Greg M

Thank you all for the continued likes and motivation. I managed to work through my list above a few days earlier than I expected and there were no big surprises or gotchas. When I brought my Winnie outside on Sunday to fair the decks with the mouse sander, the natural light showed just how bad the finish looked above the wales. I think in hindsight I only sanded to 220 and applied a single coat of WOP expecting to clean it up before chapter 3. I realized I had to completely strip the finish and start fresh. I also had the problem with the Elmer’s school glue that had turned white. The picture is a good example of what I had to deal with. I used 320 grit sandpaper to remove the finish, giving special attention to glue stains, rough patches and scratches. I followed this up with a lot of acetone on the seams, patience and scraping with a piece of cedar to remove the glue. Then I applied 3 coats of WOP and the finish looks quite a bit nicer. That's one item off the list. Moving on to fairing the decks. I decided to color code the work I would need to do thinking it would make this process much easier. Pink is high, yellow is low and blue is about right. I figured the mouse sander would make short work of the job and I got hold of some 40 grit sanding pads which is where I made a bit of a mistake. I really only needed 40 grit for the pink areas which are for the most part the bow and stern and pretty beefy pieces of plywood. What I should have done is used 40 grit on the tip of the mouse and 120 for the rest of the sanding pad. The 40 grit absolutely rips through the aircraft plywood including areas I didn't want to take much off. The mouse faired the deck in about 5 minutes what would have taken me a full day or more by hand. It did a wonderful job of smoothing out the stern and waist, but the bow was a bit of a struggle and the 40 grit chewed up some of the builkheads a bit. The orange bulkhead is because it did such a great job at the stern and waist, that bulkhead is now a little bit high. 120 grit on just the tip of the mouse and no sandpaper on the rest smoothed out that frame in no time. Some 1/32” basswood filler strips and a sanding block were all that was needed to smooth out the low areas. I might need to fine tune a spot here or there and tested the false decks. They'll require a little trimming, but there shouldn’t be any surprises come chapter 4. Finally, I installed the bollard timbers. Painting the stem and bollards took a while as all the time I had spent giving them a nice smooth finish also made them resistant to the acrylic paint. I should have scratched the finish with some 400 grit first. It also solidified my decision that I'm going to leave the channels natural color. All the prep work that I can see is done, so time to get back to moldings and friezes.

Thank you all for the likes and I hope you have had an amazing weekend Chuck. I spent the better part of the last week constructing the roofs. I still can’t get over how much easier it is to work with boxwood than any of the usual kit woods I've worked with in the past. It's sanding, cutting and durability make It feel like working with a high quality resin rather than wood, but without the brittleness of resin. I can’t believe with the amount of sanding and handling needing for the roof tiles that not a single one chipped or broke. I thought I had a great idea where I would use my calipers to scribe the lines for where the tile ends would rest. Worked great for the first row, but things went off the rails for the second row. That line below did not stand. I found starting from the fore end created a much cleaner run. One thing I noticed after the fact was the instructions had 11 tiles for the first run and I used 12, which made for a tight squeeze for me by the 3rd row, but I managed. I bought a pen sander thinking it would be useful for fairing the inside of the frames and it was pretty worthless on the heavy plywood I used. It has been one of those tool purchase regrets that has had very little use until now. I feel like it was designed for just the purpose of sanding the roof tiles. It only took a few minutes to consistently thin out a row of tiles. One thing I didn’t discover until I was almost done is it was a lot easier to sand the tops of the tiles flush and then worry about thinning the tile overall rather than trying to thin them first and then sand the top flush. I painted them black, then dry brushed with a couple shades of lighter grey. I found after I applied WOP, I needed to hit the roofs with a coat of Dullcote as there was a lot of shine coming from the shadows between the tiles, which made them look odd. I added the trim and sanded them down a fair bit. My run on the right one was a tiny bit off which is why there is a small gap on on the far right side; I may add some filler and paint, but I didn't want to force the trim to conform to the run as I'm sure that would make installing the fiddly rail more difficult. Test fit - starboard Test fit - port I’ve made a list of a few things I want to do before I start on the hull friezes and moldings, so it will be at least a week and maybe two before any major progress from here. First and foremost I want to fair the bulkheads for the decks. It looks like my cuts were pretty good on most of the bulkheads, but there are a couple that are a bit high as well as the false keel is high in a few places, plus I need to take down the bow fillers down a bit more. Luckily, it looks like I should be able to set up outside and use a mouse sander for the bulk of this, which shouldn’t be too bad now that the days are a bit cooler. I also didn’t spend a lot of time early in the process getting a good finish above the wales. I also used Elmer’s white school glue figuring to attach the black strake and this appears to have been a bad idea, because it looks like it the glue turned white over the last couple years and there are some tiny spots along the seam that I need to remove. This should have been easy to remove, but the WOP covering it makes it much more durable. The good news is I only applied a coat or 2 of WOP so I’m going to test stripping the finish with 320 grit in an area that will be covered by the friezes and see if a full refinish will be needed or if I can just do some spot work. Looking way ahead at the finished model, I figure now is a good time to paint the stem and bollard timbers black (plus install them finally) and assemble the channels; debating whether to paint those as well as I rather like the contrasting black/natural look.

