Jonathan_219

I think I've posted everything I've taken. I feel a little bit bad about disparaging this kit all the time but it's just terrible. In addition to the bad instructions several pieces are just the wrong size to even fit, I'm continually frustrated and having to scratch build some pieces. The weird thing is that it eventually makes a nice looking model. My advice is read through the entire instructions several times and them spend some time with the drawings that show details on the large plan sheets. Sometimes either the instructions or details just won't work but between the two I'd figure out something to make things fit. I've been bouncing all over the instructions not really doing things in the order they're presented in the book. I'm a little afraid when I get to rigging as that's less intuitive to me to figure out what will work and in what order to do things. There are several build logs here much better than mine and I've learned much about the pitfalls that are up ahead by studying them. Good luck, it seems like so far I've been about to find a solution for everything that's popped up.

Just finished another attempt at getting consistent blackening on my cannons and found that using my Dremmel with a polishing pad on the cannon after cleaning greatly improved the result. I've only been cleaning with rubbing alcohol since my workspace is in the house and just don't want acetone or similar solvents in the house. My process was clean with alcohol and a rag, rub dry, polish with the Dremel pretty vigorously and then wipe clean one last time to remove any dust from the polishing process. I used a small container with about 50/50 Casey Brass Black and distilled water and tie a thread around the cannon and keep the cannon off the bottom of the container and move the cannon about fairly frequently. I do two at a time and it takes a couple minutes for the process. Before I started polishing the process took almost 10 minutes and the finish was splotchy. The finished product still has a bit of a matte finish and a slightly powdery look but much less powder than before I started polishing. I finish the cannons out by rubbing a very small amount of clear candle wax over them with a rag, tried beeswax but the candle wax worked better. This gives the cannon a much more realistic finish and texture to my eyes. I'm hoping in the future I can continue to get a fairly consistent result by polishing since personally I like the look of blackened over paint. These were my last cannons on this ship so it will be a while before I get to try this process again. I've been following this thread as I've tried to improve my process and wanted to share some positive results, it wasn't as easy as I thought when I started but once I got a process it went pretty quickly.

First Spiral Staircase and Railings: Slowly adding some deck details , started with the small cannons and after a discussion and some very helpful advice in the Metal Work forum decided not to force things and continue to try and bend these small cannon tails up like the instructions indicated. My first attempts didn't budge anything and with the info from the forum decided it would be best not to keep attempting to bend it and end up ruining them. I think they look fine straight so will have to stay with that. I did have better luck with blackening them as I tried a different method of using about 50% blackening solution and 50% distilled water. I hooked a small thread around the barrel and then made sure to keep the cannon constantly in motion in the solution and that does seem to give me a more uniform appearance. I used a very small amount of candle wax, tried beeswax but candlewax was softer, and polished the cannons with a cloth to remove any powdery look. This lightens the color some but still give a nice look, anything is better than the bright untreated brass. Couldn't stand the look of the deck edges so I found some 1x3mm walnut strip left over from another build and finished out the edges, I'll need to do that on every deck edge but it looks so much better than the raw ply edge. The railings were pretty straightforward except I wondered what to do with the edges of them since they're made out of multi-ply stock so when staining they're going to be striped no matter what I do. After a test stain I decided the stripes were a feature not a bug and that they looked ok, or at least better than painting them a wood color. Considered briefly painting them blue or red as part of the color scheme but decided that I'm in danger of, or maybe past the point of having too much accent color and wanted them as natural as possible. The finished spiral staircase in the instructions was just ugly. The other two positions have covering pieces but these two were left bare with some railings added and just didn't like the look of it. So I took some inspiration from the Testazyk build log and added my own outside covering and details. I'm happy with the way it turned out. Now on to making 5 more! Thanks Testazyk for the idea. The deck details are one of my favorite parts of this build so far, since it's a decorative build and there's not a definitive right or wrong with the details I'm able to just do whatever I think will look good without worrying too much. It looks a bit gaudy to me but I'm hoping all the rigging and hardware will tone that down a bit in the final product. Don't want to veer from what might have been possible but I don't have to be a stickler for accuracy either. I plan to go opposite way with my next build and try the historical accuracy route to see how I like that approach.

