Pen Duick by jpalmer1970 - FINISHED - Artesania Latina - 1:28

[BobG]

Nice work!

 

As you noted, the AL instructions fade away at this point and leave you with only a few photos and, when it comes to the rigging lines, it gets even more vague. You have more patience than I do to figure these things out though! Good luck! 

[jpalmer1970]

Thanks Bob. Yes, the instructions are pretty woeful regarding the rigging. I am hoping the collection of diagrams in the plans gets me through it. I have one or two other guides to help but not being a sailor does mean that sometimes these don't make a lot of sense when you aren't sure exactly what things are for in practice. 

[hof00]

Hi Chap,

I found the Reefing Gear the most confusing.

I must admit that I used a bit of Modeling "License" to create something reasonably acceptable.

 

Also, if you are going to use the kit Sails, my Mainsail was too short, (Luff?), for the length of the Boom given on the plans.

 

Cheers.... HOF.

[jpalmer1970]

Thanks HOF. I am still unsure whether I will add the sails or not. If I do, I will attempt to make them from scratch as the kit supplied ones are undersized. I am also missing one sail from the kit so to have a full set I would need to make one at least. The chances of me finding material that matches the kit cloth is slim so I'd probably end up making a whole set.

[jpalmer1970]

I remember now why about 40 years ago I gave up making plastic model kits – I just don’t really enjoy painting that much! I’m not sure whether I don’t like painting because I’m not very good at it, or whether I’m not very good at painting because I don’t like it. Either way, I was reminded of this during all of the time I have spent painting the Pen Duick for the last week or so… 🫤

 

I used a spray can to give the whole hull a covering of white, even though only a very small section of this will eventually be on show. I tried using very light coats but of course at some point I was just too heavy handed and had a section that had a run in it. So I had to sand that back and there were also various parts that I thought needed smoothing out a little more, so between coats I occasionally added a little filler in small places. More and more light coats (I learned my lesson!) were added until I was happy with the coverage and the finish. All of this took a week or more to achieve given that the somewhat unseasonal early heat we have been having here in Australia limited the times of day in which I could paint. 

Eventually I was able to turn to marking off the hull to apply the black section of paint at the top of the hull. The kit instructions or plans don’t really give too much information on the positioning of the demarcation lines between the black, white and green sections of the hull but they do seem to suggest that the central white band spans the area where the top of the rudder meets the hull. I looked a few images online of the Pen Duick undergoing restoration and found a different answer there. In those images the white band is positioned above the rudder / hull meeting point. I decided to go with this second option and set out to mark the top of the white band using a pencil waterline marker. However, it soon became apparent that this wasn’t going to work in this case because of the almost horizontal plane of the underside of the hull at the stern of the model. My pencil holder had no ability to angle the pencil downwards and could therefore only draw a horizontal line on a basically vertical surface – fine for the waterline of an 18^th century frigate but no good at all for a 19^thcentury racing yacht. I decided to go high tech and used a laser level to project the line onto the hull and then marked it out using Tamiya tape and a special 'tape for curves' at the stern.

 

After masking off the rest of the hull with more tape and some plastic sheeting I then added the black paint to the area at the top of the hull. You will also see from these images that I had by now also cut and fitted the 4mm brass bar to fit into the pedestals on which the model will stand. I am never quite sure when is best to remove masking tape when painting models? Leave it until the paint has dried or take it off as soon as there is enough paint is on the model? I hedged my bets and took the tape off about 10 minutes after applying the final coat of black – again I had applied several light coats. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I managed to achieve a pretty good clean line between the black and white paint.

Setting the model on the pedestals on a temporary base board I then started taking off the masking on the deck. I had my fingers crossed that no paint, spray filler or wood filler had managed to get onto the deck. For most of the length of the hull the bulwarks do provide a very effective barrier against this but at the rear of the deck there is no bulwark at all. Removing the masking went well and whilst there are a couple of small places at the stern, especially on the port side, that needs a bit of attention, I was pleased to see that the deck was still nice and clean. I did lose a very small dot of black paint on the starboard side where the cut out for the bowsprit lies but this should be an easy touch up later on hopefully.

