Mayflower by Winlich - FINISHED - Constructo - Scale 1:65 (First build)

[Winlich]

Reading this forum has helped me so much, so I though of sharing my first build project with Mayflower by Constructo kit.

 

Specially pictures have been great help because these instructions (at least for a newbie) has been awful. Secondly I didn't exactly know what I actually started, before I needed to do first hull plank pending... Since I started this project few weeks ago, I try to put dates to different phazes that might help some newbie like me getting the understading how long it takes .

 

Project starting 10.4.

 

12.4. Keelson, frames and false decks glued. These were ready cut parts so it was simple. First mistake: At this point I measured ~ish by eye that everything was in 90 degress angle (I come to this later, but it might be that this caused a slight pending of the hull later (or the fact that I used slightly force in hull plank pending).

 

 

 

[Winlich]

29.4. Hull first player planking starts to take shape. Sorry I missed day-by-day pictures but I it'll get more frequent.

 

Few learnings:

- Don't glue wet wood, gaps starts to appear in few days

- Don't use much force in bending (this might have caused my hull slightly pending toward left)

- It don't help if you soak the wood 1 days compared to 1 week, in my opinion at least bokapy the result was the same

- 1 day soaking didn't give good enough pending base, and I wasn't that successful with the hot iron either. so I made myself a plank pending tool, since where I'm from, there were no ready made available. Soaking few hours and using plank pending tool gave me the best result.

- Put in place and let it dry -> glue only after that. No force needed and you can control the gaps. In addition you can see immediately if some sanding is needed. The hull planking techniques for beginners instructions was the best thing that helped me. For example how to use full stealers. I needed 2 full stealers to get everything in place.

- I used lots of pins (~400) to get the hull planks in place, and after sanding the hull only few were visible so I think it was a good decision to put pins right through the wood, even I read that pro's don't put the pins through the wood cause it will leave visible marks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Winlich]

3.5.2015. Hull starts to be ready and finished the false deck. Also planking is finised.

 

Learnings from this period was that:

- Ramin is much softer wood that bokapy.

- Save all the dust from sanding -> you need this to fill the gaps unless you are sure to make second layer to the hull.

- Stop using pins after this point -> you cannot sand visible parts anymore as you could with the base hull planking which in this kit was 2 x 6 x 600 mm.

- At this point I started thinking hull second layer, I was pretty sure that I will make that. Later after glueing sand dust to gaps and sanding the hull several times I decided not to do second layer planking to the hull. Lets see later if it was smart decision or not

 

I used coal pen to mark the sides of the planks before gluing them. After gluing I used 5% Van Gogh Burnt Sienna color to Wash the deck to give more contrast to the shadows. After "washing" the planks, I put 2 layers of matt coat of varnish.

 

I also continued to put sand dust in few remaining gaps in the hull and little sanding the next day.

 

[Winlich]

4.5. Sanding the hull

 

 

[Winlich]

5.5. Finished the bulwark planking and continued filling gaps in the hull and re-sanding, re-sanding, re-sanding.....

 

Lessons learned: check the planking color before cutting and clueing. As you can see, the shade of the planks are different in the back. I did second layer of planking to the bulwark after seeing how different color the same planks can be...

[Winlich]

7.5. Final decision on not to make second layer in the hull. I felt the hull was good and I was afraid I would screw it up by putting second layer (and my spiling wasn't good). I decided to put a coat of varnish to the hull and bought mahogany color. I got scared when putting it down -> how RED it was.... In addition I first put it only until the upper side of the gun ports and found out that it really looked stupid -> so put the coat of varnish a bit higher.

 

Well, my eye got pretty used to the mahogany color so I decided not to do any remediation actions at this point

 

 

[Winlich]

11.5. Started making hand rails and the hand rail pillars.

 

There was a slight gap in the hull planking and keelson which was visible to the deck. I put small additional slices of wood to cover that gap (draw a black circle around to the last picture).

[Winlich]

12.5. Finishing hand rails and sanding them smooth.

 

 

[Winlich]

11.5 and 12.5. measuring and gluing the stringers into the hull (not sure what they are called, I'm having hard time with these instructions since I'm don't speak english natively).

 

 

[HIPEXEC]

Great first build!

[Winlich]

13.5. Building the stern. I had to make few additional "decorations" to the back side because I had left few gaps to the back...