Thanks everyone, I had been mulling over the visual effect of just leaving it like it is and not trying to do anything and with the information provided I feel a lot better about doing that. If I'm not mistaken this is pretty old kit so it seems very likely that this particular cannon included has changed from the original design of the kit. I feel like a broken record on my build log but this kit is a mess. Just FYI there are only 6 of these cannons included with the kit and they're all placed on a top deck and are aimed through the circular gunports in the railings so the anti-personnel intent would match that placement. Thanks again for the great information.

Excellent idea, had not thought of that. Not sure what I would use for the tube that would be sturdy enough but some additional leverage seems like a good thing, Thanks.

In my San Felipe build there are 6 smaller cannons (picture included) that the instructions show to bend the tail up slightly with a picture of pliers next to the cannon. I'm assuming they are implying that I should use pliers to bend the part but I grabbed the tail with my largest pliers protected by some cloth and pulled with all my might and nothing happened. I don't have a vise and really don't want to get one for just one task but I don't think there's any way I'll bend it by hand this way. I also tried laying it across a metal screwdriver shaft and hitting it pretty vigorously with a hammer and again nothing happened. I'm afraid if I grabbed it tight enough with some vice grips or something similar tight enough to hold it firmly enough that it would end up deforming the cannon and I don't want that. I checked with calipers and the very narrowest part of the tail is 2.3mm and it enlarges from there pretty quickly and it appears to be solid as a rock. Just looking for ideas for a simple way to get this tail to bend a bit upwards. I've considered trying to heat it over a gas stove but I'm worried about trying to hold the barrel steady while trying to bend and not burning the heck out of myself and haven't done that yet. Everything I've needed to bend in the past has been pretty easy but these are just not budging.

Bow Railings and Dummy Cannons: Installing the dummy cannons turned out to be a bit more involved than I anticipated. The blocks that hold the cannons aren't really at the proper distance from the gunports to give me the amount of cannon I wanted sticking out and I'm not sure if that would ever be possible even if I had planned it better since the blocks are straight and the hull is curved. The only solution I could come up with was to drill a hole big enough to let the entire cannon barrel go through and not just the finger that seems is designed to be inserted into the hole and that turned out to be nearly exactly a 1/4" hole which gives just a little play for the cannon to be adjusted to a chosen position. I wanted to use the Dremel to drill but my 1/4" drill bit won't fit in the Dremel but I did find a Dremel drill set with a 1/4" drill and a smaller bit that would fit in the Dremel which allowed me to drill 1/4" holes with the Dremel. Using a heavier hand drill would have been possible but that seemed a lot more unwieldly to me so I was happy the Dremel bit existed. Went outside to do the drilling as my work space has enough sawdust and dirt already. I've also had a bit of an issue blackening the cannons, I'm using Brass Black and cleaning each cannon before I blacken it as best I can with alcohol and rubbing with a clean rag but I'm still getting mottled and uneven results. I don't know if it's the material, my cleaning or what but the result is not exactly what I was looking for but it did get a worn used effect so it's something I can live with. You can see in the picture how much variance there is. I was timing how long I left them in the solution and then add some if they were lighter but still couldn't get a consistent result. I then made a small jig to fit into a gunport and drilled a 1/8" hole in it at the position and angle I wanted to drill a pilot hole for each cannon and then with back with the 1/4" to finish out the hole. There are some places where the block didn't go far down enough to encompass the entire 1/4" hole but I think I have enough to glue the cannon on, I just have to fix it in place while the glue dries. So far I have one row down and nothing to difficult so far putting the cannons in and adjusting as the glue dries. Also finished the front railings, I had to scratch build several of the pieces for this, the included pieces just weren't long enough and left a significant gap in the railings which I just couldn't have. Not hard just time consuming, but enjoyable. Will continue to finish the cannons and gunport covers on this side and then it's on to repeat everything on the other side.