In between all of the painting and waiting to do painting I had had time to progress with working on the deck fittings. I made up the section comprising the main hatch and companion way and then added mini hinges to both of the butterfly hatches.

The image below shows some of the deck fittings simply placed on the deck – nothing will be permanently attached for some while yet until the rest of the hull painting has been finished.

[Thukydides]

For someone who is “not very good at painting” you have produced a really good smooth base coat on the hull. I am not sure I believe you :).

[jpalmer1970]

Thanks Thukydides. It is more luck than skill I think! And there is still plenty of opportunity for me to mess it up!

[BobG]

She looks great! 

[jpalmer1970]

I continued with work on the Pen Duick by cutting out the six slots in the rear of the deck into which the cockpit coming sits. I had roughly marked these out when i planked the deck but now that I had constructed the main companionway hatch I was able to see exactly where the coaming would sit. Some care fun work with the mini chisels, the #11 blade and some fine sanding sticks enabled me to cut out all six slots.

Then it was time for more painting! The next job was to mark off the area for the green coat to the lower part of the hull. Again I used a combination to Tamiya tape and 'tape for curves' to mark out the edge between the white and green sections. I also used the laser level along the sides of the hull but this didn't work as well on the stern section due the angle of the hull there and so I had to eyeball the curve around the stern and hope that I got it right. After a bit of backwards and forwards with the tape I eventually found what I thought was the right curve. I used Vallejo Model Air 71.331 Faded Cockpit Emerald Green for the lower hull - I believe this is the same colour as used by @BobG on his build. I applied with paint with my airbrush and was pleased to see this went on pretty smoothly as far as I can tell. I am a real newbie as far as airbrushing goes and am still learning my way but I was fairly pleased with how it went.

There are of course a few areas that need touching up before I can add the varnish coat but that is only to be expected. There is a tiny tiny green mark in the white section on one side of the prow but hopefully I can clean that up. I did note that the making tape I used when I applied the black paint has left a little impression mark in the white band and I'm not quite sure what that happened as I left the white hull for several days before I moved onto the black. I am pondering giving the white section another coat of paint but I'm not sure how well I will be able to mask off the green and black sections and so I could end up making things worse. Maybe I can give the white section a very light sand to clean up the marks instead? There are also a few nicks in the black paint at the top of the bulwarks but that should be an easy fix (hopefully).

[Thukydides]

For what it's worth I don't think the mark will be that noticable. It is hard to tell from the picture of it is an indent or a bump.

 

If it is a bump you could o as you said masking off the area. Note this doesn't have to be perfect as the line is already established. Just mask off the specific area you want to work on.

 

If it is an indent what you could do is brush on some varnish on the area. This will level and fill the area. Then sand and mask and paint again.

 

In either case give it a few days before trying anything. It is looking really good.

[BobG]

14 hours ago, jpalmer1970 said:

I continued with work on the Pen Duick by cutting out the six slots in the rear of the deck into which the cockpit coming sits.

I carefully cut out those slots as shown on the plans as well but, when I went to add the cockpit coamings to the slots, the tabs on the coamings did not line up perfectly with the slots. I finally got the coamings seated after some additional filing of the slots and the tabs but there were some small gaps left around the tabs that I needed to fill with a mixture of white glue and saw dust. 

 

The cockpit coamings have a very slight inward bend to them and the laser cut wood pieces were flat and stiff. I actually think it would have been easier to simply cut off the tabs and then wet the coamings and use heat to create the slight bend needed. I could then have simply glued the coamings flat to the proper place on the deck. This would have eliminated any misalignment possibilities between the tabs and the slots. In short, I think the tabs were unnecessary and the fit and finish without them would have been better and easier to achieve.

[jpalmer1970]

10 hours ago, Thukydides said:

If it is an indent what you could do is brush on some varnish on the area. This will level and fill the area. Then sand and mask and paint again.

