SkiBee

@Jasennord welcome and you will learn a lot and gain skills that will help in your future builds.

@Taken Aback you will learn a lot and gain great experience in these 3 ships. I had built the MS 18th Century Long boat first and had a lot of problems that would have been prevented if I had built the MS Shipwright series first. Good luck and welcome, you will enjoy this hobby.

Bob I'm in the middle of building the AVS too. I have found that I get a lot of great information from @CiscoH AVS build log, I have found him very responsive to messages via this web site. He is ahead of me in the build, since I have taken a break from the build. Also, I've found great detail instructions from Luck St Shipyards, https://lauckstreetshipyard.com/ the instructions do cost but I have found them indispensable. Also, I'm also building the MS Phantom, but it is on hold while I focus on the AVS. Please do post some pictures of your Phantom.

I normally prime the area to be painted with a few light coats Tamiya or Rust-Oleum 2X flat or matt spray primer before using acrylic paint with little to no fuzz. I have also used Minwax® Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner prior to painting but mostly prior to staining.

Added the aft deck bulkhead planking and finished the interior and exterior painting. Not the happiest with the finish of the interior, hopefully whey I get everything installed it won’t’ be as noticeable. I ended up with a gap at the fantail and aft ceiling plank, see circled pic below. I’m going to wait until after I plank the decks to see if I need to fix. Now on to the lower planking, a lot of reading of build logs, especially CISCOs, and R Lunt’s practicum from Luck Shipyard; as well as determining the layout and marking up the hull.

@ERS Rich Thanks for the idea to use a chisel and the other suggestions. Keep the suggestions coming, I do appreciate the input.

Painted the upper exterior. Not satisfied with the way the walnut finished so I did use wood filler to somewhat smooth out the surface. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong but the walnut splinters as you cut it.

Excellent work!

@BuckyBoo welcome. This is a great web site to learn about and ask for help on everything that is model ship building. Also, please update your build on your own build log, you get a lot of great help by doing that.

NOTE: I strongly recommend that if you don’t have a micrometer to buy one now. One of my biggest problems on this build was determining the thickness of the very thin planks. It was hard to use a rule to distinguish between 1/32-inch plank and 3/64-inch planks, as there is only 1/64 between them. Sometimes hard to distinguish even a 1/16 in plank from them. I’m afraid I used some 1/32 in the wrong place. Save yourself some trouble later on, buy one now. NOTE: I should have drilled a small pilot hole through the spirketting scuppers so you can align the black strake suppers to match the elevation of the spirketting scuppers. The scuppers pilot holes will also provide an upper alignment line for the wales plank. Installed the wales and black strake planks, after I filled the scuppers in the black strake. There was a about a 1/16-inch difference in some areas between the scuppers on the spirketting and black strake planks, I don’t think it will matter much unless someone looks real closely. Then painted the top of the black strake gold. Even though you normally paint dark colors after the lighter colors, I wish I would have painted the black first as it bled through the masking tape a little and now, I have to go back and fix that.

Installed the inner bulwark planks. When I trimmed the planks around the gunports, the walnut splinted a lot, should have cut them to fit better when installing them so I would just have to sand them around the gunport When I went to install the upper plank, noticed that on the port side there was a area mid-ship that was not covered by the plank. Not sure if I should cut the area out or add a sliver of plank to fill in the gap. But I’m going to wait until I install the upper external planks to see if there is a problem there. When you look at that area without the plank, you can see an upward bulge compared to the starboard side. Suggestions welcomed. Port Side Starboard Side

NOTE: you need to make sure you measure twice cut once. Also, the walnut is really hard to cut length wise with a knife and plane due to the strong grain wanting to drag you off line when your using your xacto, or end up with chunks. I wasted a fair amount of walnut planks with splitting, braking and such, to the point I had to use multiple pieces to get the length I wanted without wasting wood. I decided to do the internal planking before I did the Wales plank. Started to prep the Spirketting Plank, I picked the wrong walnut plank, to thick, to thin. Then I used the right planks and cut them down to 1/8” per the practicum. However, I found that doing that I ended up with a spirketting plank below the gun ports. The right height for my one plank was 3/16” or slightly under that and the other a little wider than the 1/8 inch. So, recommend checking the space between your final waterway and the bottom of your gun ports before you cut anything. I used a 3/16” round file to make the scuppers to the required dimension. The other problem I noticed was my bulkhead extensions were not the same thickness, especially by the waterway. So, I tried to reduce the thick ones and I’m not sure I’m going to need to shim the thin ones. This became very noticeable when I glued the spirketting plank in, it was at a slight angle instead of vertical. I painted the waterway flat black, and the spirketting plank a flat red. I painted a scrap piece of walnut with the kit’s bulkhead red and a Tamiya flat red to see which one I liked. The flat red was redder than the bulkhead red, but I decided to try the bulkhead red since I can topcoat with the flat red later. I did use white primer on both the waterway and spirketting plank which gave a truer color to the final coats of color. I installed the lower sills on the gunports, had to use a little putty to fill in some small gaps. Also, I noticed that some of the gunports have a gap between the gunport and bulwark extensions. This would leave a noticeable gap in the finished model. So, I’m going to have to fill them like the gunport sills.

I to use a Xacto and steel rule, but I do draw a line first witch gives a little indent, then I use the back edge of the Xacto to deepen the indent once or twice then cut. I'm going to try the sandpaper on the rule since it seems to slip a lot.

FINISHED with the first layer of exterior hull planking, filled and sanded smooth as needed. On to Ch 3 of R. Hunt’s practicum from Luck Street Shipyards and a whole lot of help from CiscoH build log.

Welcome, I enjoy both plastic and wood models as well. I started on the unarmed Long Boat; it was a great learning experience. However, halfway through I changed and started the Model Expo 3 boat shipwright series. I think this was a good idea for me as it gave me more knowledge before I returned to the Long Boat. Great start and hang in there during tough times.