Stern and some deck fixtures: I've been mostly working on the stern and breaking that up with some deck fixtures that don't need to be glued in place for a change of pace. Things have been going pretty slowly as it seems that almost every piece of the stern has to be worked and in some places completely remade to fit properly. Since several of the pieces are brass that has meant a lot of hand filing and shaping. Fitting the cannons in the four gunports proved especially challenging since there wasn't a convenient piece to attach them to, I suspect that I placed those gunports lower than planned but any higher and the opening would have been almost completely facing down horizontal which didn't seem like a very likely arrangement for cannons unless they wanted to shoot fish. This required me to file away some of the nearest bulkhead to the stern and do it through the gunport without damaging the gunport, tricky for clumsy me. I have also added the back gunport lids and worked out a system for the eyebolts included in each lid. The instruction call for eyebolts to be pushed through and then bent into another eyebolt on the back side but I didn't think that I could make that look good and I also felt like the included eyebolts were too big, for my eye at least, so I ordered 400 eyebolts (62 lids X 4 each with some spare I hope) and I'm using those. I've tried using the Brass Black on the eyebolts and lid hinges but the result isn't that great. It seem very powdery and easy to come off and I'm assuming that's due to the material used to make those components since it seems to work pretty well on cannons. My only other alternative is to paint them but I wanted to try the Brass Black and see how it worked on smaller pieces, jury is still out on that. I'm going to take a deep breath soon and start working on the cannons. I expect this to be a fairly big job but I don't want to start full bore on the deck details until they're all in place so I don't have to work around anything that I don't have to.

Been a while since I posted, just working on a lot of fiddley bits, mostly the bow and stern along with completing the second side. Lots of small pieces and especially on the bow front bulkhead a lot of having to adjust pieces to all fit together correctly to my eye. The most difficult bit, and probably the most difficult area I've ever done was the curved sections in the front bulkhead. I've heard these called "seats of ease" but I have to wonder if they'd put the seat of ease directly over a door, that seems like it wouldn't work in practice at all but I'm going with where things are shown on the plans and only making minor changes in that area. The difficult part was getting the face plus the top and bottom strips to curve to the semicircular base piece without cracking and coming apart. The top and bottom strips could be soaked but even after 24 hours of soaking they tended to come apart at the grain when curved that much. I tried soaking and then wrapping around a small bottle with painters tape tightly wound around it to start the curve and then seemed to help a bit but didn't eliminate the issue. My solution was to pre-curve first as described, let dry and then soak again right before gluing but the wood still came apart in some places and then I'd slowly glue the cowlicks back in place with CA glue after the bulk of the strip was glued in place. Luckily the piece was painted and not stained so I could be a bit free with the glue and then sand into a reasonable resemblance of a curved strip after everything dried. Couple issues with the stern, one of which I'm still trying to figure out, which is how to glue the dummy cannons in place. There's nothing really in the right place for a simple solution so I'll probably have to make something that will attach somewhere to the frame to hold those stern cannons in place. I did get some Casey Brass Black for the cannons and other smallish brass pieces so they wouldn't lose detail by painting black and I'm happy with the results so far, I've been experimenting with different concentrations and timings so once I get to the main cannons I can hopefully get a consistent result. I don't really want totally black but something with a little of the brass color coming through, I just like that look better, helps the eye see the detail on the cannons better I think. Should be finishing up the sides, stern and bow fairly soon and am looking forward to doing the deck details like the staircases, etc.

Hull Side Details: I'm working on the side details trying to get one side done and then move on to either the stern or other side, haven't decided which yet. I've changed up the color scheme in several places but I've decided to embrace decorative on this build, I think my next build will focus on historical accuracy so I'm not getting to hung up in that for now. Using wood and painting it red for the top two molding strips came about because I didn't believe I had enough of the bronze/gold molding and even if I could squeeze it out, several of the bronze molding pieces looked pretty ragged so this allowed me to pick the best ones and use them and avoid the bad ones. Also both of the stern window assemblies should have bronze columns in front of the red side pieces but no matter how I tried to mount them I just never liked the look so I'm going without them for now. If I have a change of heart then they'll be pretty easy to add later. I still have a little more work on the bow area and at some point pretty soon I'm going to have to start building and installing cannons. I want to get as many in a possible before adding the last deck and any deck details that would get in the way of placing them. I have a feeling a couple of them are going to be challenging anyway. I should probably get the other side details done first so I can continue to lay it on it's side without dislodging cannons while working on it. I have to say even though at times I've gotten frustrated with this kit, if you're willing to work through the issues it looks like this is going to be a very nice looking ship when done. I'm enjoying it and getting experience with every piece I consider gluing as I go through the instructions and think through "what piece does this need to have in place first and what is it going to close off when glued" which is probably good practice for any build. I think will have worn out the instruction manual and plans by the time I'm done.

