Santa Lucia by usedtosail - FINISHED - Panart - 1/30 scale - Sicilian Cargo Boat

[popeye the sailor]

when planking,   I have never cut a rabbit.......but I usually build Billing's kits,  which use a pre cut rabbit that you cement the planks to.  I copy the angle that the bow stem is set at,  cutting the end of the plank at the same angle.  then,  bevel the end edge,  so it will sit flat against the stem.  as I proceed with the rows,  it's easy to line up the ends along the stem.  the same can be done at the stern as well.  you should get a straight line all the way down the stem.  if there are any that don't follow the line,  they can be easily trimmed and sanded to blend in.

[usedtosail]

Thanks Popeye. That is good advice which I will use on the second planking.

[usedtosail]

I have completed the first sanding of the first planking, both with rough and medium grade sandpaper. There are a few spots that need a bit more filler, so that is the next step.

[usedtosail]

I have been spending most of my shop time building the case for the Constitution, but I have done a bit more work on the Santa Lucia. I finished the first sanding of the first planking and added filler in some low spots. This morning I sanded those down with medium grit sandpaper so it is now ready for the second planking.

For the second planking the kit provides 1mm by 6mm wood strips. I am going to use 20' scale length planks that at 1/30 scale come out to 8" long. I can use full width planks in the middle of the hull then taper them towards the bow and stern. I'll use a 3 butt shift for the plank ends. Here are a few planks that show what it might look like. I need to figure out the widths and the tapering needed before I can start laying these down.

[usedtosail]

I haven't had an update for a couple of weeks but I have been continuing to add planks to one side. I started with a few middle planks then started adding the bow and stern planks from them. I am leaving the top few bow and stern planks until later as these will have to be spieled and probably dropped to fit the space.

I was able to use clothes pins as clamps but now I am mostly using the screw clamps, with holes drilled into the first planking strips. I also use medium CA interspersed with wood glue on the middle planks that don't need to bend too much and hold them with my fingers for just a minute.

[usedtosail]

When I got close to the keel on the starboard side, I started planking down from the keel, so that I could use a shutter plank underneath the hull. This will be whatever width I need to fill the last gap, so I want it to be less noticeable.

I am also planking both sides now. The port side is about half way there.

On the starboard side I have now got to the point where I need to add two planks to finish the planking. I decided to use two planks that are slightly wider than the 6mm planks I have been using, as tis way there won't be one plank that is a lot bigger than the others. I cut a long strip 8mm wide from the 1mm sheet you see in the photos, and used it to create the last two planks in the middle of the hull. Here is the first one being glued in place. This morning I added the other one, so now I need to add the bow and stern planks in the gap, then tackle the planks at the sheer.

[Fernando E]

The planking is looking good Tom.

 

Cheers.............Fernando  

[EJ_L]

Coming along nicely! A few more boards to go and this phase will be complete!

 

[usedtosail]

Thanks Fernando and EJ. Almost done with the starboard side and about half way on the port side. I will be happy to move on to the next phase.

[popeye the sailor]

very neat way to plank Tom........look'in good!

[usedtosail]

Thanks Popeye.

 

Almost done with the port side planking now. Two rows left to put on, then a bunch of sanding.

[usedtosail]

A small milestone - second planking is on. I will give it a good scraping/sanding before planking the inside bulwarks.

[usedtosail]

Thanks guys. I just spent about a half hour filling some of the larger cracks with wood glue, then sanding over them to fill them with saw dust. It really worked great, as they virtually disappeared. I know I have tried this in the past with poorer results so I don't know what i am doing different now, but what a difference. More pics after I get the whole outer hull sanded and looking pretty.

[usedtosail]

I gave the outside hull a course sanding for now. I give it a final sanding later when I am ready to apply the paint. There are still some areas that need some filling but not much.

I then started removing the bulwark supports on the inside of the hull, which needs to be down before the second layer of planking can be applied there. I am using a thin X-Acto saw to cut them. I had tacked the first layer of planking to these so they break off fairly easily after they are cut.

Once they are all removed, I need to file the cut areas down to make a continuous curve from the central areas of the frames. I also have to remove some wood along the stem and stern posts. Then I can add the second layer from the sheer down to these frames.

