Thukydides

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I already planked that area (see the first picture in my last post). However I suppose it doesn't really matter, just will result in more sanding :).

I am hoping so, it is the little things that you don't know are important until it is too late that trip me up :). I am optimistic that with a lot of filler and sanding it will be smooth by the time I am done.

Log #7: Fixing More Errors Work on the first planking continues and I am starting to feel much more comfortable with the process. I am certainly more pleased with the last few strakes I laid as opposed to the first. However, I decided that I wanted to correct the issue I alluded to in the previous log. When I attached my first planks I thought I would be clever and use a piece of plank to mark how far down to place the plank. However to do this I used one of the limewood planks for the first planking, not the 4mm ones in another bag. As a consequence the first plank is about 1mm lower than it should be. Additionally, I did a poor job of lining the first plank up and the amount it is off by changes depending on the point you look at. As a side note, part of my problems with getting the strakes to look right stems from this issue of the first ones not being in the right place. I considered two options to correct the problem. The first was to simply use a 5mm plank instead of the kit suggested 4mm ones for the top strake tapering it as necessary. Then a thin piece of scrap would be used at the bow to raise it to the correct angle. This was my initial plan until I considered that getting the bow right would be very difficult. So I went with the second option. I once again removed the front part of the top strake and using the 4mm plank as a spacer, I correctly positioned it 4mm below the ends of each frame. Now with the run of the plank corrected I used thin pieces of limewood that I had trimmed off while planking to fill the gap. It doesn’t look pretty, but once it is sanded and filler added, I am hoping it should serve as an adequate base for the 2nd planking.

That is the problem, I feel like I could do a much better job now knowing what I know. Hopefully we remember what we learned on the 2nd planking :).

I am finding that usually when I am having trouble getting the plank to bend round the bulkheads properly it either means I didn't fare the bulkhead enough or didn't edge bend enough. What i never appreciated until trying this was that sometimes you need the bend centered on two different points. Good job, it looks great

Quick update, the first planking is progressing and I am now more than half way there. I had some issues at the bow (mostly related to how I didn't fare enough/tapered/positioned the first few planks, but I have managed to push through. There are a few gaps I will need to fill. I see a lot of sanding in my future.

Log #6: Lining Off the Hull I decided to add an additional strake bringing me down to just below the wales before beginning the lining off process. I tapered both ends to two thirds of the original planks width. I also discovered another earlier error. When I attached my first planks I thought I would be clever and use a piece of plank to mark how far down to place the plank. However to do this I used one of the limewood planks for the first planking not the 4mm ones in another bag. As a consequence the first plank is about 1mm lower than it should be. I have a plan to try and account for this, but first I need to finish the planking. Lesson Learned: The first plank is really important for positioning everything. Next time I need to take more care with it. But before I got to lining off the hull I got distracted by the idea of scribing the keel. In retrospect if I was going to do this it would have been a much better idea to do this before the keel was attached to the hull. In any case I think it turned out ok. Certainly it looks fine from 3 feet away and once it is painted some of the minor imperfections will hopefully not be visible. Finally, on to lining off the hull. I attempted to follow Chuck's lining guide and for the most part I think it worked. My main problem is I had trouble telling if the string was in the right place or not. I guess it doesn't matter too much since this is the first planking. The lining off took a lot of time so I didn't have time to do any more planking.

Looking forward to seeing this

I also like the pear. Maybe it is because it looks a bit more aged.

Are there any other books on cutters you would recommend? The Goodwin one is almost impossible to get now unless you want to pay a small fortune for it.

The stove would have been below the deck. If you look at pictures of the finished model you can see the stove pipe just ahead of the mast. I am not sure there is an easy way to actually model the stove on this kit as there is no lower deck. For example see below for my work in progress alert model. The kit has a lower deck which is where you would put the stove if you wanted to add it in. Especially for a first build, I wouldn't worry about this as very little of it would be seen through the hatch anyways.