 

In either case give it a few days before trying anything. It is looking really good.

Thanks Thukydides. The line appears to be an slight indent so I will give your varnish trick a go. I am grateful to you for you advice on this.

[jpalmer1970]

2 hours ago, BobG said:

The cockpit coamings have a very slight inward bend to them and the laser cut wood pieces were flat and stiff.

Yes they aren't easy pieces to fit. I was lucky and had cut the slots in what appears to be the right line, I was just a little out on the start points for some of the slots so I had to lengthen them a little but the extra gap is covered by the coaming. Soaking or heating the pieces to get the curve is a good idea. 

[Thukydides]

1 hour ago, jpalmer1970 said:

Thanks Thukydides. The line appears to be an slight indent so I will give your varnish trick a go. I am grateful to you for you advice on this.

Just a note. Depending on how deep the indent is you may want to try more than one layer of varnish before moving on to sanding.

[jpalmer1970]

I continued working on the hull painting by masking the whole hull except for the white band. It was difficult to tell if the line left by the tape in the white paint was raised or indented so I decided that the best first step was simply to sand the whole of the white section. I approached it carefully with a soft sanding stick with #400 grit paper and I soon found that this evened out the surface nicely. A quick clean up to get rid of any dust was followed by another two coats of white spray paint. This gave me a nice smooth white section and I was pleased to see that when I removed the masking tape I hadn't made any marks in either the green or black sections of the hull.

 

As mentioned previously there were a few chips at the top of the hull in the black paint and so I touched those up with a small paintbrush and then remasked off the deck area and gave the whole hull (and the rudder) three coasts of gloss varnish. I was pretty pleased with how this all turned out and was very grateful that the varnish hadn't spoilt the previous paintwork. It was a great relief to have the painting and varnishing work finished as this isn't something I'm confident with. My next model is going to be just wood and WOP!

So back to woodwork! The next step was to install the gunwale rails around the edge of the deck. These are 3mm wide pieces of mahogany and I used the plywood former that the false deck had come on as a guide to the curve that needed to be set into the rails. Using a little water and the heat from a travel iron I was able to bend the two rails to the approximate shape required (they sprang back a little bit when released from the clamps holding them to the guide).

I wanted to use PVA glue to attached the rails to the hull but I couldn't work out an easy way to clamp the rails to the gunwales whist the glue set that didn't risk marring the hull or the deck. I contemplated using rubber bands but decided I didn't want to risk my nice paintwork! In the end I decided the best way to fix the rails was with CA - though I try to avoid this where possible. The forward section of the rails is pretty straight so I glued that part first and held it in place by hand whilst the glue quickly set.

I then applied more CA down the rest of the rail, holding each section in place with my fingers until the whole of the rail was glued into position. Each rail was then given a coat of WOP so that they matched the rest of the mahogany pieces on the deck.

The instructions now call for you to install the skylights and cabin and coamings etc on the deck but I decided that whilst the deck was completely accessible it might be a good time to pre-drill all of the various holes required for pins, ringbolts and stanchions etc. The ringbolts supplied with the kit are made from 0.7mm brass but to my eye they look a little thick and chunky. I have some Amati copper eyebolts that are only 0.5mm thick and these seemed to be more in scale to me. I will of course have to decide whether to leave them the copper colour or blacken them or even paint them brass colour - I was recently able to purchase some Vallejo brass paint. The pictures I have found of Pen Duick online seem to show all of the metalwork on deck to be that greeny grey colour that bronze(?) goes after being out in the elements for so long. Anyway that is a decision for another day.

One other feature of the deck to consider at this point is the installation of what the instructions call the deck windows. These are little rectangular skylights set into the deck to allow a little more natural light into the cabin. In the kit these 'windows' are represented by little rectangles of grey metal - practically the least useful thing you could use to represent a window.  