Bouncing around and another ? moment: I've been working on the hull details and picking and choosing where I'm working next and everything has been good. Focusing mostly on the stern of the ship and spend a lot of time just working out which pieces need to go in first and hoping I get that right. Had a bit of confusion as I worked on the railings as one of the railings just doesn't fit the space where it should go. I'm positive I have the right pieces (port and starboard) and I'm including a picture of how the length of the railing is too long and goes over the place where the circular gunport would be. I've been placing a 1x2mm strip on the inboard edge of the railings because the railings are ply and I don't like the look of ply stained. I've gotten around that on the hatch coverings by painting the edges brown and the railings look find with the added strip. I'm not sure how the railing piece can be so wrong, I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything wrong as the area it fits against is an unaltered side panel with the locations for the gunports already cut out. To remedy the issue I had to shorten the railing piece in two places, first removing a section to make the holes for the railings move to the correct place and then trim the end to stop at the correct place. I left it slightly long so I could shape it for the circular gunport later. Adding the strip helped add some strength back to the piece and I've included a picture of an original and altered one. It wasn't a really difficult fix but I just don't know how this could happen. Continuing to just work on the hull details. I'm waiting for some Birchwood Casey Brass Black to take some of the shine off the cannons and I want to place the two forward facing cannons before placing the deck above them. The instructions have you place the deck first and then use string to pull the cannons in place with glue on the base but I'm going to avoid that as much as possible and get cannons in place while I can still reach their positions. Once I'm able to start placing cannons I can start adding some more details that would be blocking their placement.

Wales and Stern Balcony Bulkhead: As I mentioned earlier I painted the wales black, I think the dark strips down the sides with black wales will contrast nicely with all the brass and blue that will be going on the ship later. Took me several tries of black paint to find one I liked, I didn't want too flat and didn't want too glossy so I was just trying to find that perfect satin finish. Ended up using the Admiralty Dull Black, it's a bit thick but I put on a coat and then went over it with a 6000 grit sanding pad and then put another thin coat on top and I like the look. All the wales except the bottom one went against the slight difference in height between the side panels and the planking so placing them was quite easy, I had considered trying to even out that height difference but decided that since the wale would hide it there was no need and I'm glad I went that way. The very bottom wale just went along the edge of the darker stain area, it's hard to see that in the picture below but it's obvious in the picture in the previous post. I didn't follow it exactly near the bow to allow the wale to take a more natural flow. For the stern balcony bulkhead I had several challenges to deal with. First was that the side panels didn't come quite far enough back to completely cover the space where the bulkhead should go, I knew that, but when placing them I had to decide between that issue and having the gunports alignment look completely wonky and I went with lining the gunports where I liked figuring I could find something to fill that space. I ended up filling that space with a piece of leftover 4mm walnut planking cut to fit. The gap was wider on the top than on the bottom so cut it to match the space. The instructions say to use planking cut to short lengths similar to the bulkhead below for the main bulkhead, but I decided to use a piece of flat scrap and started with the door and window overlay as a template and then cut the bulkhead larger and just gradually fit it in place. Gluing this piece was a challenge as there's enough curve in the piece that every corner really wants to pop up and I couldn't find a good place to clamp everything at once. Ended up gluing the center in place and then gluing each corner down one at a time and holding it in place while it dried with clamps and painters tape. I added walnut strips on each edge to try and get a neater join. I also decided to paint the door and window overlay black areas blue. The black was very badly mottled and was going to have to be touched up, black would have been easier but I think the blue accent color matches the rest of the stern blue nicely so I just bit the bullet and slowly painted the black areas blue. Had to touch up a few gold lines with some gold but my gold doesn't match perfectly so I did that as little as possible. One skill I really need to work on is mixing paints to get good matches and the colors I want. Still have the second side wales to finish and then I'm not sure where I'll go next.

