DocRob

Thank you James, I checked with the plans and my mizzen mast definitely rakes more to the aft. I think, I will extend the masts lower end eccentric under deck, if this is possible through the staircase opening. The part, which will extend below the lower deck will be connected with a brass rod to the mast, which sits on the lower deck than, partly.

Thanks for answering Chris. The mizzen mast is inserted correctly into the hole of the lower deck. I checked with other builds here on MSW and the build log from @glennard2523 shows a similar rake. I looked at the manual and drawings and it is angled too much aft for my liking. The last shroud (aft) should at least have an 90 degrees angle, which is not the case with mine. Cheers Rob

It looks like I have done not a lot with the build and it's partly true, as I'm pounding a lot of rigging concerned themes in my head and also read a bit in other DoK threads. I've been fitting the deadeyes into the strops, which was easy for the 3 mm deadeyes and a bit more daunting with the 5 mm ones, which needed quite some bending. Meanwhile, I test assembled the masts, to check their angles and found the mizzen mast to be a bit to far angled to the back. I'm not sure, how to adjust this. One possibility would be to enlarge the hole in the lower deck somehow, the other to shorten the mast and insert a kind of support through the staircase onto the lower deck. Any other ideas and suggestions are welcome. Cheers Rob

Oils are perfect for replicating woodgrain. It's simple to do and it's completely removable during the application stage. Matte sand brown acrylics are a good base, better than gloss. You can apply the brownish (depending the type of wood) oil colors onto it, better a bit too much than to less. Then use a flat brush and start to remove the oil color with defined strokes and find the right amount of thinner for your purpose. don't let the mix get too wet, it's better to use a paper towel to get rid of the oil color you removed, while gently stroking. Have a good idea about the desired finish, which includes varnishing. For a wooden deck a matt clear varnish should work, for other warmer effects, Tamiya's clear yellow or clear orange, heavily thinned work marvels. Best you try it first on a flat piece of plastic, until you feel comfortable. In your case with a relatively small scale, the brushstrokes should be very light, it's easy to overdo the wood grain thing. I used the oil technique just recently on the anchor winch drum of my Duchess of Kingston build. It's 64 scale and therefore made with only a hint of wood grain texture. Cheers Rob

It may be possible to remove only the wash, as most washes are made for application and then to remove a bit until you achieved the desired effect. It depends, what kind of wash you used. You can try to remove the wash with the appropriate thinning medium for the wash, but if it's the same like the acrylics underlying, bad luck, the base layer will be affected too. BTW.: You haven't sealed the wash with varnish afterwards. The best option for a natural wooden finish deck, IMHO is to strip the deck, if possible, paint it in a matte acrylic sand brown and than use the oil paint technique for texturing. With this technique, you can adjust the wood texture as you desire, using white spirit, to spread and erase the oil paint until the grain looks perfect. The effectiveness depends on the scale of course, it's easy to produce too much texture in small scale. If you think, that is a solution for you and you need more information about the how to's, I can explain the technique a bit more detailed. Here are some examples I did with this technique in 48 scale. It's only oils on acrylics, at this stage without varnish. Some more examples in 32 scale Cheers Rob

I never used one, but many plastic modelers start to use plotter cutter devices, which can cut PC pre designed contours into vinyl foil. This should be accurate enough. Cheers Rob

I didn't like the look of my blue PE oars and I had to do something about them, as they were too prominent on deck of the DoK. I de-charred the also supplied ones from pear wood, rounded them cautiously with sanding paper and files and gave them a coat of Wipe on Poly, followed by blue for the blades and gold for the handles. Now I like the look and it was well worth the extra effort to tear off the PE oars, rip of the seat planks, clean them from CA and repaint them. The supports were glued to the deck, but the boat will be removed, as it may is in the way, while rigging. Next is cleaning of the bench and then, it's rigging time . Cheers Rob

