Fifie by Dsmith20639 - FINISHED - Amati - 1/32 scale

[Dsmith20639]

Began build of Fifie Scottish fishing vessel  by Amati. MDF hull parts presented a few problems. Sanding of parts required use of a respirator and shop vacuum because of the fine dust. Somehow one bulkhead broke and another almost did even though I thought I was being very careful. Never had that problem with wood frames. Plans called for numbering parts before removing from laser cut sheets and rough beveling fore and aft bulkheads before installation. It would have been nice if Amati had used the laser to number the parts and indicate an approximate line for the beveling. I assembled the hull parts following the directions , and used a batten to fair the frames. Next up is to install the main deck panels and then begin the first level of planking.

 

[Dsmith20639]

Installed deck panels. Added top two strakes of hull planking by glueing the second plank down from the shear line first and then only edge glueing the top plank in place to the second plank to facilitate the ease of removing the bulkhead extensions later in the build. Took measurements of the bulkhead lengths remaining and determine that I would need 23 strakes to complete each hull side using the 7mmm planks provided. I then lined off the hull into 3 belts of approximately 8, 8, and 7 strakes by applying two runs of thread across the  bulkheads from stem to stern.

 

[Dsmith20639]

Things have been going slow lately. Missed a lot of days due to problems related to my Parkinson's medication. On the days that I am able to work on the Fifie, I have been able to place one strake on each side of the ship. At that pace I have 15 working days left to complete the first planking. I have thus far finished the top most belt of planking. The planking strips are wide and thick and are difficult to bend to fit in some places but I'm doing my best. At least this is the first planking so I can use some filler if I need to when I'm finished so I end up with a smooth surface on which to apply the second "visible" layer of planking.

 

[Ken_2]

I just pulled the Scottish Fifie off of my shelf and I am planning to start assembly in January.  I found your build log, and I find it most instructive.  Your pictures are wonderful, and I am sure you have already forewarned me about several problems I am likely to face (broken frames, wear a mask, etc).  Thanks.  Your boat looks great so far.

Ken

[Dsmith20639]

Making progress, only a few days more of applying the first layer of planking and then I can start sanding and filling in preparation for the second layer.

[VTHokiEE]

On 11/25/2022 at 2:15 PM, Dsmith20639 said:

I have been able to place one strake on each side of the ship.

Looking good so far! This is typically my pace as well for planking 😁

[David W]

Happy to see another is building the Fifie. I just started my build and am going with a radio control ship so am having to make some changes since the prop shaft is 2mm larger in diameter rather then the supplied 6mm

 

I see that your planking terminates on various bulkheads and how I will be doing mine rather then splicing the planks as others have done.

 

I'll be following with interest.

 

Dave W

[Dsmith20639]

I thought that trying to fit full length planks would be too difficult, so I used shorter planks. I fitted each strake starting with the bow and stern planks first with the lengths staggered to minimize adjacent planks terminating at the same bulkhead and then filled in the centers of the strakes with one or more additional planks depending on how well I could get them to fit. The boards are difficult to bend (especially edge bend) because of their thickness. I ended up with 4 boards left over at the end.  This might have been more time consuming (and really not necessary as the results will not be visible under the second planking) but I treated it as a single planking to get more practice for future cases were there would only be a single layer of planking and I would need to use tapering, edge bending, spiling, etc. I didn't use nails as I thought the bulkhead material was to prone to splitting but edge glued each plank to the previous strake with PVA and used CA at each bulkhead holding the plank in place manually until the CA had set.

 

[Dsmith20639]

Completed first layer of planking. Next up is to fit the keel pieces and then its on to the second layer of planking the hull.

 

[Dsmith20639]

Completed the fitting of the keel pieces and began application of second layer of planking. Also assembled the included stand.

 

[Dsmith20639]

Continued application of second layer of planking. I was able to apply planking strakes at full width for 10 strakes starting at the bulwarks and working down and 3 from the keel working up. I then divided the remaining space into two bands and beginning with the lower band began the installation of tapered strakes. The remaining space at mid ship turned out to be almost exactly 96mm which divided by the 6mm planking material provided gave me a total of 16 strakes (two bands of 8). Reviewing some other builds here and on YouTube; I noted that some builders installed full width planks wherever possible that ended up terminating into the edges of previously installed planks or required the creation of long finely pointed filler planks at the stem and stern. This ended up looking OK (but didn't seem realistic) and I thought I would have a more difficult time fitting the thin sharply pointed filler planks. My tapered planking strakes will all terminate at the stem and stern. Probably doesn't matter, once the lower part of the hull gets painted the planking runs will be less visible.