Thanks JJ for the encouragement as well as everyone for the likes. It’s been quite the ride the last couple weeks as applying the friezes and closing up the galleries really shows how far off the mark from the plans the build is going. Luckily, issues have been cosmetic rather than structural. It dawned on me today as I was finishing up that the digital adjustments I made to the upper counter friezes directly aligned with the gaps underneath the column bottoms. Building a template using the upper counter frieze would have made a really easy way to align the aft ends of the gallery framing. There’s a lesson here to stop working when you are tired and not try to get one last thing done. The upper moulding has a small edge bend and I did it in the wrong direction. Luckily, it popped off very easily. A few minutes and a little bit of heat and a much better run. Poster tack back out for testing the drop and figure. Onward to the roofs. Other than the fiddly rails on top of the roofs (that I may ignore for a few chapters more ), the rest of the chapter seems pretty straightforward. I also realized I never faired the deck to remove any high points, so I'm going to work this in over the next week.

Window Installation time. I’ve been looking forward to this and stressing in equal measure. There was a little curveball with the acetate that ended up making things simpler for me in the long run. When I pulled the acetate sheet for the windows out of the bag, I discovered a long scratch all the way across the center. $10 and 24 hours later, I have enough .005 acetate sheets to last me 4 or 5 lifetimes. I started to think there’s a greater than 0% chance I may have to replace a window at some point in my lifetime, so I tried to put this part of the build together in a semi-permanent way so I could replace a window without needing to rebuild the gallery if I had to. Before I started this step, I grabbed a can of compressed air and got every little bit of dust I could out of the galleries. I then donned some gloves and started by cutting a piece off acetate almost to the height of the roofline and then set it in the groove without any glue. I tack the window in place with a spot of wood glue at the upper right, upper left and bottom of the window. Once set, the window is solidly in the groove and there’s no chance of an accidental glue smear on the acetate. I cut the acetate long to act as a guide for the filler piece which I cut out of 1/32” cedar. This is the same thickness as the windows. I shaved the filler pieces to height rather than sanded as I didn’t want any dust to get in the galleries through the little gaps in the top. I also cut a little dust cover and taped the doors to the gallery. I think I spent a bit too much time trying to get the perfect bend on the moulding and it really marred the finish on the uprights, but this gets hidden. Mouldings went on smoothly once I stopped fighting with them and focused on a straight run along the filler pieces. It looks like it’s drooping at the front, but it’s the camera angle. The moulding is only held by a dot of glue at both ends and it sits flat. The ends of the columns had a bit of a learning curve. The funky angles kept throwing me off thinking I was doing something wrong. The bottoms are floating a tiny bit as well., but It isn’t noticeable at a normal viewing angle. I’ll wait until I finish up the other side to see if I will have the same issue there and then determine if I should add a little bit extra underneath the columns. Added the column bodies and then carefully gave everything except the window frames a brush with WOP. Finally, a little cleanup and poster tack for the figure and the drop to make sure everything is lined up properly. It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty happy all the same. I'll finish up the columns on the other side tomorrow and then on to the roofs.

