yvesvidal

Thank you Mtaylor. Yes, I have sanded it in pretty much the same way the original model is depicted. Thank you for the pointer. Yves

These offset turrets are interesting. These engineers had plenty of ideas.... Yves

I would say the ship is slightly too heavy on the bow, especially at the speed where you took it. Yves

I have a few questions for the experts of period ships: 1) How do you finish the angles of the stem? Do you leave them square or do you sand them slightly to smooth the sharp edges? I am assuming that these ships did not have a polished and round stem to break the waves at 3 to 5 knots of speed....not really useful. 2) What is the best way to protect that cherry stem, for now? Would you use an oil? The final model is supposed to have the copper tiles and a stem painted black. However, it may be months or years before I get to that stage, if I ever do. Yves

I am now building the stem. Steps 4 and 5: The fit is pretty good, out of the box: The keel is now glued to the main spine: This is done with the Lowe's ruler, clamped to a flat table to provide a good base. The keel is placed against the ruler and the spine rests on styrene cards of 1 mm thick. Spine is 10 mm, keel is 12 mm thick, leaving 1 mm on each side. Plenty of heavy weights are placed upon the assembly to make sure the whole keel/spine is perfectly flat. In the meantime, the stem has been glued, cleaned and polished. The cherry wood is very pleasant for the eyes and even better to the touch: Finally, the stem is glued to the previous keel/spine assembly: This ship is going to be massive: And yes, it holds vertically, by itself: Next, we will be assembling bulkheads and placing them on the spine. So far, I am very pleased with the kit and even though the cherry wood is hard to work at (at least with my tools - I do everything by hand, no electric sander), all the parts are fitting very well. Yves

Another beautiful kit. James, you are unstoppable !!!! Yves

What a beautiful ship and excellent building skills. Yves

Amazing work!!! I miss access to a resin printer for my Corvette.... 😞 Yves

Working on the keel of the ship. I glued all parts of the bow, three at a time. This is still a puzzle.... All the parts are made of three layers of cherry wood. The parts are designed in such a way, that both external sides are not burn by the cutting laser, which is a nice attention and a time saver. The next part is building the horizontal keel, using the staggered arrangement: A bench is designed with the help of Lowe's and Home Depot. Some shrink wrap plastic sheet is used to prevent the glue from running on the rulers and the bench. The parts are stuck in the trough and inserted very tightly. Making sure it is straight.... the keel is about 40 inches long and comprised of 18 parts. After removal, the keel is very strong and absolutely straight. Yves

James, congratulations on finishing this kit so quickly. It is amazing and I have come to the conclusion that you do like building rat lines..... Yves

With the roof of the engine room glued, all was left was a nice overspray to "harmonize" the decks: You can see that the junction between Module #4 and the engine room (Module #5) is smooth and flush: Now, I just have to work all the details on each of the module. The hull and decks are for the most part completed. Yves

Very sweet !!! Yves

Major milestone again, with the permanent gluing of the side decks and rear deck. At this point, no coming back without rebuilding a significant part of the model. First, the wooden covered side decks. These are stained with natural stain (Micro-mark) followed by a dilution (lavis) of Payne Grey acrylic. They are submitted to the elements of high sea, not as much as the bow of course: These two panels are then glued. Again, I am very grateful I spent all the time preparing the fitting of these parts and of all the deck sections. It really pays off: Strong of that success, we are moving further: the rear deck !! Each of these parts are left to dry multiple hours, for a perfect and strong bond. Then the platform for the depth charges rails: I will have to pull the airbrush and harmonize all these parts, with a fine mist of Dark Grey XF-24. Now that we have a rear deck, the engine room extension can be glued: And so we do it..... The extension could have benefited from two panels of extension, but the curvature of the cabin prevented me from doing it, without redesigning the parts. Besides, with two panels more, it was getting very close to the rails. Overall, I am rather happy and it looks better than the original kit: The roof of the engine room is not yet glued. It will be the next step. Yves

There are special glue for plexiglass that will not whiten them, as the CA does. I think Micro-Mark sells these. Yves

I decided to cut the front part L4 and the stern part L2 and came up with the following. Before cutting L2 below, L4 above: In the picture below, you can see the L4 modified part and the L4 part from the kit. The modified part will go in the middle and will be sandwiched, creating the deFacto staggering that I was looking for. Now, I just have to assemble the horizontal section of the keel.... Yves

A small improvement at the juncture of Module #4 and Module #5. I noticed that the newly added deck is sagging and not joining perfectly. I decided to build four small pieces to provide extra support for the deck: These are based on the ENGINE>ENGINE_ROOF_JOINER part provided in the kit and resized to 30 mm x 19 mm x 1.6 mm (thickness is unchanged.). The smaller parts are 19 mm x 10 mm x 1.6 mm. The small parts are glued to the end of the large parts, and the large parts are glued underneath the Module #4 deck. It now offers a very solid base for the extension deck, discussed previously. Yves