Log #5: Planking and then Re-Planking I must admit that the planking was one of that parts of the build I was most apprehensive about. I planned to treat the first planking as if it was the only one in order to practice the techniques for the second planking. This might result in a slower build, but hopefully will allow me to work out all the kinks before I get to the part that everyone will see. I used Chuck's edge bending method on the planks. You can learn more about it here. However, what appears simple in theory was much harder in practice. First I struggled with how much and where to make the center of my bend. Then I discovered that sometimes I needed more than one bend. However, by the time I got to the 4th strake I was feeling much more comfortable with the process. I then bent the strakes round a curved wooden block again using the iron and a tiny bit of water to get them to hold their shape. I attached the strakes to the model using pva. After much humming and hawing I decided to go in this direction as I felt it would be easier to remove strakes after the fact if I messed up. This thought turned out to be rather prophetic. Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I set the model aside to dry. A few hours later when I went back to examine it I noticed this. The problem had not really been visible when I attached the first strake, but now that the second was on I could clearly see a gap between the false deck and the planks. The problem was that I had not adequately fared bulkheads 2 and 3 causing the plank to bulge out between them. I was of two minds what to do about this. I considered posting about it to see how much of a problem you all thought it might be, but in the end I decided to go ahead and correct the problem. This was the moment I became very glad I had decided to use pva for the first planking. I dabbed a little bit of isopropyl onto the joints on the first few bulkheads and then gently used my hobby knife to pry the planks off. Then after sanding down the bulkheads (this was an awkward task where I had only partially removed the planks), I reattached the planks to the hull. In the end I was glad I took the time to go back and correct the issue even if it might not have been a big deal. It would have messed with the fit of the margin planks on the deck and I would have been forever bothered by it if it had resulted in any visible distortion, no matter how minor. Lesson Learned: Be much more careful about checking the faring before attaching any strakes. This will ultimately save a lot of time and headaches. On to lining off the hull...

Log #4: Final Assembly and Faring Having laid out the planking pattern it was time to install the false deck and begin the faring process. However, before I could begin this I needed to make sure I had a way of making templates for theargin planks. The boxwood sheet I ordered won't get here for another week or two and once the deck is installed, the tabs would get in the way of me double checking the template. To create the template I used the sheet the deck came in. I cut off the tabs used it to draw the outside edge of the template. I then used the compass to draw the inside edge of the template. Everything appeared to match so on to the final assembly. After gluing on the deck and adding the final pieces of the frame I fared the hull using sandpaper. This wasn't as hard or as time consuming as I had expected. Just letting the sandpaper run down the natural lines of the hull took off the parts it should without me having to think to hard about it. Finally I attached the front end of the keel. The instructions indicated that I should attach the whole keel at this point, but I decided to leave off the back end of it to make the sanding stage after the first planking easier. I can always dry fit it when attaching the garboard plank. Next up, I get to see if all the reading I have done on planking taught me anything...

That looks really good. I have been considering the possibility of doing furled sails for my alert build using silkspan, but I am a bit nervous it is a bridge too far for a first build.

That makes sense why I ended up with more planks as the kit ones are just shy of 4mm. One question I had for you was the process for cutting the steps in the margin planks when you actually do the planking. You glued down the margin planks long before you actually laid the rest of the planks. Did you just cut the notches out with a hobby knife? Is there anything I need to be careful of when glueing down the margin planks?

I don't think I really appreciate the detailed work on rigging I have seen on these forums until I opened up the fittings box for my alert and saw how small all the bits really were. It looks good.

They look amazing. I would never have guessed they were made out of card.