 

[usedtosail]

I finished cutting out and cleaning up the bulwark supports and sanded the inside planks above the frames. To remove the excess wood along the stem and stern posts, I first used a pointed grinding bit in the Dremel tool to hollow out the pieces, then a chisel and knife to clean out the rest of the wood. Of course once the support was gone the plank ends were unsupported, so I cleaned up the ends with an X-Acto saw blade then inserted small strips of wood to close the gaps. I used thin CA glue to hold them all together, then a riffler file to file the wood strips down. The inside planks will hide these wood strips, but I will have to use wood filler on the outside to cover them up.

I could now start the interior planking. After some planning on how to attack this, I started by gluing plank strips along the top of the bulwarks in the middle of each side.

I then temporarily clamped the plank below so it extended out past each end, which gave me the angle of the top bow and stern planks. I cut planks to fit and glued them in place.

 As you can see these planks do not go all the way to the stem or stern post, as that would need a very severe edge bend. Instead I am cutting them off where they intersect the top of the bulwarks with a more gentle bend. This will allow the second row of planks to fit flush to this top row.

 

For all of you who celebrate, have a happy Easter.

[popeye the sailor]

putting the cap rails in place,  this will never be seen anyway    this is a neat approach....no need to taper or bend.

[usedtosail]

Thanks Popeye. I don't know if it is too much of a short cut but I am happy with the results.

 

I finished planking the insides of the bulwarks and gave the planks an initial sanding.

There are more planks near the stem and stern as the deck slopes down pretty severely there. I filled the inside of the stem and stern planks with a small bit of wood filler and used a riffler file to file it down. They still need a bit of finishing but I think it came out OK.

For the outside planks I needed to add quite a bit of wood filler and shape it to follow the lines of the planks. It still needs more layers to blend it in, but I think it will eventually look OK once painted.

I still have a lot of work to do on the outside planks to get them to look good, but it is coming along. I sanded down the tops of the bulwarks but that still needs more work so that the cap rails don't slope down one side or the other. In between sanding I have starting making cardboard (folder material) templates of the outer deck planks that fit along the inside bulwark planks. I am going to cut these out of sheet basswood, a little thicker than the deck planks. One of the plans shows this plank higher than the rest, and I think it will look good that way. One thing about this kit is that they don't really supply plans, just plan sheets with lots of drawings of the construction steps from different angles. There is a top down view of the deck to show where the openings are but no other details, for instance.

[Fernando E]

Hi Tom

 

I found the plans provided were very basic and at times difficult to follow. One of the more challenging builds I have done!

 

Your planking looks a treat so, as they say, "keep on keeping on".

 

Cheers..........Fernando 

[usedtosail]

Thanks Fernando. It looks like locating the openings in the deck is going to be interesting. It's funny how they give you the dimensions of the openings but not where they are located. I think I will try copying that part of the plans and blow it up to real size.

I diluted some wood filler and spread it on the gaps both inside and outside the hull.

While it was drying I used my small plane to plane down the tops of the bulwarks to take out and bumps and so the cap rail can sit flat.

 

The pieces to make the stand for the model are plywood and I didn't like seeing the layers in the edges. I used them as templates to make new stand pieces from 1/4" cherry. After test fitting them to the hull I glued the pieces together. I will add some Wipe-On-Poly later.

Happy Friday everyone.

[usedtosail]

Getting further along on the hull. I took advantage of some nice warm days and sanded down the planks and wood filler outside (Back to winter  temps since then, Arg!). I started with rough sandpaper to mostly get the planks to be level with each other. I then added more diluted wood filler then sanded the planks and filler with medium and fine sandpaper, until I was pleased with the smoothness of the hull. I cleaned the dust off the hull and out of the workshop as best I could, then added a coat of diluted gesso to the inside and outside planks as a primer.

I was thinking of using my airbrush for this but it is just not suitable for painting large areas. I then thought about buying a can of spray primer but I eventually went with a large soft brush to apply it. I will sand it down after it dries and then do one more round of diluted wood filler, sanding and primer. I am doing this now before I plank the deck because I want to stain the deck planks and this way I can paint the inside planks at the deck before I add the deck planks, so I can get a good paint line there. If I was going to paint the deck planks I would have put them in then primed everything.

[usedtosail]

Here is the hull after another round of wood filler and another light coat of gesso. I think this is good for now.

Before painting the inside planks white,  I thought I should work on the outer deck planks since these will take some fitting to get right. I first made a pattern of the port side edge on a large piece of paper.

