced, starting at the bottom of the stern post and working forwards and upwards. Where possible, continuous strips were used, reverting to single plates when necessary. And before anybody asks the bleedingly obvious question - why didn't I just cut the paper into scored strips then paint them once glued to the hull, it would have been much quicker - I have no idea why I didn't think of it.🥴 🥴. Cheers

A big decision Glenn , and well done. I may be making a similar decision myself soon.

OK, I've been away on a holiday for the past four weeks, so very little has been done since the last post. I decided to do what others have done and put a frame around the stern square tuck, though I did it in a different way to the other builds. Those formed the frame then infilled it with new planks over the existing kit-supplied stern piece with the frame thus being flush with the new planks. I thought of a simpler method - though in reality it probably wasn't. The photo shows the four pieces for the frame. These were cut from 0.6mm pear fret. One of the curved pieces had to be redone as dry fitting showed it to be somewhat off. The pieces were then very carefully sanded so that the inside edges came to a knife-edge. That is, they finished with a triangular cross section. They were dry fitted, then glued in place. From a normal viewing distance it is very difficult to see that the frame is actually sitting on top of the planks. Cheers

OK you two, now you've got me involved as well 😁😁😖. Just ordered the kit plus canopy plus laser cut pieces. I may be slow as I'm part way through building Harpy. Cheers.

After a break, slow progress with the second planking. The following three photos show the beginning with several strakes in place. A wider strip cut from pear fret was used as the garbord strake, and planking continued upwards from this and downwards from the wales. The usual methods of planking were used, tick marks, tapering and edge bending. I had already fixed two drop planks in place at the bow, then needed two stealers ar the stern. I didn't make much of an attempt to colour match the planks as most will be covered by copper. Some of the supplied pear planks were unusable full length due to ragged edges. Finally, the planking was completed. The hull was hand sanded, finishing with 320 grit. The hull in the following photos was wiped with a damp cloth for the photos. The hull still needs a little attention before coppering takes place. I am happy enough with the way the planking turned out. Cheers

Thanks for your detailed build log Glenn. Your descriptions of the problems and possible solutions will be very handy when I reach that stage in my build. Cheers.

Wow, the speed of your progress is amazing. I'm only up to the second planking and I've not done much of that. Well done.

Thanks Maurice.

After a short break, I'm now about to start the second planking. The wales were first coloured black, using an artist's felt-tipped pen. This is a dye, not paint, so is only good on bare wood. Mostly I intend to run uninterrupted planks from bow to stern, but where the strakes are above the waterline, I will use scale-length planks. I will take the length of these from the size of the individual planks that make up the wales, as these would have certainly ended on a frame which would not necessarily coincide with the model's bulkheads. Other Harpy builds have simply edge-bent the planks at the bow, but I decided to use a drop plank in each of the first two pairs of strakes, ie four strakes midships reduced to two at the stem. The first strake under the wale was run from the stern and stopped short (after tapering) at about bulkhead one. The next strake ( number 2) would be the one that has the actual drop plank, so to get this in the correct position it was run from the stern to about bulkhead three. The third strake was then run full length thus leaving a gap between the wale and strake three, which would be filled with the short drop plank. This process was repeated to fit the second drop plank. Making the actual drop planks took quite some time with much trimming and dry-fitting. One of the four needed two attempts as the first ended up about 2mm short. These planks were cut from spare pear fret, using a template to get the rough shape. The template was formed by laying a length of masking tape over the gap and running a pen along the edges. Sorry guys, this sounds complicated and I forgot to take photos which would have helped. There is a clearer description with photos in B.E.’s Harpy build log (Post 21). Two of the four drop planks. The hull ready for the rest of the second planking. Cheers

Yes, I found that too.

You're powering ahead - looking good.