Second Planking Done: Finished the second planking which I feel like is a big milestone in construction of a model ship. I still haven't figured out how to get the planking done without breaking every rule but thankfully it's still going to look decent I hope. The plywood keel looked awful stained so I painted it, considered a brown to sort of match the hull but decided on black to match the rest of the keel. I've also decided to paint the wales black to give more contrast against the darker wood as the wales run the length of the ship against the dark wood background. Still have some touch up to do in a few places but my normal handling during the rest of the construction always seems to add a few dings so I'll fix all of those together when I'm closer to finished. I had to do my first complete tear off of several planks when I just got crazy and put them down in an obviously terrible place. I didn't like removing the planks but couldn't see any other way to repair the damage so I just bit the bullet and used my knife and plane to slowly remove the bad planks. I purchased the smallest Ibex finger plane (8mm blade 25mm body) a couple weeks ago and now I don't know how I ever got along without it. It was more expensive than I would have thought for something so small but it seems really high quality and is really handy in places where a knife is awkward. If I'm not careful I'm going to develop a hand tool fixation. As always photos seem to bring out every imperfection.

For Fusion 360 all I could find was a 30 day free trial and then $60/month or $347/year after that. Is there something I'm missing for hobbyist use? Tinkercad looks like it might be a good option to just start learning the basics to be able to move to more advanced programs and have some background.

This is the kind of thinking that could really push things forward. I'm sure some people would enjoy researching and creating the files necessary for something like this but I'd prefer to use existing files to make more accurate pieces for my models if they were available. I have the DeAgostini SotS on order (backordered forever) so this is something that I'd probably eventually use if it were available. I wonder if the forum would be able to host files like that so people would have a logical place to look if they need something, just thinking out loud.

I did intend to say Blender instead of Bender, I blame Futurama. I will check out Fusion 360. I've done a couple of the Blender tutorials and am more lost than when I started.

I've been poking around, downloaded and installed Bender and have been looking at free and cheap sites for 3D patterns that would apply to shipbuilding. One of my biggest concerns is what resources are 100% legal to use as a basis for creating a 3D model. Let's say I learned Bender well enough to model a specific 16th century cannon and I found a picture of one on the net. Would it be legal to use that picture as a basis for creating a model? I don't want to use something without knowing that it's legal but I'm just a hobbyist that would make something with no intention of selling either the plan or product but I'd like to be able to make and share it with the community without worry. Copyright laws and just plain Intellectual Property common courtesy seem like a very deep subject. The free and nearly free sites are tough to search, but there are useful things out there. I tried searching for barrels and found lots of patterns and could almost surely find one that fit my needs (purely hypothetical right now) either as is or with a little tweaking in Bender. Some of the more specific things like hull decorations or figureheads seem like they'd have to be made since they're more specific to a single ship. Learning Bender seems like a pretty monumental task and that's not something I'm sure I want to tackle right now. I'm still trying to think this through and see if it's worth digging deeper. The possibilities are pretty amazing but if it's just one off pieces I'm not sure it'd ever be worth it.

I've been thinking (a dangerous pastime I know) and it seems that there ought to be a way to 3D resin print parts that either aren't right or aren't included to finish out the deck details of kits. I really know nothing about 3D printing but I've been doing some research and there are some companies that are selling some items like that and I think that's great but what if they don't have the item or scale you need then what are you to do? As resin printers come down in price, I've seen some under $300, it seems like that should be an option but I don't know where I'd get the 3D plans to print the correct part, I don't really want to learn how to create those plans needed to print accurate parts but maybe that's what I need to do. I'd like to think that there could be a repository of plans that have been created by hobbyists that we could all share and use or adjust if needed and scale then to the right proportions for whatever ship we're working on and just print out the right cannon, for instance. I'm assuming that once a 3D plan has been created it could be scaled to whatever size it needed to be to fit the ship you're working on. It seems like pretty much anything needed from cannons to buckets to lanterns could be printed and added to kits with a fairly inexpensive printer and the right plans. Even figures for the crew should be within the realm of possibility. It seems like a new world of detail and accuracy is in our reach if we just had the right plans and a printer. If someone has been down this road and knows why this would or wouldn't work then it would be interesting to hear. It's an emerging technology, resin printers seem to be able to produce the detail and size necessary, but it seems like the biggest barrier right now is the lack of public plans to create these pieces. I have no idea how hard it would be to create a 3D bucket or cannon in a format that would translate to whatever printer someone decided to use and if people would be willing to share their work after creating something like that where anyone that wanted to print a new one for their ship would be able to access. Possibly some companies will fill this void and there won't be a need for most people to print their own items but it seems that there are so many different possibilities that something like this would work in a lot of cases.

