Jim Lad

Those planks look really good, keith! John

Good to see that your 'great leap forward' went better than Mao's! She looks really good right side up, Mark. John

hello MM, and a warm welcome to the forum from 'Down Under'. John

Just take a deep breath and go for it, Chuck! John

Now she's looking like a real submarine. Hope you find a good solution to your loose joint problem. John

Ah, yes, now everything's perfectly clear. Errr, what was that again? Think I'll just enjoy watching this beautiful model grow.! John

Hello Fred, and a warm welcome to the forum from 'Down Under'. John

Nice looking bottle screws! How are you going to prevent the open lower eye from opening under the strain when you tighten up the shrouds? John

I agree with Rick - very nice, Nils! John

Hello, and a warm welcome to the forum from 'Down Under'. John

Amazing; just amazing! John

Quite a production line you've got there! john

Nils, thanks for that. I had forgotten about the 'Padua', but she is in many ways a similar ship. Jerome, this restoration is a little different to most, as we want the model to accurately represent the ship at a particular period in her history. While we are keeping as much of the original work as possible, some has to go in the interests of accuracy for a museum model. John

Thanks, Roger! John

Good idea, Keith. Thanks for that. John

That roller fairlead it special, Nils! Well done! John

I thought the German would be simply 'Feuer'. John

Looking good! It's interesting that the name on the stern includes 'of' and is not just the bare name and port of registry. John

It's always a good project to build a model of a favourite ship - someday I may even build a model of my all-time favourite ship, the 'Pilar Regidor', but that would be a pretty big model! Good to see that you've decided to build her as you remember her on your epic voyage. You should find quite a lot of photos to support your memory of what the ship looked like at that time. John

Another small update. The first image is an overhead view of the very long poop deck - now cleaned of dust, dirt and general grunge. The second image is of the forecastle, showing the first tentative steps towards correction of some errors on the model. Part of the railing has been removed on each side of the deck, as these sections were removable and had chain, rather than steel bar railings. More thinking and study of photos has brought to light another major problem. The original ship had a beautiful teak capping rails all around the poop rather that the pipe rail shown on the model. The Senior Curator would like to have this changed to conform to the original, so - yet another major alteration. My current thinking is that the simplest way around this will be to file down the tops of the stanchions a little to bring them to the height of the bulwarks forward, and then to run the wooden capping around on top of the current steel piping. A lot of work, but I think easier than ripping out all of the railing and starting again. If anyone has any better ideas, I'd love to hear about them as I'm not looking forward to all that additional work. Another problem is the number holes and gaps in the deck caused by the removal or alteration of items that were no longer on the ship at the time of her last voyage. I need to find some kind of filler to close up all those holes and make them a little less obvious. This model is turning into a real lesson for anyone thinking of taking on a restoration; the number of problems on deck on this model that have come to light since I started serious cleaning operations is amazing!! John

You'll be finished before you know it, Nils! John

She's really coming along very nicely, Keith. John

Very neatly constructed, Chuck. John

That's looking really nice, Colin. John

Hello Max, and a warm welcome to the forum from 'Down Under'. John