I certainly don't feel that I want to use these in my model as they will just look like four lumps of metal set into the deck. There is a possibility of replacing them with little pieces of acrylic or perspex but I am not sure about that either to be honest. It would be possible to cut out the appropriate shape in the deck planking and fit in a thin piece of perspex but this will then only sit on the false deck and I'm not sure whether it will end up looking like a window or not. I'm not keen on cutting through the false deck too as I think it will then be difficult to glue the perspex squarely in place without having anything to support it from underneath. I am tempted to leave the 'windows' off the build entirely at this time - but again that is something that I can reconsider further down the build.

 

Here is the current state of the build.

 

 

[hof00]

Looking very nice!!

Crisp and clean.

 

Cheers.... HOF.

Edited October 22, 2023 by hof00

[Thukydides]

It is looking really nice and smooth now. Great job on the painting.

[jpalmer1970]

With the hull painting completed I was able to return to a bit of construction work. I had previously attached the propellor to a thin dowel and so this was now glued into the hull. I was also able to attach the rudder - the short nub at the top of the rudder was glued into the hole in the hull and a thin brass pin was fitted through the bottom of the rudder and into the hull. A dab of the green paint covered up the end of the brass pin.

Now it was time to move back to the deck. The instructions call for thin pieces of walnut to be added to the inside of the main hatch and the fore hatch to form ledges onto which the hatch covers can be mounted. The walnut strip is fixed in place so that the top of the strips sits 2mm above the deck. For some reason the middle hatch doesn't need these supports, at least as far as the instructions indicate. It may be because the cover for this hatch is the butterfly hatch and perhaps the walnut may show through more easily through the brass bars? It isn't clear if that is the reason but I stuck with the instructions and did as I was told.

 

I then soaked the two pieces of the cockpit coaming in warm water for a short while so that they could be bent into a slight curve and mounted them to the deck via the three slots previously made there. The main hatch was also placed on the deck and weights and clamps were used to keep the whole structure together whilst the coamings dried and took on the shape needed.

After the coamings had dried the whole structure was removed from the deck and the coaming pieces were given a coat of wipe on poly. After this had dried the whole structure was then glued in place and weights and clamps reattached to hold it in place whilst the glue set. The middle hatch was also glued into position. At this stage the fore hatch is only sitting in place on the walnut ledges as I still have to fit the metal skylight ring to it before the final fitting can be undertaken.

I also have started considering the construction of the masts and yards. The kit provides various sized walnut dowels for these but in my case the 6mm walnut dowel that is required for the mainmast was rather bent. Luckily I have some 6mm Tasmanian Oak dowel which I thought I might use instead - and this is straight! I cut some lengths for the mainmast, topmast and boom from this. I will need to taper and resize these on the lathe in due course. The other yards and masts need a 4mm dowel and I'll see if I can find another oak dowel to use for these. 

[yvesvidal]

Such clean and precise work. A pleasure to watch. I really like that green for the hull...

Yves

[BobG]

Gorgeous work! I'm really looking forward to following your progress on the deck fittings, masts and rigging. 

[jpalmer1970]

The work on the build this week mainly focussed on some of the many little metalwork fixings on the deck. I firstly collected together all of the metal fixtures supplied with the kit such as the cleats and the stanchions etc and gave them all a spray coat of grey primer. I then separated these out into two groups - one that needs to be pained black and the other that needs to be painted a brass colour. The group that need to be blackened were then given a spray coat of satin black paint and then a coat of satin varnish. Hopefully I can paint the other group of pieces with the brass paint this weekend. I also have to paint some of the copper Amati ringbolts a brass colour too, so I will do all of that together.

 

There are various brass structures the instructions call pinracks which I constructed out of 1mm and 1.50mm brass wire. One pair of pinracks is also made out of 2mm wide brass strip and each holds two belaying pins. Interestingly, the bottom section of the belaying pins is only just under 2mm in diameter so I decided to pare those down a little so that I still had some metal left in the 2mm sheet after I had drilled the holes for the pins! I used the mini drill press for drilling the holes for the belaying pins and the eyebolts that secure it to the deck. I started with a 0.50mm drill bit for all of the holes and then enlarged the ones for the belaying pins by working up in size through a variety of drill bits to 1.3mm. The brass strip was then carefully bent into shape and the belaying pins put in place.