 

 

 

 

 

[Winlich]

14.5. Wow, taking pictures really makes you notice all the small errors . Anyways, finally caught this day and continued to build Fo'c's'le railings and uprights. Also put some sanding dust to the stern to fill small gaps, lets see how it turns out. I also want to sand the side stairs a bit to give them a smooth fit tomorrow as I probably try to build the keel and stem.

 

 

Edited May 14, 2015 by Winlich

[Winlich]

15.5. Sanding side ladders and uprights and starting stem, keel and sternpost.

 

Lessons learned: The better you finish your parts, much better results and easier to build parts on top. Cutting corners in one stage will probably bite you back next stage by either:

a) difficult position to fix the underlaying part.

you need to re-modify your next part more.

 

In addition now I'm starting to suffer from my working station -> not good enough place/holders to fix the ship steady without hands.

 

[Winlich]

16.5. Finishing uprigts, and front bell. Starting of build Rammsporn/front.

 

Learning: Again, the better result you do in the initial front hull plaking/wails needing pending, the easier it is to later insert pieces top of those. In addition in when starting the rammsporn, its difficult to start fixing pieces that are not fully pend to the front.

 

At this point I started using scotch 3m glue (2mins to hold, 24h final). Its not the best for sanding but... Earlier I was using Aliphatie resin (20mins to hold, 18h final), but it takes quite a long time get the initial hold (Maybe  I should be more patient)..

 

Instructions didn't say anything whats the diameter of holes I should drill in pinrails + for example anchor holder, but I figured 2mm. (Any pointers here?) (atleast 0.3, 0.5, 0.8, 1 seemed too narrow if I should try to put a rope later through them)

 

 

 

[Winlich]

17.5.2015 Building ram.

 

Continuing from yesterday, today was first planking the ram. I used again soft pencil to darken the sides of the planks. After planking I used 5% Sienna color "washing" the deck to give darker color to nail pressings and to planks. Pictures 1 and 5 shows the difference.

 

After planking it was more or less building the sides to the ram. Again building too much in a row caused small mistakes I need to correct tomorrow... again little sanding dust

 

[Winlich]

Hello Winlich,Your Mayflower is looking very good .Nice neat work.I double planked and couldn`t get them to lay as nice as yours.It looks like we both are fans of the Mayflower.Our build logs and our avitars.Enjoying seeing your Mayflower build of the Constructo kit.Will you be making any doors or windows for the bulkheads?Wish you well and I would be glad to hear from you. drake1588

 

Thank you Drake!

 

I actually did second layer planking only to the side of the bulkheads in the rear. Only reason was because the original bulkhead was build on same strips I used in hull and I didn't notice the color difference between different planks (some were lighter and some darker) so it seemed a bit off.

 

I'm going to put doors and windows to the bulkheads, but at this point I think I'll use the parts that came with the kit (only glue the door+frame on the bulkhead without carving actual holes). I'll put pictures when I'm there (I think in 2-3 days) so you can see. the doors are plain colored at the moment so I think I need to put some color before inserting them.

 

Btw. How did you manage to make your deck planks so "old" looking, did you use some washing technique or some colored coat of varnish?

[Winlich]

18.5. Building pinrails and starting on gun ports.

 

Have to find a way to secure the boat's position since tomorrow probably I will start on chainales and cannot lay the boat sideways anymore. In addition had to skip rudder at this point because don' want to break it when turning the boat while keel touches the desk all the time.

 

 

 

 

[captgino]

Very nice!!

[Winlich]

19.5. Rudder, gun ports and chainwales(?)

 

Rudder was pure pain. I don't know how I've should have done it, maybe my technique was poor. If I needed (hope I will not) to do it again, maybe I would first glue the hinges to the frame and rudder and only after that I would put very small decoration nails to it. Now I didn't use glue and tried to use nails to fix the joint hinge in place. I took some photos of the process I did the joint and hinge. My fingers are just too large for that and my tools too big. Maybe I should have fixed the rudder already in earlier phazes, now there so many overhangs (for example bow ram, anchor holder, gun port covers etc), so using brute force with the nails would have probably broken something... Also using glue at this point would have been difficult since the angles and position in the rear and it was hard to use any clamps.

 

Too tired to continue, but made the chainwales(are they called that?) ready for tomorrow.

 

 

[Winlich]

20.5. Gun ports, soffits, chainwales and stern.

 

Fingers sore from yesterday's rudder battle, today was a bit easier job gluing ready pieces and drilling few holes. Tomorrow I'll start building the deck equipment: Boat, gratings, mast pinrails, wheelhouse, achors, etc.