The Spine is 42 inches, very precisely and according to your drawing. Yves

Looking at the keel and pondering: The keel is made up of three layers of the exact same parts. What you see on the picture (above) is one layer only and the main spine. The spine is 10 mm thick and the three layers of cherry wood making up the keel, will be about 12 mm. That creates a rabbet of 1 mm deep on each side, which should be enough. What I do not like is the fact that the parts are not staggered, for solidity and straightness. I am thinking about cutting the first part (L4 on the instructions) shorter and staggering at least the middle section of the three layers sandwich. Cutting it short by an inch or two, would automatically create an offset that will force the flat and straight L3 parts to be staggered. The stern L2 can also go through the same treatment. To build that keel, you have to secure both sides with straight guides and glue all these small parts within the trough created by the guides. Hopefully the result will be straight and the staggering can only help. I just wish CAF had thought about this possible improvement. Yves

MODULE #3a - The Wheel House As promised, here are a few pictures of the Wheel house, located on Module #3a. I have decided to not depict the inside of it, first because I am not sure how it was done and secondly for the simple reason that it will be almost impossible to look into it. The Virtual kit provides all the parts that you see here. The only additions are: - 3 stanchions (Caldercraft 20 mm) - Thin plexiglass to simulate the glass - 1/32th x 1/8th inch basswood strips - 0.6 mm brass wire for the railing. - four tiny piece of right angle styrene strips to hold the walls. In situ.... Module #3a cannot be glued to the hull yet, as Module #2 must be "inserted" first. It will be kept aside for now. Yves

Superb little boat Maurino. It is like walking back along the shores of the Mediterranean sea, from the Spanish Costa Brava, all the way to Genoa, where you can admire these colorful fishing boats. The fish is always fresh and so delicious, thanks to the work of these fishermen and wonderful boats. What will be your next project? Yves

Overall dimensions (for the hull only) should be 1.25 meter by 0.31 meter. Yves

I just decided to see how the bulkheads fit on the spine: Perfectly !!! You barely have to remove some charring on the spine and the bulkhead will slide in and be perfectly square and flush. I am truly impressed by the quality of the cuts and fit. On such a large model, it is impressive: Hmm... I thin Bulkhead #18, needs to sit lower. I misplaced it. The keel is built separately and then glued to the spine. The keel is made of three layers of cherry wood. Yves

MODULE #5 Alright, time for a few updates. I am leading multiple fights at once with this model and cannot really work one module at a time. So without waiting, let's go to the Module #5. As a summary, here are the sub-assemblies that I have created on this model: Module #1: the bow or stem - Finished as you could see in previous posts. Module #2: the Gun and Edgehog - Not much done so far. Module #3a: The Wheel house. Soon to be unveiled... Module #3b: The deck - Nothing so far. Module #4a: The Galley - Almost completed - Mast being developed.... Module #4b: The Funnel house - Completed. Module #4c: The Dinghies.... a lot to do. Module #5: We are talking about it below.... Module #6: the stern and the depth charge launchers - Nothing much. The kit was developed around the HMS Agassiz and that particular section of the model does not match the Snowberry. The kit engine room is way too short and the rear platform located between the charge rails and the rear of the engine room is too wide. It looks like a dance floor and does not fit Snowberry. When you look at pictures of the Snowberry and actually most reworked Corvette, the engine room is much longer and comes close to the rear of the charge launchers. Modifying these parts is not easy because of the curvature of the cabin and of the decks. If I was a wizard in Sketchup, I could have taken the existing engine room parts and extended them, before printing. But I am not that wizard. So, we are going to have to do it, in the traditional modeler way: cutting, gluing, sanding....and repeat. Also, Snowberry has a set of inflatable Dinghies/Rafts sitting next to the funnel and two stairs linking the main deck with the rear deck. These aspects are completely missing on the Virtual kit. Some modifications are in order: Here you can see a piece of deck that I printed, using a deck joiner part and changing its size. I sized it exactly at 33 mm wide, 140 mm long and 1.6 mm thick. It fits perfectly between the main deck and the engine room roof, and will provide the base for two ladders/stairs going down to the rear deck. The rest of the space will be used for a couple of rafts. Now, we can see that the rear of the engine room is getting more realistic. The additional section is made by printing again the forward engine room walls and cutting the first panel off. These left and right panels are then glued to a second print of the rear wall. That is the beauty of printing your own parts: you can do it as many times as you want. From an aerial perspective, we now have the following: Below is the details of the engine room roofs: The rails provide a way to fit the roof in place and hold it tight, until its permanent gluing. Painted: Another major milestone, once everything has been fitted and tested many times, is the gluing of the engine room to the hull. Here again, I would recommend keeping all the hull join parts intact, as they are very useful to hold everything in place: Notice how well the kit is designed with the perfect indentation of the engine room walls into the very thick deck of Module #4: Then the 1.6 mm thickness of the engine room deck, fits perfectly flush with the main deck. More pictures of this major milestone: The U shape profile is used to prevent the sagging of the engine room walls, when you install the wooden decks. Hope you enjoy. Yves

Yes, GRP hulls are notorious for using demolding agents and that is not good for any paint. Thorough washing with detergent (Dawn is very aggressive as the name implies ... 😉 , light sanding and primer coat. Then you can do all you want. Yves

Exactly. Snowberry had Donald Duck instead of Flare Launchers. Yves