MBerg

Thank you sirs! Sounds like it's a non issue. Agreed. I've been thinking similarly and less concerned with potential issues, while also trying to use this as as much of a learning experience as I can. Let's see how the top coats turn out. I'll look into airbrushing when getting to the bigger projects.

Coming out of one of the most brutal winters I can remember, I'm looking to finish priming and painting the pram. I had already finished priming the interior, the exterior needed one more coat, and I also made the common mistake of not filling the last cut line on the transom before painting. Spoiler: the paint did not fill the line in, so I sanded back, filled and reprimed. However, I'm coming across an issue. When prepping to put the second coat of primer on the exterior, I noted it was thickening up quite a bit. Rather than using some 'bad' primer, I grabbed some of the OcCre stuff I had lying around. It seemed quite blotchy when applying it so I was immediately wondering if I made a bad mistake by switching primers halfway through. I let it dry overnight and today I noticed it's quick shiny. Now I'm wondering if I should've stopped after the first coat, and went to normal paint. Will this gloss cause an issue - did I screw it up by using 1 coat each of different primers, or is this just a normal characteristic of some primers? @Jim M P.S. Thanks again for the advise on painting. I'm still using a brush and the stuff with the kit, but I picked up some spray primer I'll use on the smack and hopefully develop some better painting skills for future projects. Pics of the sanded and filled transom + odd glossy primer for reference:

Your pram looks great! Nice work! Good luck on the smack.

Awesome job on the stand! Really adds to it. I may need to steal your ideas when I get to making mine. I appreciate your log in this one.

Once again, I appreciate the response. One last question - I was given a 'wood conditioner' with the kit. This is strictly a pre-stain and has nothing to do with the painting process - is that correct?

@Jim M that's interesting, I'll look a bit into it. So is the idea to seal the wood with shellac then paint over it as mentioned above? I haven't come across something like this yet,is it what's typically done on plastic models which is why it's sealed first? I see Mr surfacer is meant for plastic (thought I might be looking at the wrong thing,I only did a quick Google)

Time, for an update, but first I have a few questions. Unlike the dory, I'll be priming this one. I have both Occre and ME primers show below: 1. Instructions suggest spray on primer (eg. Rust-Oleum primer) - Should I buy some of that instead of brush on? 2. If I don't use spray primer, does the brush on primer need to be thinned similar to the paint? 2a. Is one better than the other between ME & Occre or is this more of a personal preference/doesn't matter type of thing? Log #9 - Row locks, rub rails, dagger board, rudder, thwarts Progress has been slow, but it has been. I enjoyed making the row lock pads, I find a lot of kit modelling is sanding off char and then sanding some more so it was nice to do a little carving, even though it was incredibly basic. They're straightforward, as is the rudder gudgeon pad. I clamped a block of wood and used an 'upside down' chisel blade to carve them, then clamped to drill them out and cleaned up. The rub rails are self explanatory, nothing special here, and the pads glued in place. It was nice to have some of the work on the thwarts done from earlier steps. All that was left was to sand down the width of the middle thwart. I already fit the forward and aft thwarts, they just need some cleaning up to take the char & edges off. Sanding the rubber went smoothly. However, it felt like I sanded the daggerboard for an eternity, and it still isn't as loose as I'd like. I'm trying to avoid it getting jammed in place once painted and installed. I feel like I've taken off enough thickness from the daggerboard, I'm going to try filing down the inside of the daggerboard case some more to make for a looser fit before painting. In a full shot up above you can see I still hadn't finished the tiller slot on the rear transom yet. I wasn't sure what to do with this yet since the instructions incorrectly stated a 3/8" file (I believe it's probably 3/16" as mentioned by at least one other). Rather than buying a file for this purpose, I wrapped a piece of sandpaper around my brush handle and sanded it out that way. This worked fine and is complete now (no picture). If I remember right, I believe I need to complete the dagger board 'stop', add the midship thwart 'retainers' and refine the remaining thwarts before I'm ready to paint. I'm keeping my eye on the price of the PROXXON Disk Sander TG 125/E as I feel like it'll be a nice first power tool to add. I believe it'll help with cleaning up char and more importantly getting precise angles that I sometimes struggle with. If anyone has an experience with it, or other recommendations I appreciate any input! Thanks for following, Matt

I think he's referring to the notch for the tiller. I found 3/8" to be massive also and thought they meant 3/16". The etch mark is closer to that size. I skipped that part until I assemble the tiller then I'll fit it and decide which way to proceed. Looks like Scott used 3/8" above which doesn't look bad at all.

Holy cow. Incredible job. I only just jumped in the last few weeks here, but I appreciate the intricate details none-the-less.

Jumping in on this log so I can see another person finish this build before I do . The dory looks great. I have a second one and may go back to make a diorama, where did you get the figure?

It's been a while so I figure I might as well post an update on where I am. It kind of looks like I bought a sailboat and took off! That is not the case. I ended up spraining my thumb at a golf tournament (who said golf wasn't a sport?), while waiting for that to heal, I had a week long business trip, and now that it's slowly getting better, we were just slapped with a nasty bug for the past week and a half. I'm still battling with some serious chest congestion so needless to say I don't want to wear a respirator or do anything that conjures up sawdust to be inhaled. I have made a small amount of progress both before I injured my thumb and before I got sick. The thumb is still not 100%, but it's close enough I should be able to keep moving along carefully once these lungs clear up. This will be a short log, but will bring up to where I am today. Log #8 - Floor cleats, mast step, chainplate slots Floors cleats are pretty straightforward. Wet them, bent, cut down, then glued in place: Next, the mast step. It seems people are receiving different version of this, but mine had a hole in one piece, with the second being solid (which is what the instructions call for). I was incredibly careless when gluing it together. I clamped the sides to even them out, and then clamped it long ways to achieve the same. This was a bad idea. The force of the clamp snapped both pieces right in half. It wasn't dry at all yet so I quickly added a bit of glue on the broken ends and fit it back together clamping it to the table so it dries flat. The instructions say to glue it in place and then sand the ends down. I couldn't do this since it was shorter than the frames. Either: 1. The piece as provided is short, or 2. The frames aren't in the right spot. I did not use the instruction book since I already know it's printed out of scale, but I used the PDF download and printed scale from that to place them. So they should be correct. In any case, I don't see that either problem will affect the end result too much. Chainplate slots weren't too bad, but they were tedious. I marked out the location, drilled a hole as per instructions, but I couldn't simply 'poke' the saw blade through as the instructions imply. I had to kind of repeatedly attack it with the saw, a brooch and an X-Acto. Eventually I got the saw through and wow, those blades I got are super dull, they only cut on one stroke and not very well. Got it done eventually. That's all for the build now. I have a driveway dumpster coming this week and will be doing a serious garage and workshop clean out. I may take a 'break' to move the shipyard out into one of those spaces as a larger, more permanent setup. That, or I'll wait until I finish this thing and start fresh out there with the smack. Here's some shots of the lovely aurora we had the other evening:

Congrats! The end result looks very good!

Very nice output, Dan!

This is a dream build. Incredible work so far 👍

Not the clearest instructions for a beginner build. Sometimes takes trial and error or a lot of pondering face until the ah ha moment. I'm glad it's been helpful, and happy to do my best to answer any other questions.