Giddy Gibberish

So, I didn't keep up with this at all. Building is so much more satisfying the writing about building. I've finished Polaris several weeks ago. I'm mostly posting this to close out this log because I have the Endurance on the way and I want to try and keep up with a proper build log for that one as my first "real" ship. For the final parts there wasn't much to tell. I had a lot of challenges attaching the spars to the masts. The glue just wouldn't hold. I read too late about a technique to drill a hole partway through the mast and in the spar and using a pin or nail to attach it to the mast. Next time! I really enjoyed rigging. It was fun passing line through all the blocks and tightening it up, but another problem I had was making the blocks. The video and instructions were not exactly clear on what knots to use to tie the blocks to the beams. I ended up just using a few square knots to create some spacing. I need to learn more about knots. The rope from Occre was really fuzzy. I thought that was just the way model rope worked until I read about quality rope. Looking forward to ordering my Rope Rocket as soon as the Syren store opens. Other than those few things, nothing special or noteworth happened with the final part of the build. I did get one sail backwards (I poked holes in the wrong edge) but you can't even tell. Truthfully, I'm disappointed in myself. I made a lot of mistakes that I feel were easily avoidable. Some were due to impatience and those are hardest to forgive. But... I find the pursuit of improvement very motivating so at least I have a lot of "low hanging fruit", as they say. Here's some final photos and comments. Overall I was pretty proud of the second planking results, but because of my poor shaping on the bow, a few ends broke due to the very sharp bend: As I mentioned, I had oversanded the keel pretty bad. This was my solution: Walnut colored wood filler: I found the metalwork a little stressful, but I was happy with the result: I really enjoyed placing stuff on the deck and building the little pices like the pump. I did a horrible job with the barrels, though. All done. On to the Endurance!

I find your build log very inspirational as a fan of this ship and her story. I will be starting my own build soon and hope to incorporate many of the alterations I’ve learned here, so far as my skill allows. Yours was the first Endurance build log I clicked on and, after reading the entire thing, I’m looking forward to reading the other build logs that inspired you. I wanted to share that a big part of the reason I recently took up this hobby was to learn to slow down mentally and your post about recognizing that shift from “want to” to “have to” and feeling forced to rush was very relatable. I appreciated learning that someone with your skill and obvious patience encountered a similar feeling. Thanks for sharing.

That’s amazing! Your painting technique is so realistic. How did you make the tarps?

Sanding the bulkheads and hull was stressful. I tried wood model building ages ago and failed when I had to sand a balsa block into a specific shape. I figured a monkey with a rasp would do a better job, so this step was my "is this really going to be for me or not" step. Turns out I'm not as bad as I remember. I still suck, but at least I'm better than a monkey with a rasp! This was another area where I made a mistake but didn't realize it until much later. I didn't sand the nose blocks enough. The top and bottom were ok, but the middle was too steeply curved. I was able to bend the first layer but a few planks on the second layer snapped at the bend. I didn't want to use any nails so I bent the gunwales and planks to fit pretty well before gluing. I used PVA and clamped. NB: Like many other builders, I found that the tail piece of the gunwale kept breaking off. I ended up leaving it off until it was needed. Photos: Gunwales bent and ready to attach. Shaping port keel plank. Shaped plank held in place by toothpicks. Planking complete. You can see here I clearly have something going on in the keel. Bulkheads were not sanded down enough. Sanded and prepped for next layer which will be my next post.

Hi! Thanks for stopping by. This is my first build. I had ordered this and the Shipways series. This came in first by one day so I jumped into it. I've been working on it for exactly one month as of today, but not every day. This post basically covers unboxing through the deck assembly. This log did not go as intended. I had originally planned to have one post for each day of work but life happened. I'm almost done with the hull (up to the accessories) so some of this will be very retrospective. I've made several big mistakes. Despite reading the instructions and watching numerous build videos I still did some boneheaded stuff. I'll call them out in each post. The unboxing was uneventful and unphotographed. All parts were present and in good condition. I tagged and labelled everything as shown in the videos. For assembling the bulkheads I was worried about them being square. There was more play in my joints than I expected so the individual bulkheads wiggled quite a bit. I came up with a clamping mechanism that kept them at 90 degrees. I also build a mounting mechanism for the hull. My first major mistakes started occurring with deck planking. I wanted to follow the individual plank method I saw in a YouTube video (the pirate ship version of Polaris). I had made myself a little table saw for this purpose. It took about 10 minutes to make all of the deck planks. I clamped them into bundles and then shaded all the edges before cutting. Each cut I would shade the ends. Blanks being prepped for cutting: Ready to cut: I then cut the planks for the pattern and dry fit them: This is where I started making mistakes. First, I tried to plank beam to beam and that turned out badly. I ended up getting jammed up at the 3rd row and had to create some cut-to-fit planks to straighten it out. Then I made the biggest, most boneheaded mistake of the entire build (so far). I didn't even notice it was a mistake until last night. I cut out the notches in the deck from the deck planks! So last night, after crying in my whiskey for a bit, I started trying to cover up my mistake. For some reason it wasn't until I was working on placing the deck fixtures that I notice those notches were never going to get covered up by anything. Extremely disappointed in myself. In any event, I attached and finished the deck without realizing what I had done. That's all for this post. The next post will cover planking the hull. Thanks for checking it out! I appreciate any feedback or advice.