Thanks Frank and everyone for the likes. I think you nailed it on the head that the prints on the galleries have a bit more green than the ones on the back. I'm taking the approach that the color behind the columns should be consistent and something that will complement the differences of the friezes without trying too hard to match either one. I think I've found a color that works well, but I'm still going to take a day or two to sit on it and move onto the roof and moulding above the windows. I'm going to test edge bending the boxwood moulding above the windows and hope it responds the same way as cedar. The thinner mouldings worked well with brute force, but that extra 1/64" adds enough rigidity to make me think it will break if I get too aggressive. Edit: turns out it wasn't so much edge bending as application of heat and a bit of twisting. Regardless, I was impressed with how easy the boxwood bent with the application of heat.

This was an amazingly productive weekend. Kids were off doing their own thing and nothing on the honey do list. I went through a lot of test friezes, but the effort was worth it as the installation went pretty smoothly. As soon as the glue had dried, I used a q-tip and WOP on the friezes, which had a nice effect of muting the colors and making them look painted and less printed. I had planned on using high quality matte presentation paper, which looked nicer when printed than cheap copy paper, but they looked the same in my tests when the WOP was applied. The cheap copy paper is thinner and easier to work, so it was a no brainer to bin the more expensive paper. Also, as much as I liked the flat blue for the uprights, I was realizing they needed a little bit of green. I use Vallejo paints and I tested flat blue versus turquoise versus blue green against the friezes on the counter and both turquoise and blue green on their own was a step back. I ended up mixing 1 part flat blue with 2 parts blue green. It muted down contrast on the uprights a fair bit. I’ve since painted the transom with this and I’m very happy with the updated color as the counter friezes have more blue in them. Port side friezes went on cleanly as well. I installed the upper counter frieze when she was upright and then flipped her over to install the lower counter frieze. I also cut the hole for the rudder while I had her flipped over. I left the hole a touch undersized as it should be manageable to make any minor adjustments from here. Finally, the last order of business while I had the Winnie flipped over was building a new cradle. It's a lot easier to check for fit and I wanted something that would serve as a prototype for when the time comes to build a nice, permanent stand. I had originally tried to retrofit the framing building board with just a small support in the center and supports at the bow and stern. It simply didn’t give me the stability I needed. Frames G and 11 seem like good locations for a new cradle that will show off her lines and provide plenty of support. It’s ugly, but it works even better than I had hoped. I can easily pull the dimensions and angles from it to construct a proper display stand when the time is right. Most importantly, I don’t think I will ever have to flip her over again and this removes one more point of accidental damage. Back to closing up the galleries.

Thanks guys for all the advice. I tried a test run to see if I could mold it properly and I didn't get a result I was happy with, so I went the virtual route. Converting the PDF to a jpeg, removing the background, importing it into GIMP, then using the unified transform tool to slightly rotate along the seams on either side of the ships name did the trick. Writing it out now makes it sound more straightforward than it was as it took a lot of trial, error, and printer ink, but the latest test fits well now and this weekend will have the friezes installed. Losing the light on the latest test shot, but it's a clean run now.

Thanks. Trying to get it to bend is worth a shot before going to other options.

As always thanks for the likes as well as the encouragement JJ and Chuck. Ran into a spot today that I could use a bit of help with that I'm sure I'm probably not the first. These are draft mode friezes I printed out for initial fitting. Don't even have glue holding them on. The lower counter frieze with a little more trimming will fit just fine and the q-gallery friezes look good as well. The issue I'm having is the outer edges of the WINCHELSEA frieze. Looks like my upper counter is a little bit off. I'm trying to figure out the best solution to fit this frieze. I think the worst possible solution would be to just trim the bottom, find a close paint match for the corner and call it a day. More viable solutions would be: 1. I could put a little strip of decorative moulding in the corner. 2. I could paint (or photoshop) on the paper and then trim it out to size. 3. I could cut the frieze into three pieces along the seams next to the W and the period; then adjust the angle. 4. I can try to photoshop the frieze itself to warp the edges up a bit. This would be the ideal solution, but my concern here would be losing resolution. I think 3 is probably the one I'll start with, but wondering how others may have solved this issue or have any thoughts?