Log #3: Designing the Deck Though I largely intend to follow the instructions as written, there are a few places where I want to make some minor adjustments based on some ideas from other build logs. The first of these adjustments was the deck planking pattern. The pattern is largely a replication of the excellent work that blue ensign did on his alert kit. I would highly recommend you check out his post on the subject here. It was not clear to me from the pictures what width of planks blue ensign was using and since I was planning on using the planks that came with the kit, I needed to rebuild the pattern from scratch using the picture of his finished pattern as a guide. The first step was to mark out where the margine planks would go. These will be cut out of a boxwood sheet I have ordered. I used a compass, setting the width to match the distance the bow cuts into the deck, keeping this width constant all the way round the outside of the deck. Next, I measured and drew the plank lines down the length of the deck. I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to do this precisely until I realized I could just lay the boxwood strips next to each other to make my tick marks. Then, I marked where the planks would but into the margine planks. Finally, using the beam positions that blue ensign used, I marked the plank ends using a 4 plank shift pattern. This had to be adjusted slightly near the center to avoid any of the planks looking too short or too long. I would love some feedback on any issues anyone might see with the planking pattern. It turned out a little different than the one blue ensign did, likely due to differences in plank widths. Next up, final assembly and faring...

I love dollar store clamps. If the break you can always just get more.

I have a question relating to photos. I have been doing my log in Google docs (just so I have a record) and then copying and pasting it into my log her on msw. I have noticed that when I view the log on mobile the pictures appear squished. Is there anyway to fix this?

Log #2: Assembling the Frame Having checked that all the pieces appear to be in the box I proceeded to dry fit the frame. I also took the opportunity to mark how much I had to thin the keel using a 1.5mm strip I cut off some masking tape. This is one of those places where the knowledge shared on build logs here at MSW has been invaluable. This is the sort of thing that would never have occurred to me, but likely saved me a lot of hassle and I suspect the thinning would not have been nearly as even. Having done this I then drew in an estimate for the bearding line and sanded it down to prepare for planking. Based on what I had read I figured this was easier to do at this stage before I assembled the frame. After that assembly was straightforward. I know that it had been mentioned in a few logs that the pieces fit together well and should hold themselves straight, but given some of the problems I had read about in other (non-alert) build logs I decided to be extra careful and ensure each bulkhead was square using the tried and tested lego block method. It was at this point I finally understood why everyone keeps saying you can never have enough clamps... As many of the other Alert logs have mentioned I had some trouble fitting the stern frames into position. The problem is the outer two frames. The inner ones slotted in fine, but the outer ones required a slight bit of bending to get them to fit. I was worried they might break as I was doing this, but managed to get them in fine and the rest of the assembly proceeded without incident. The final piece to add to the puzzle before beginning the faring of the bulkheads was the false deck. However, that will have to wait till the next log as I decided I wanted to try and replicate the deck pattern done by blue ensign so that needed to be measured and marked out before I could proceed. Next time on Thukydides’ Alert Build Log: A novice tries to draw a deck planking pattern...

I am certainly enjoying it so far. We will see how I feel when I hit the inevitable first major problem.

Do you have a build log going?

Thanks for the advise. I do plan to take this very slow.

Log #1: And So It Begins I have always had a keen interest in model ships, but never realized that kits existed or that there was ever the possibility of me making one. A few months back a video popped up on my youtube feed of the Amati Lady Nelson being built in a timelapse. This was my inspiration to start researching the subject and I discovered the wealth of information available online and in particular I discovered MSW. Over the past month or so I have been reading many of the build logs on this site and trying to absorb the wealth of information here. I had originally wanted to start with a more ambitious project, but a number of posts on the subject here on MSW convinced me to start with a more modest one. My model making experience has tended more towards things like this: So this project will represent a bit of a departure for me from my normal hobby activities and I fully anticipate making many mistakes over the coming months. Hopefully as I document them in this build log they will be of use to those that follow afterwards. Please feel free to critique any mistakes you might see as I progress through this build as I suspect I will need all the help I can get :). I would be remiss if I did not mention up front how thankful I am for all the completed Alert build logs on model ship world that I have to follow along with. I found the logs by Blue Ensign and glennard2523 particularly helpful. I know that one of the selling points of Chris's models is the lovely big build manual. But I guess I never really grasped how nice and big it is till it was there in front of me. Every part is clearly labeled and numbered in the manual making everything nice and clear. Having double checked that the contents of the box were all there, I was ready to begin. Unfortunately it was at this point that I ran out of time and the start of construction will have to wait for the next log.