Sides and Gunports: I've finished attaching the side fake planking pieces and cutting the gunports. I spent so much time double and triple checking the height of the top piece to make the cannons hit the center of the gunport and even with all that when I put the cannon in place it's a bit too low. I did my measurements with the gunport cut and the height of the center of the cannon that I measured was right at the center of the gunport but when you set it in place it's a bit different. It's not so much that I won't be able to make some minor adjustments on the cannons and get it correct but it's weird to have the measurement and actual cannon not exactly line up. I think it's due to the angle of the cannon so every bit of the barrel is lower than the tip and when it sticks through then the lower part is what you see at the port. Lesson learned I hope. After getting all the side pieces on I needed to cut all the gunports, the only real challenging part was with the ones that had the covering for the inside decks that was visible. Cutting the port without damaging the inner planking was tricky, I covered the inside planking with 4 layers of painters tape to try and keep splintering to a minimum and cut slowly and carefully on those and for the most part was successful but a couple spots still splintered and I'll need to do some minor repairs to that planking. I decided early on that I wasn't going to paint the hull so instead of the painted black strip below the bottom row of gunports I stained the walnut planking dark to simulate that. I also stained the strips between the side pieces the same dark walnut stain so it's has three rows of the dark wood. I'll be staining the lower planks a lighter color. I still have the wales to put in place on the dark strips and I'll probably stain that the same color. It's starting to come together and I'll finish the hull planking next so I can get the ship on the cradle for stability and then work on the upper areas.

Upper Hull, Decks and What? Having finished the first planking my goal is to get the etched hull planking pieces in place on the sides so I can do the second planking. I want to finish the second planking because I push and pull a lot as I'm planking and even with some styrofoam blocks on the decks as I turn it upside down it's still easy to damage the upper decks so I though get the planking done and then work up from there. I've worked through the instructions and plans building up the hull planking where it will rise above the etched planking pieces and can be trimmed down to be flush and lined the hull on the inside. I've also been trying to make sure that anything that needed to be in place before the etched sides were added was done. I've been paying very close attention to the position on the side etched planking pieces since there's quite a bit of play at the bow while the stern position is pretty locked in with the slot fitting around the stern balcony deck. The instructions seem very vague about the exact position of these pieces, it's up to the builder to check and make sure it's all going to work with the gunport locations and cannons. I made up a cannon so I could measure and test the gunport positions and it seems that the center part of the first planking piece needs to be biased up a bit (2-3mm) and from there to the bow bias it down a bit (1-2mm). I've testing this by measuring and by sitting a cannon on the deck and drilling a very tiny hole in the hull and seeing where the bit hits the cannon and I've marked these positions on the hull. What I haven't figured out yet is how I'm going to glue this fairly large piece down getting it firmly against the hull and biasing things in the correct positions, I may try to do it in sections but that has issues as well. I was having trouble making the very back end of the starboard piece fit with the hull assembly already in place and decided to put the two etched hull pieces against each other, the port piece fit perfectly. They should be a mirror image of each other as far as I can tell but they're not even close. I'm not sure how this could happen. It would be one thing if one was just too large as it could be trimmed back fairly easily but the very top area is short. Any type of filling or patch is going to be near impossible to paint to match with the wood grain etc. I knew the instruction in this kit were suspect but this is frustrating. Maybe this will be an area that gets covered up or I can fudge it enough to cover up easily, it's only about 1-2mm short, I hope so. I don't remember seeing this in any of the logs I read but I could have easily missed it. I've included a picture of the two etched pieces, port (correct) on top and starboard (wrong) underneath to show the difference in shapes. Every other bit of these two pieces is an exact match for the other. This will require some thought.