 

 

 

 

[Winlich]

21.5.2015 Gratings and mast pinrails.

 

I started from the boat which was white colored. I thought of planking it but before that, I would have liked to color it deep brown... I put some oil color into it (van Gogh) and waited for 24h... It was still as wet as I have just put it! I searched the net and saw that oil color might take "1 week to dust dry, 2-4 weeks to touch dry", what? I think I need to try wipe it off tomorrow and use some other type. Well, managed to build 1 grating and few mast pinrails.

 

Learnings: Never use oil color (meant for picture painting) to paint wood, at least without thinning it.

 

Edited May 21, 2015 by Winlich

[Winlich]

22.5.2015 Continuing gratings and starting boat

 

Continuing to build deck accessories. Fixed the oil color mistake in the boat by cleaning the oil color and putting colored coat of varnish on top of that. Lets see if should still put planks into it.

[Winlich]

23.5. Anchor, wheelhouse, capstan, ladders and finishing row boat.

 

Pretty relaxing day putting together deck accessories and looking for information how to make proper mast setup and rigs.

 

 

[Winlich]

24.5.2015 Loops, deck accessories and pumps

 

Continuing with deck accessories (pumps, lamp and painting anchors to black). Learning the builds of loops and deadeyes.

 

 

[Winlich]

25.5. Finishing deck accessories and chainwales. Also tried my first rope "circle" to the ropes on the row boat .

 

Learnings: Never use alkyd-colors. Tried painting doors with that first and the surface was slick smooth with bright reflection (nothing that wood would look like). Well, second layer then with normal acrylic paint and the result was much better.

 

In addition I put some color to the baskets, barrels and build handles.

 

 

[Winlich]

26.5.  Glueing deck accessories in place and starting to sort out mast and bowprit.

 

 

[pagie]

just stumbled on your build log as im new to the site.am working on LE HUSSARD 1848 and hope to start my own build log soon. wish id seen the detailed pictures earlier as would of helped me greatly I am up to rigging my ship  but I like what I see of your build.splicer

[Winlich]

just stumbled on your build log as im new to the site.am working on LE HUSSARD 1848 and hope to start my own build log soon. wish id seen the detailed pictures earlier as would of helped me greatly I am up to rigging my ship  but I like what I see of your build.splicer

 

Hi Splicer and thanks for comments!

 

I agree with you, that is exactly what I was looking from this forum in the beginning. I try to take more detailed pictures in the future (I decided to have this build log only after I had already done my initial hull planking) and especially pictures from build phazes, not just from ready parts

[Winlich]

27.5. Preparing Masts, building mast towers and bowprit side deadeye riggings

 

While I was building mast towerposts, I used same method as I used in deck planking (5% oil color sienna blending) to give the masts a bit darker color (I should've used 10%-15% since I would have liked a bit more darker color). I painted the towerpost bottom to brown, as well as the fence circling around the mast tower.

 

I also started my first deadeye rigging exercise in the bowprit side. As I was finished I tried looking for best practices in the rigging and found out this Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrImPdbLRAw. Maybe I follow that when I get to the chainwale riggings... Well still few things to do like masts before I get there .

 

[Winlich]

28.5. Attaching bowprit and battling with tower guard posts.

 

Only negative comment so far about this Constructo kit has been the really poor instructions. One large 1:1 architecture pictures and 1 picture illustrated no words guide. The more you advance, the poorer and less detailed the illustrated guide becomes. There are also differences between the guide with the pictures versus the architecture picture. Also second time some of the "ready made parts" didn't fit (first one was with the metal doors).

 

First I did grid parts under thetower guard post with the ready cut parts -> wrong, since they are identical and actually the base foremast diameter is more than foremast top, so basically those didn't fit through the grid and I had to made the parts that fits. Second error was the picture in the guide and in the architecture paper. In the pictured guide you can't actually see how the guard post is set up and to what direction it should point. On the architecture picture there is a clear arrow pointing bow, BUT its wrong. Since the square hole in the guard post is not square but rectangle, you cannot fit the foremast and the foremast top if the rectangle is faced wrong. Basically this doesn't matter, UNLESS you had drilled the deadeye holes that was instructed in the pictured guide -> had to drill second pair of 6 holes correspondingly.

 

Learnings: From now on, I will not follow the illustrated guide, and before I start to operate on any part, I will double check the part and the architecture picture that it's right sized/facing/cut/drilled.