Other things that were constructed at this time include the fore sheet bar and also the wooden supports for the binnacle and the bowsprit knightheads/support. I have also started gluing some of the cleats onto the outside of the cockpit coaming and also attached the mooring rope guides at the stern and prow. All of this is pretty fiddly work and takes me a surprisingly long time!

 

There are lots of eyebolts that need fixing into the deck but I am holding off on gluing those in place just yet until I work out which ones are actually going to be used for the rigging. I have drilled the holes for them but I want to keep the deck as clear as possible whilst the rigging is being undertaken and little things like eyebolts can easily get in the way and cause snags etc - they can easily be inserted into the holes in the deck later on. 

The pair of pinracks and the bowsprit knightheads haven't been attached to the deck in the picture above, and are only standing on the deck to show where they will eventually be placed.

I also obtained a length of 4mm diameter Tasmanian oak dowel and so I was able to roughly cut out the sizes needed for the bowsprit and various spars. I am looking forward to tapering these and the masts once I have all of this metalwork safely in place.

[BobG]

Nice work! I'm really interested in how you will finish the deck fittings and the rigging.

 

This is the point in the build where my build stalled to a stop. I was not happy with the quality of the fittings and found the instructions confusing but it looks like you've got the patience to figure it out. Patience is not my best quality at times!

[Thukydides]

6 hours ago, jpalmer1970 said:

I used the mini drill press for drilling the holes for the belaying pins and the eyebolts that secure it to the deck.

What is the brand and how do you like it? Is it very precise? Like you I have limited hobby space and so no room for a large tool shop so I am always interested in smaller versions of these tools.

[jpalmer1970]

9 hours ago, Thukydides said:

What is the brand and how do you like it? Is it very precise? 

It is from a company called Arrowmax. They sell a couple of different versions of the drill and you can choose to get the drill stand with it or not. I find it very useful and much better suited to our purposes than a dremel or other drill like that. The Arrowmax I have only rotates at 550rpm so it is much better for drilling small holes compared to the several thousand rpm of the dremel. It also takes 2.35mm drill bits and the set it came with seem to be pretty solid - I have only broken one of them and that was entirely my fault. They are much better quality than the cheap PCB mini drill sets you get on eBay. 

I bought my drill from Amazon but I see the prices there are ridiculously expensive now but you can get them much more cheaply Here.

 

[BobG]

20 minutes ago, jpalmer1970 said:

It is from a company called Arrowmax.

Thanks for posting this. I have a very small workspace...just a desktop in a small bedroom and this could work perfectly for me.

[jpalmer1970]

16 hours ago, BobG said:

This is the point in the build where my build stalled to a stop. I was not happy with the quality of the fittings and found the instructions confusing

I can understand that. I think I am going to be making some of it up as I go along. It would be nice if the pictures in the manual weren't quite so blury when it comes to the little details. 🧐

[jpalmer1970]

It has been a little while since the last update and whilst I have been busy with the build I don't seem to have made a great deal of significant visible progress. The first task to accomplish was the painting of the various pieces of metalwork that needed to have a brass appearance. I used the Vallejo brass paint and my airbrush to give the stanchions, eyebolts, binnacle and various other parts a couple of coats of paint. The Artesania Latina instructions show the capstan to be left as bare wood but online pictures of Pen Duick show it to have a brass appearance and a flat greenish coppery coloured top. The wooden capstan in the kit has a distinctly domed top so I sliced that off and painted the whole thing with the brass paint - I decided to omit the greenish tinge to the top face.