 

 

 

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[Ken_2]

You are making good progress!

Ken

[Dsmith20639]

Lost about two weeks of progress due to an upper respiratory infection (Covid 19 test was negative). Anyway back at it now with only about  10 plank runs left to finish off installation of second planking.

 

[Ken_2]

You hull looks good.  I like your idea of full planks from the bulwarks down 10 planks, and 3 up from the keel, then tapering the remaining planks fore and aft.  I plan to do something (if not exactly) like that.  I use excel to determine the tapering dimensions.  Any lessons learned on using CA glue for the final layer?

Ken

[Dsmith20639]

I have completed the planking of the hull. Try as I might there were still a few places where the planks did not abut the previous planks perfectly leaving a hairline crack that needed to be filled. I filled the gaps and low places using Durham’s Rock Hard Water Putty.  I did not color the filler but left it white as I intend to paint the entire hull. The unpainted top portion of the hull looks interesting on the display packaging and instruction manual;  and shows off the walnut wood supplied, but I don't think the real boats would have looked like that but would in practice have been painted. I doubt that they would even have had the white stripe.  If you leave the top portion of the hull unpainted choose your planks carefully as the walnut coloring varies and sudden color changes may not look pleasing. Ken, when tapering the planks I used proportional dividers every few inches to determine the tapered width of the plank at that point.  If I did it again I might try using a tapering fan or calculating the taper using Excel as I ended up with the space for the last two planks in each band being slightly too big to exactly fit two planks causing the use of three planks instead and I ended up with inconsistent plank widths. I think what happened was I made errors in transferring the measurements to the actual planks. I need to improve my accuracy, Only off by a fraction of a millimeter but that created a gap. If I had erred the other way and the final space was too small to perfectly fit two standard supplied planks I could have made one or each thinner and it would have turned out looking better. There's always next time.

 

 

 

[Dsmith20639]

Added 4 rubbing strakes to each side of the hull and applied wood sealer prior to painting.

[Dsmith20639]

Hull was painted with primer prior to marking out the water line and applying final black, white, and red colors.

 

 

 

[Dsmith20639]

I painted the hull. I started by painting the entire hull with white primer and painted the middle area just above where the water line would be white. I then marked off the water line using my Amati water line marking gauge while elevating the bow an appropriate amount. I taped off the bottom portion of the hull at the water line I just marked, applied a coat of white at the edge of the tape to minimize the chances of the next color seeping under the tape, and then painted the bottom of the hull red.  Finally, after applying several coats, waiting a day between each coat, I taped off the top area of the white strip and painted the top portion of the hull black.

 

I then removed the bulwark extensions and sanded them level with the false deck.  Now I can start planking the deck.

 

 

 

 

[Dsmith20639]

Per the manual, I have laid the deck planking using the 1x1mm walnut strips for the caulking.  As other users commented in their build logs Amati did not provide enough 1x1 strips. Luckily I had some strips in my stash from prior builds to complete this step. I ended up with only about 2 inches of material left over at the end. Next up is to sand, fill, and apply a coat of poly.  The results are not perfect but no one other than myself will notice once the deck furniture, etc. is added.

 

[Ken_2]

Very nice!  I look forward to your future posts!
Ken

[Dsmith20639]

Completed deck and added inner bulwarks. 

 

 

[Dsmith20639]

I added the bow and stern brackets. Unfortunately, they were not even close to my bow and stern shape and required significant modifications to fit. They look like wood in the construction manual photos but are MDF (which I hate).  I will probably paint them white along with the gunwales so it's not a big deal, but how could I be so far off?

 

I then added the timber heads and sanded them level with the bulwarks. The spacing ended up being exactly the width of my small clamps which helped. I remembered that from someone else's build log.

 

I started fitting the inner rails in place. First I tacked them in place using CA glue for every 4th or 5th timber head then nailed them to each timber head with the supplied iron nails. This involved marking each nail position with a small awl, starting the nail hole with an Archimedes drill, completing the hole with my mini cordless rotary tool, and finally driving in the iron nail with a small hammer. About 90 of them to do!