I haven't tried soaking it in water but I did spend quite a bit of time under very hot tap water with an old toothbrush and toothpaste. This did help quite a bit and now it seems that where the residue was before that the surface texture is different than the "good" areas. I'm calling a good area one where the surface is smooth and shiny. It's hard to tell if there's still a slight bit of residue left or if it's completely gone and the surface of the brass where it was previously just has a different texture than the other surfaces. I'm still debating if I'll try soaking in Sparex, on one hand I'd like to try it and see what it gets me for learning but on the other hand if the texture of the surface is just different in these areas now (which I believe to be the case) I don't see how it could do much for that. Luckily I have a lot of time before I have to attach any brass to the kit so I can keep thinking about it and make a decision. Either way I'll report back whatever I decide and the results.

Building the San Felipe and many of the brass castings have a hard whitish, almost crystalline substance in many of the crevices. A gentle probing with a dental tool seems to do almost nothing to remove it and it really degrades the look of the piece. I'm looking for ideas to clean the pieces with this residue up some, the casting is already of fairly poor quality and I'm hoping I can do something to improve the look before attaching them to my kit. I've thought of trying an old toothbrush with some toothpaste and seeing that if does anything but if a dental tool doesn't dent it I doubt a soft brush will either. Removing this material from the crevices would help restore some of the definition and it would be nice if it was brass color everywhere without the whitish crystal look in the crevices. A side question is this really brass or some brass like alloy? Some of the pieces have the color and brightness of brass and these pieces are much better cast with good definition. The pieces with the residue have a more tarnished and dingy look with softer edges. I tried taking a picture and it doesn't show it very well. The piece also doesn't look as bad as the picture makes it look, it's not great though.

Scrubbyj427, thanks. Honestly I wish they didn't have the etched decks and planking now. I'm not thrilled with the way they look but decided to just go with it and see how it works out. Part of the learning process but I suspect I'll avoid any more kits with it. I will be doing a second layer with the provided walnut and will check out Chucks tutorials, I need all the help I can get with planking, I'm getting a little better but it's a skill that benefits from practice.

First Planking Continued, Stern: I've been continuing the first planking, trying to get that done to be able to return to the topside of the ship and so far still going well. Finished one side and nearly done with the other and finished roughing out the stern. No major sanding or filling yet but trimmed with exacto and some light sanding to be sure everything was in line as much as possible. The stern was pretty interesting with all the different things coming together and trying to understand what was going to end up on top in each area. Everything but the lower deck will get another planking and that gets painted so that will need to be very smooth. I've bought some new filler as the last type I tried seemed too dry and hard to work with. Tried a little of this new filler (Famowood) as a test, and the initial results were very good, I'll be doing a few other spots soon.

First Planking Progress: As I was trying to work out the position of some of the top decks and gunports it sent me into a deeper and deeper rabbit hold as I realized that this position affects that and so on. Trying to work all of that out really helped me understand and visualize where things are going but I also realized that I needed to get as much work on the hull done as possible since flipping the ship upside down and pushing and pulling planks would damage more fragile upper deck work. So I went ahead and decided to get at least the first planking done. It's a slow process as I glue the plank to the first three bulkheads and then wait for the glue to dry enough to glue the plank up to the last three bulkheads and then after that dries enough to work on the last three bulkheads. I can work on both sides at once but I'm only getting 2 or 3 planks done a day but I'm not in a hurry so that's all right. I have discovered that I can use a knife like a plane and smooth off the plank edges that stick up on the bigger curves. It seems to be much quicker and more precise that sanding although I'll still use some sandpaper to finish off the smoothing process but it should be very close just using the knife. I've also done some work that I can while waiting on the hull planks to dry so I've gotten some of the stern work done but there's some that I can't do till the hull planking is finished.