You're welcome Rick. I made a hash of the first few, but then like anything, it clicks. It's also helpful to have an Optivisor. I can’t bring myself to throw out any scrap of wood and as luck would have I threw all the offcuts from planking into a jar and with just a tiny bit of trimming, I had a virtually unlimited supply of short lengths of 3/64" cedar for the uprights without having to sand any char. The miter saw on the right, which is probably the most dangerous hobby tool I’ve ever used, was really helpful in being able to reproduce the uprights at precisely the right angle once established and saved me a lot of time over a razor saw. First try on the uprights using rubber cement…and close, but no cigar. A bit of careful sanding of the uprights (primarily the edge along the transom) and everything fits. Just need to re-arrange the windows a little bit. I decided to go with a flat blue for the gallery uprights figuring it would contrast nicely. Apparently I am also coordinating with the Model Shipways boxes in the background, which just happen to be Confederacy and Syren. I used CA to hold the upright along the transom and attach the forward upright along the hull with wood glue and let it set. I used CA figuring it would be easy to pop off if I needed to fine tune it. Then I used wood glue on the second upright and quickly installed the foremost window. I did the same with the next third upright and installed the other two windows. Using the wood glue allowed me a short windows to make some fine adjustments before it set up. Finished results of the starboard side. I trimmed the top with a little pen sander and would highly advise against that due to the amount of dust that ends up in the gallery. I used a #11 blade to trim the uprights on the port side and it was a much simpler cleanup. I was nervous that I wouldn’t find windows that fit, but my fears were put to rest. I’ve decided now is a good break point to stop, put the windows away and install the friezes. Looking ahead, I think I may use this opportunity to flip her over one last time and open the hole for the rudder as well. It also gives me a chance to buff and give another coat of WOP to the underside and build a proper cradle for display (or at least a working prototype). My system for securing the Winnie when hull up uses the cutout for the companionways which I can’t use after chapter 4. I think I should probably also get Chapter 11 sooner than later as it looks like having the channels on hand will make fitting the center moulding along the hull easier.

Thanks Rick. Picking up a cheap mini-lathe and some thin diamond cutting discs made all the difference with the scrapers. I'm sure I'd still be practicing if I attempted with files.

Thanks JJ. Scraping turned out to be a lot of fun. I just discovered your Portland prototype; absolutely amazing and when you release it, I'm going to need to figure out a way to work on both.

I spent the last couple days scraping boxwood. I initially was putting double sided tape on a piece of tempered glass, but I found it would slide at the worst times. I discovered putting painters tape directly on my workbench and then double sided tape on top of that, it held and the double sided tape along with the moulding could be peeled right off the painters tape with ease. Then the tape just be peeled off moulding. A new piece of double sided tape could be put down on the painters tape. No scraping adhesive with a razor blade or using it to separate the wood from the tape. Super simple. I ended up grinding two more scrapers and created a test piece for each, then applied a coat of WOP. I decided to use 1-1 for the upper counter and 3-3 for the lower counter on either side of the stern post. After scraping enough of those two patterns, I realized they weren’t going to cut it. A 2 inch test piece wasn’t a good sample size when the moulding needs to be 7 inches or so. 1-1 is nice, but doesn’t seem fancy enough and 3-3 has a periodic loss of detail. In the end, after scraping a 7 inch piece of the other 5 mouldings, I chose 2-2 for the upper and 2-3 for the lower, which also happened to be the last 2 scrapers I made. I think I’ll use 2-1 for the q-gallery roof moulding, but I may need to practice as that seems to be a pattern I can’t seem to get a good long run of. I used a test piece of cedar to get the dimensions for the thicker moulding on the transom and then added 1/32” to both sides. Then I pre-beveled and crossed fingers that the q-gallery moulding would meet up nicely Sacrificial piece of cedar to get the right angles for the gallery moulding. This moulding was a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be. It’s much more complex than it initially appears and I needed to thin it a bit so that it would bend properly. Perhaps a few more passes with the scraper would have been a better way to do it. I was really focusing on making sure the front was flush with the hull and the that it joined up perfectly with the moulding. The downside is that the moulding is a touch low towards the back of the run, showing some of the shell. I feathered it maybe 1/128” and it’s much less visible in the following shots. On the port side, although the moulding follows the line of the gallery better, it didn’t join as well with the moulding on the transom. I think when I was framing the galleries, I was eyeballing it a little bit higher than I should have and so the upper edge of the frame on both sides is angled up a tiny bit. In hindsight, a test batten when I was framing would have helped for ensuring a clean run when I hit this step. I thought the lower moulding was going to be simpler and in theory it would have been if the frankenclamp had popped into my mind sooner. Just need a little leverage to hold that front edge down and the CA kept popping. It took a couple hours and 3 sacrificial pieces of moulding before I figured out how to clamp and was able to glue it up. In the end, the run between the mouldings eyeballs pretty well. We’ll see once I cut the friezes. Port side was much quicker and painless. Going to need to touch up that gunport and the scratch on the wale. The run of both mouldings is pretty clean. Wish the miter joints were a little cleaner, but from eyeball distance, they look pretty good. Going to need to get some wood putty and finally fill the cat bite marks. Luckily, those are the only ones and are on a painted area. Port side Easily my favorite part was finally installing the moulding along the stern post and hiding some of the embarrasing planking joints. I decided to put the friezes on hold for a moment and will start closing up the galleries next, before going back to them.