Thank you very much Glenn, for explaining your methods of rigging ratlines and others. This will be a great help for my very first rigging on my Duchess of Kingston, same scale, same knots. I hope, I will learn from your experiences and don't ruin my nerves and yours along, when I bombard you with questions. Cheers Rob

I scratch build my own supports for the boat from planking rests, cut with my trusty mitre cutter and sandwiched the MDF parts for the boats stand between them. After a coat of varnish, I added some eyebolts and decorations, which originally should be used at the hull sides, but I never liked them there. I like the look, as it fits to the other sub assemblies on deck. What I'm not sure about, is the look of the blue etched rows, which I may exchange for the also supplied wooden ones, painted differently, maybe whit and natural wood. What do you think. Cheers Rob

Many good advices by Oldsalt, Glomar. Airbrushing is about a certain discipline. It's not overly hard to learn, but you have to train a lot, to get decent results. Try everything on paper or an old model first. Keep the airbrush clean at all times and care for your needle. A bent needle will result in bad spraying. One thing can't be emphasized enough, the mixing ratio. Almost all colors have to be thinned. The rule of thumb calls for a milk like mix to spray. Again, this has to be tested. To thick mixes will clog in the airbrush to thin mixes run under masking and don't cover. Try to get adjusted to the medium you spray, acrylics, enamels or whatever. Use the appropriate thinner for the color. When you have found the possibly correct mix of color and thinner, experiment with the air pressure, until you have the right balance. When you spray, try to avoid start spraying onto the model surface, start before and stop, when moved over the area completely. If there is dotting, you may have color clogged on the needle. This can be easy cleaned off, but can be a sign of a to thick mix or to high air pressure, specially with high pigmented colors. Airbrushing is 80% preparations, masking and cleaning and at max 20% of spraying. Be patient and analyze what you achieve. One word about masking, there are several possibilities, the one I like most is yellow Kabuki tape, which you can purchase from different producers. It's thin, adheres well and can be cut very precise. Sometimes you will need liquid masks or flexible masks for achieving contours. Do yourself a favor and wear a respirator mask and rubber gloves, when airbrushing. Almost all mediums you spray are poisonous or dangerous. If you have more specific questions, I will answer you for sure and don't forget, airbrushing is fun and a great technique to have mastered. Cheers Rob

I never tried a carton model, but yours looks sweet and tempting. somewhere, I must have shelved lightship kit, I will look for that. Cheers Rob

Almost there with the Cutter. I painted the hull flat white, the seats flat red and the rudder, rows and stripe flat blue, all airbrushed with Tamiya's XF colors. The gratings, which are made from PE, were primed, airbrushed with Desert yellow and then received a oil color treatment with a flat brush and whit spirit, to emulate a wood finish. Last was a coat of clear matte. The colors were chosen to match the DoK's colors. Some minor touch ups and fitting the rows, hooks and anchors and this little side project can be called done. Cheers Rob

Your boat looks absolutely fantastic, made with great woodworking skills. Cheers Rob

This boat is truly a model in a model and consumes lots of time to build up. My new Sphinx kit has thee boats included, that will be a real test. I added the spars, which are made from pearwood strips, which I soaked and clamped around a tin for drying with a curved contour. These were glued in with CA and then cut. Finally after adding the supplements for the seat panels, the inside of the boat got a coat of varnish. The rest of the boat will be painted matching the scheme of the ship. Cheers Rob

I feel with you Vane, as I'm building a boat for my Duchess of Kingston at the moment. It's a tedious affair for a novice like me and the first planks were not the most difficult. I feared the step of removing the frames, but it worked out good, without destroying the hull. I used PVA for the planks in places, where the frames will be removed and CA on the other parts of the planks. Cheers Rob

I like large scale ships a lot, as it's possible to show a lot of detail. Lately I found some pictures of the Philadelphia kit and was immediately attracted. I hope you don't mind, if I take a seat and follow your build. Cheers Rob

A wonderful and clean build of this very attractive ship, congratulations. Cheers Rob

