Liam D

I've bought a plank bender which helps getting it around the hull, but it seems some of the planks also need to be bent side to side to accommodate the curvature of the hull. This is undoubtedly due to my hubristic insistence on trying to avoid stealers and drop planks. So I've ended up with a lot of raised edges and gaps that will need to be sanded/filled eventually...

Hello all, Welcome to my slightly shambolic first ever build log. First off I'd like to point anyone interested in this kit to the extremely detailed and helpful build log for the same ship by Dee_Dee. I've tried to follow that log like a child following footsteps into the deep forest, realising as I go how far in above my head I might be. I've also been trying to follow the more general instructions within the book 'Ship Modelling Simplified' by the aptly-named Frank Mastini and the tutorials on here: https://thenrg.org/resource/articles. I thought I had taken some more photos at the start - I'll see if I can find them. I copied out the bulkheads onto paper by holding the plans up against a window and then cutting them out with scissors and laying them on top of the pre-cut pieces. They were in fairly good shape but needed some sanding to all fit together, and the false decking was a particular pain to slot in. I wonder if that was a sign that I hadn't done enough to prep and shape them... Having attached the top plank I decided to do a garboard strake because that's what Dee_Dee had done. I then tried to separate the hull into two planking sections, and have used the planking fan method to determine widths within these two sections. I can already foresee issues - I am sure I'm going to need to bend the planks laterally but I don't have any of the kit to build a nice little bending rig. I spent a lot of time just trying to figure out how to plank it and get it right the first time and got a little scared to actually move forward in case I messed it up. I understand how to measure and divide the bulkheads, but on this ship there is the angled stern section, so I'm not sure if I am supposed to do the transom separate from the aft keel section, or measure it as one long line... But then I remembered the point of this build is to learn how to do all this, not to build a perfect model the first time. My mantra for this is 'Done is better than perfect' - so I started with the planking.