Ed Ku20

Originally posted Mar. 25, 2021 Painting the hull & Staining the decks Around mid December, I completed painting the hull and staining the deck. I used my new Paasche Talon airbrush with Vallejo Air paints that I purchased after scrapping the Model Expo paints. Unfortunately, the post office lost my return shipment, so I was not able to get the refund promised! Oh well, there has been a lot to learn with this hobby! I struggled a lot trying to find the best color matches. For anyone who is going through the same struggle, here is what I used to produce the results in these pictures. Basic colors are Black 71.057, White 71.001, Light Gray 71.050. I really liked the way that Red 70.926 turned out below the waterline. For the Yellow stripe I went with Light Yellow 70.949. The hull was also primered and puttied multiple times before painting. I found the Tamiya putty to work better then the Elmer's wood putty on the hull. Wood putty left little dimples that I could not sand off. In fact sanding just hardened them. Another struggle was trying to find really narrow masking tape for the waterline and especially for the yellow stripe on the cove. Everything I saw seemed too wide and heavy. I ended up using this tape I found on Amazon and it worked great. "JINBING Mix 6Rolls High Temperature Vinyl Fine Line Fineline Masking Tape Automotive Car Auto Paint 1mm 1.5mm 2mm 2.5mm 3mm 4mm". After airbrushing and curing the water line and waist line, I masked them with 3 mm and 1.5 mm tape respectively. Then I airbrushed the red below and black above the waterline. Afterward the tape came off cleanly with a few minor exceptions. I also had trouble where the tape went around the keel at the bow. I got some leakage under the tape. These areas had to be touched up by hand later. The final step at this stage was to stain the deck with 2 coats of Minwax Cherry.

Originally posted Oct. 29, 2020 Deck Planking I completed planking the deck today. This took most of the month of October. I found the nibbing to be the most difficult task. Inserting the final plank on each side was also a challenge. But, I think it turned out pretty well for my first time. The next major step will be painting the hull. I plan on using an airbrush that I purchased for this build. Except for doing the waterway, I've never airbrushed before. I had difficulty with lots of goobers in the paint. I've since repainted them several times with a regular brush. I bought some Vallejo Air paint for the hull painting. You guys seem to think it's pretty easy and smoother than brushing, so, I'm going to do it too.

Originally posted on Oct. 1, 2020 Since my last post, I removed all of the bulkhead stanchions and smoothed down the waterway with some heavy sanding. I was not happy with the way it looked after building it last month. I think it looks much better now. I glued in all the stanchions using CA glue. I followed the process I found on the build log from CPDDET. Thanks Dave, your procedure worked great! I cut the scuppers and attached these bulwark planks including the waist plank. While these were exposed, I painted the waterway light grey and the inner bulwarks white. I also planked the transom, inside and out. These are photos from this point taken today. The next step is planking the deck. I am following the process from Suburban Ship Modeler. He inserted butt joints using a staggered pattern across the bulkheads of 1,3,5,2,4. Although more difficult, I think this looks a little more realistic then running planks the full length of the deck. There is a tutorial on this process here: http://modelshipworldforum.com/resources/Framing_and_Planking/Deck_PlankingIIbuttshifts.pdf

Originally posted on Sept. 6, 2020 Well, I reached a major milestone this week! I completed the planking of the hull. I don't think it turned out too bad for my first time. Here are a couple of pictures of the completed hull before sanding. Next up I will start to work on the sanding and filling of the cracks and gaps. I don't expect to need too much wood filler, but will see how it goes. I will post more pics when I'm done. Do you recommend applying some sanding sealer after sanding is done?

This post was first submitted on August 26, 2020 Planking the Hull The pictures I posted yesterday were taken at the end of July. Since then I've completed the waterway and am in the process of planking the hull. Here are the most current pictures of the progress on the model. Planking is going well. These pictures are before any sanding or filling, so I think I will get it looking pretty good afterward that. I plan on painting the hull as recommended. So I will be able to hide any flaws. I am not satisfied with the waterway. When I complete the hull planking I plan to cleanup the waterway. I would like to remove the bulkhead stanchions and sand down the entire waterway and then install fake stanchions. The spacing between the bulkhead stanchions is uneven, although the bulkheads are all at perfect 90 degree angles with the keel. So, not sure where I went wrong there. (See the last picture of waterway in this post) But, I've read some comments warning not to remove the b/h stanchions until after installing the upper bulwarks. But, it would be much easier to do the cleanup if they are removed first. Then I can use a temporary plank to align all the stanchions. Or maybe leave a few of them for supports to install the bulwark? Has anyone else done this successfully?

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING OK! So, after the initial couple of posts on my build log for Bluenose I did something wrong and all of my further postings were done as "Profile Status Updates" (found under Ed Ku20) AND were not attached to this build Topic as intended. I am going to try to correct this problem by copying those updates over to this topic and once done I will delete the other misplaced postings. I don't know if there is an easier way to merge/copy them over, but I'm guessing not. I will insert the original posting date to help keep them straight. I will begin with the post that came after the above.