Thanks Chuck and everyone for the likes. The boxwood strips came this morning, so I ran out to the workshop to quickly scrape some test samples. What a difference in both end result and how forgiving the scraping process is with boxwood. The most difficult part is going to be to decide which patterns to use.

I had to pack my Winnie up in Dec 2023 for what I thought was going to be 2 weeks which ended up through a series of events being over a year and naturally destroyed all momentum. I did not expect to take such a long hiatus. Regardless, about two weeks ago , I finally found myself with the appropriate time, headspace, storage space and workshop renovations to jump back into it. Once I got set back up, I noticed my Winnie had a little wobble on her building board, so the first order of business was inspecting the board for damage, removing all the painters tape from the ship and making sure there was no damage. As it turned out, a shim I used on the center support must have popped off at some point. It’s now nice and solid after glueing a new one on. Thankfully, there was no damage to the hull, although I would highly recommend not leaving painters tape on the hull for extended periods of time. There was more tape residue than I would have liked and I was surprised at the coloration difference of the wood even being kept out of the sun. I’m reducing the amount of tape to the bare minimum and hoping that the color will mellow and blend sooner than later. I had left off at the point where the moulding and test friezes are installed, but I decided a slight detour to install the seats first was in order. I spent a couple hours fiddling with tweezers and fitting the pieces individually before just assembling one and seeing how it fit. It was a lot easier to tweak once assembled. The parts just fell into place with a bit of beveling and small fit adjustments and putting the first bit of furniture on the ship made me realize that the major transformation is about to begin. I’ve never made moulding scrapers before, so after reading everything I could find and watching a few videos, I came to the realization that it’s just something you have to jump into and figure it out. I noticed just now that was my final comment in 2023 and I can't believe how straightforward it was once you get past the steep, but short learning curve. I had picked up a cheap metal lathe from Amazon along with some diamond cutting wheels a little while back and it was finally time to unbox them. I took the tack of just cutting different shapes and not trying too hard to mimic the plans. I also cut a bunch of lengths of 1/8” and 3/32” strips from a 1/32” cedar sheet plus I put an order in for more boxwood strips as I don't want to feel the pressure of not having enough stock on hand due to mistakes. The strips on the left are my initial test strips and the ones on the right are where I used double sided tape and started to get the hang of it. The double sided tape reduced the chatter and I did find the painters tape acted as a bit of a guide to reduce the wander. The topmost one I didn’t use painters tape on had some wander. 5 patterns for 1/8” look like they could make the grade and all 3 of the 3/32", but I’ll know once the extra boxwood strips come in and I’ll decide which of the patterns to use (or try to cut some extra fancy ones). Hopefully, by next week I’ll be ready to close up the galleries.