 

[Dsmith20639]

Completed installation of inner rails. Added inner bulwark cleats after rounding off edges and painting black. Attached cleats with CA glue. Instructions called for attaching them with iron nails but the cleats provided are MDF (ugh!) which only began to split when trying that approach.  Painted and applied the gunwales and. began construction of the fish board areas.

 

[Dsmith20639]

Finished work on fish board (net drying?) areas on either side of the main hold and then began work on the rudder.

 

[Dsmith20639]

I finished painting the rudder to match the hull and then attached the tiller arm and the pintles to the rudder using the small nails provided.  I used a very small reamer to enlarge the holes in the pintles and gudgeons as well as tiller arm fittings because the nails would not otherwise pass thru the holes in the parts. I installed the propeller and shaft but only made a short shaft as this will be a static model so a full length shaft was not necessary. The rudder was then attached to the hull using small nails to attach the gudgeons. Two holes were drilled in the bulwarks to allow the chain that was sunsequently fitted to the tiller arms to pass thru and be attached to the deck beam under the opening for the superstructure. Assembled the rear superstructure engine skylight, again using the reamer to open up the holes in the metal plates so that the tiny bars would fit easily.

 

 

 

[Dsmith20639]

I have completed the front and rear companionways. The only problem was construction called for 1x1 mm strips and there wasn't even enough of those in the kit to complete the deck.  Luckily I still had a few left in my stash of leftovers from previous builds.

 

[Dsmith20639]

I assembled the steam winch. For some reason, there were only 7 laser-cut whelps instead of the plan's 8, so I had to fabricate the missing one.

 

 

Then came the rope roller assembly, which like other brass parts required the holes to be reamed out before the 1mm brass rod parts would fit and a lot of sanding of the 2mm brass tubes to exact lengths to fit correctly.

 

 

And finally the deck hand pump. It was shown on deck in the position of the steam winch, just for the photograph. The only part mounted at this time was the rope roller.

 

[Dsmith20639]

Assembled the main superstructure and attached it to the deck. Some minor adjustments to the deck opening was required to get the superstructure to fit.

 

 

Assembled the net rollers. The holes in the end caps required the use of a small reamer to enlarge the holes for the brass wire to fit. I positioned the end caps at the ends of the rollers and used an awl to mark the position of the hole to drill in each end of the roller for the brass wire. I then glued the brass wire into the holes followed by sliding the end caps onto each wire and then gluing the end caps to the rollers.

 

The 26 hatch boards were then created. Each hatch board had two very tiny holes marking the position of the eyebolts and ring fittings. The holes were enlarged using a reamer.

 

 

Each eyebolt needed the holes to be enlarged to accept the rings. This took a while as there are 2 eyebolt/ring pieces to create and then glue into the two holes in each of the 26 hatch boards. These are tiny parts and sometimes it was difficult to feed the rings into the holes in the eyebolts.  After a while I determined that enlarging the holes in the eyebolts with the reamer sometimes raised a burr at the ends of the holes which was causing the problem. Filing the ends of the holes after enlarging to remove the burr eliminated the problem and made fitting the rings into the eyebolt holes less problematic.

 

 

Each hatch board was then painted red. I then ran into the problem that adding the hatch boards to the superstructure when dry fitting ended up not fitting correctly as the total widths of the 13 hatch boards was greater than the opening. I then measured the width of the opening and divided by 13 to determine the proper width of each hatch board. Then each board was reduced in width accordingly and installed into the opening along with the net rollers.

 

 

 

[Dsmith20639]

Began construction of the wheelhouse. The walls of the wheelhouse are made up of two layers; an inner layer with smaller window openings and an outer layer with slightly bigger window openings. This provides a surface to support the acetate windows to be added at a future step. Everything was going fine until I began to add the second layer. Then I noticed that the windows were not smaller for the front panel as described in the plans and instruction manual. As you can see in the first photo the parts at the top center marked 52 and 56 actually are two part 56s. So I had to add small strips of wood to the inner panel to make the window openings smaller before proceeding. This is the second time for this kit that the laser cut sheets were in error and did not match the plans.

 

Next I made the wheel assembly and added it to the wheelhouse.

 

To be continued.

 

 

[DocRob]

A very interesting build thread, thanks for pointing out the shortcomings of the kit. I plan to purchase and build the Amati Fifie and your log is extremely helpful. Keep on the nice work.

 

Cheers Rob