Thank you Tom, your build progresses greatly. Installing the fragile side railings was not the easiest task in my build, but they do add a lot to the appearance of the DoK. I recently joined here and started my build log, right were I was last week with the decks done. It can be found here. The full build log was started on MSW's partner forum Large Scale Modeler, where I'm an active member since some years. Duchess of Kingston - Beauty of the Seas - Wooden Sailing Ship 1/64 - Non-LSM 'WIP' and Completed - Large Scale Modeller BTW, I have to find a way to add my current projects to the footer of my profile, but couldn't find out how. Cheers Rob

Thank you Oldsalt, indeed these tiny boats can challenge my patience. I've managed to smooth the hull due to sanding and applying filler and have torn out the MDF frames, which worked surprisingly well, given the eggshell like appearance of the cutter. It turned out to be very time consuming, to get rid off the glue residues on the inside of the boat with sanding tools, rounded scalpel blades and small chisels. After this was done, I made a small placement test on my DoK. Cheers Rob

This is a very fine build of that lovely ship. I really like the cleanness of your build, which was inspiring, while I build mine. I'm slightly ahead of you with my first wooden ship, as I have just finished the decks and am fighting now with a planked boat, I want to add to my DoK. I took some peeks into your build, as I gathered as much information as I could possibly get, to help me with my newby attempt. Cheers Rob

Thank you Derek, that sure helps. Buying a mill is not urgent and I'm still in the phase of deciding about my needs and what I'm willing to pay. I was a metal engineer in a former live and used professional mills extensively for some years. During my education as an engineer, I was part of a team, developing a self built CNC-mill. That was back in the 80's mind. I wish, I had one of those machines now. The wood milling aspect is what's new to me and you are right, speed helps with clean cuts here. My plan is to mill wood, brass and aluminum and I will dig a bit deeper into the subject now. Cheers Rob

Like most of the above comments, I would say the booth you have chosen is not suitable for sanding dust. There are different padded filters which would clog rapidly with sawdust. I own a spray booth similar to the one you are showing, but have enhanced it a bit for bigger models and better suction. I wouldn't use it for sanding though, but the basic construction in combination with a small industrial vac cleaner might be worth trying. Using a booth limits your ability for handling a lot, you can't lets say sand a hull in there, so generally I think, like mentioned above, it's better to use tools, which have a vac cleaner port and collect the dust where it emerges. In case you are interested ,I show some pics of my booth which was enlarged using a big container made from transparent plastic. I cut an opening into it's underside, more or less the size of the booth, without the plastic sheets and connect both with duct tape. I used some ropes of LED's for lighting wrapped around the transparent box. If you find a way to install a powerful vac cleaner instead of the booth, it might work. The planes in the booth are 32 scale, the box is ca. 60 cm wide. Cheers Rob

I built up the the Duchess of Kingston, hull and decks complete with all the decorations during a three month period and needed almost two weeks for planking the cutter. I have to admit, the little bugger took a bit of wind out of my sail, but I'm stubborn enough to want the boat having finished somehow. I'm really happy, that I wouldn't have to use the cutter in real live, as it's planking job is far away from being watertight and even if it was, it wouldn't row straigth at all. My second planking job was somewhat harder than with DoK. That's it in full ugliness, before sanding After a bit of sanding it looked a bit smoother. I wouldn't go to far with sanding, as the planks thickness is only 0,5 mm. I will use some filler next, liberally applied which will not disturb, because I plan to paint the outside of the hull. Cheers Rob

You could apply some iron pigments with a cotton swab. My go to metal pigments are from Uschi van der Rosten, because these are the finest. Another fine weathering product ar AK's weathering pencils. They are special, because you can apply them dry like chalks or dampened. Oil colors are also very useful and on a pump like yours, which is painted matte or semi matte, you can work some gloss onto oiled parts or where spills occur. These are only some ideas which originate from my plastic modelling background, BTW.: Yor Cutty Sark looks great with all the detail. I will savour your log with a bit more time. Cheers Rob