I used the template to trace the edge profile to a sheet of basswood as two pieces that overlap at the frame with the mast cutout. I then cut the outer edge line on the scroll saw, leaving a 1/16" or so so I had wood to sand down. The other edge I just cut roughly so that I had more than 6mm width. The pieces were then fit into place by sanding down to the line.

Once the pieces fit well, I used a compass to trace the outer edge to make a line 6mm from it.

I then cut close to this line and sanded the inside edge to shape.

The next step will be to add more bevel to the outside edge and then cut a scarf joint where the two pieces meet in the middle. To me that will be the hardest part of this process. However it turns out, I'll post it here.

[usedtosail]

After more sanding of the outer planks I felt I had a good fit, so I heated them wrapped in wet paper towels in the microwave, then clamped them to the frames.

After they dried I marked the locations of the ends of the scarf joints on each one, then trimmed them to length. I cut a scarf joint on one of them then used it to transfer the outline to the other and cut it. After some sanding thee joint fit pretty well. Here are the planks laid in place with the scarf joint.

I set those two planks aside for staining, then made the template for the other side and cut out the rough outline on the scroll saw. I will be repeating the process I used for the first two for these.

[popeye the sailor]

I usually make the margins in pairs,  keeping in mind left and right.  if the bulwarks are equal,  it takes little fitting to get them snug.   I did cheat on the Progress though.......I used the printed margins on the deck platform for the templates.  they are not the same,  so I couldn't do like I normally would for other vessels.   is there a deck platform for this one,  or are you going to do the planking over the bulkheads?  superb progress thus far   

[usedtosail]

Thanks Popeye. I tried using the same template for the other side but it was off enough that it was worth while to make a new one for that side. It turned out useful for another reason too. Here are the four outer plank pieces after some oak stain, gluing them in place. I used a dab of wood glue on each frame to hold these in, which I was not sure would be secure enough. But pre-bending the planks to the frames meant that there was very little pressure needed to hold these in place so the seem pretty solid. I also painted the inside bulwarks white before gluing these in place.

I taped both templates together to make an accurate plan for the deck openings. In this picture the top drawing was copied from the plans, which I blew up to the scale size of the model, which is the middle drawing. The deck shape was way off and the drawn openings were too and not by a consistent amount. So I used the bottom drawing to lay out the openings, which I will use when I cut them out after planking.

There is no deck platform for this model, so I will be putting the deck planking directly on the frames. I will need to add some supports along the outer planks to hold the ends of the deck planks that don't end on a frame, which is probably almost all of them. I did the same thing on the Constitution build and it worked really well. I do need to add a couple of small filler pieces between the outer planks at the stem and stern post. I should have cut them out with these areas in place but I didn't and I didn't want to remake these pieces just for that.

 

For all you in the states, have a great Memorial Day weekend and remember the fallen.

[usedtosail]

We had a nice warm long weekend here so I spent most of it outdoors. I did get a little time in the shop last night and this morning. I added supports for the ends of the deck planks around where the mast will come out of the deck. The mast is very raked so this took a little time to get right. I am in the process of adding the supports along the margin planks. Once they are all in I can start planking the deck.

[usedtosail]

Started the deck planking last night. First note the high tech hull cradle I am now using - two tube socks filled with rice. I have used these before and they work surprisingly well. I have a Keel Clamper but the hull did not feel secure enough in it, so I went old school. I started with the plank down the middle of the deck. I ended up not adding filler pieces between the margin planks and just trimmed these planks to fill the gap. I then cut the two planks next to these, to help align them straight. I am using a 3-butt shift on the plank ends with black sharpie along one edge of each plank for the filler between planks. I glued and clamped these planks in place.

And here is how they look after the glue dried.

I have the next two planks on each side of these installed and drying now.

[usedtosail]

Deck planking continues. I apologize if this stage isn't too interesting, but I like how the shape of the boat is coming together as these planks are added. Those decks are very rounded in these boats and it is really starting to show that.

[popeye the sailor]

look'in good Tom.  

[usedtosail]

Thanks Popeye and the likes.

 

Deck is almost complete - just a few more planks to add along the edges. I decided I didn't like the center plank going all the way to the stem and stern posts, so I cut out the small rectangles at the ends and replaced them with the same material I used for the margin planks. I will sand all of these level and stain them as part of the deck finishing process.

[usedtosail]

Deck planking is complete. I started scraping and sanding the deck and margin planks to even them all out. Next step is to cut the openings in the deck for the hatches, then I'll add tree nails and do a final sanding of the deck planks.