Other items that were given a coat of paint included the brackets for the four pulley wheels that are fixed to the deck. I believe these are to do with tensioning the running backstays - my research into the rigging is only at a preliminary stage so far. 😀  You would imagine these little pulleys to be a fairly simply item to complete as they only comprise of three parts: the U shaped bracket, the pulley wheel and a short length of 1mm brass rod used as the axle shaft. However, in their wisdom AL have made the inside distance between the two sides of the bracket 2.5mm and yet the pulley wheel is 3mm wide! I therefore had to grind down the width of the pulley wheel a little on the bench sander so that it would slot into the bracket. It was then that I discovered the next little hiccup - once the wheel is in the bracket the axle hole in the bracket and the axle hole in the wheel don't line up as the diameter of the wheel is larger than the depth of the U shaped bracket! What would have been a fairly simple job turned out to be much more involved than it needed to be simply because of the poor quality of the fixings supplied with the kit. I got around the mismatch of the axle holes by sanding a little edge off the bottom section of the pulley wheel where it sits inside the bracket - this had the effect of dropping the axle hole in the wheel just enough so that it matched with that of the bracket. Luckily you can't see that the bottom of the wheel is no longer round!

I also spent some time working on the chainplates. the instructions suggest that you just take a length of 0.8mm brass rod and form a little loop at each end of it by which it can be attached to an eyelet in the deck and to the shrouds. Six chainplates are needed and it seemed to me that it was going to be difficult to form these consistently, getting the loops to be the same size and the straight section to stay straight and be a consistent length etc. I therefore had the idea of using some lengths of 1mm brass tube that I have on hand and glueing an eyebolt into each end of the tube. This method therefore allowed me to produce much more easily six identically sized chainplates. I have attached the deck eyebolts to one end but I am leaving them off the model for the time being until I start work on the rigging as they will undoubtedly only get in the way in the meantime.

Most of the deck fittings were now glued into place - things such as the cleats and eyebolts, and the pinprick and belaying pins etc. I basically started at the prow and worked backwards along the deck - the next items to consider are the assemblies that the instructions describe as turnbuckles, these are the the lever mechanisms used to tension the backstays I believe. There is also the assembly the instructions call the lee fange spanker boom (!) to make and then I will hopefully be able to turn my attention to the masts and spars.

[BobG]

Nice work! You're getting there little by little.

 

I know just how vague and confusing the AL instructions are at this point, so if I ever get back to working on my stalled build, I'll definitely be using your build log as a most helpful guide. 

[Mike_H]

My word, she’s a beauty.  I following along.

[jpalmer1970]

I have been working on more of the deck fixtures this week. The turnbuckles were the next little project and they were constructed from various pieces of flat brass strip, brass wire and a few little pulley wheels. I believe these are used to tension the running backstay in connection with the little pulley wheel structures mentioned in the previous log update. I also constructed the nicely name lee fange spanker boom, which may normally be called a horse (I'm not quite sure - basically it is a sliding attachment point for the block at the back of the boom). The instructions asks you to make this by forming two ovals from thin brass wire but it seemed to me to be easier just to squash a brass split ring into an oval shape - this way it was much easier to control the shape and size of the oval. A block needs to be attached to the split ring linking the two ovals but I am holding off on that for the moment as I like to do all of the block rigging at the same time.

I then moved on to consider the tiller and the head of the rudder stem. You may recall my rudder is non-functional as the rudder stem does not extend through the hull. Consequently all I needed to do was get a stub of dowel the right size and drill a hole in this into which the tiller - a brass wire - could be inserted. I tried to give the end of the tiller a little ergonomic shape by dipping it into a pot of black paint and allowing a blob of paint to form at the tip of the tiller. 

I also considered what to do about the lifebelt. The kit provides what can only be described as a lump of metal which is to be used as a representation of the lifebelt. The instructions want you to paint this orange and thread some rope around the outside and call it done. That doesn't strike me as very lifelike and so I wondered what I could use to make a more releasing version of the lifebelt. Online images of the Pen Duick show the lifebelt on the yacht is actually yellow rather than orange and after some pondering I realised that a local office store sold yellow plasticine. I purchased a 500g block of plasticine and had a quick go at rolling out a tube shape which could be bent to look like a lifebelt. Here is a picture of the first attempt - I realised later that I didn't get the size right initially but this is a work in progress. It was surprising hard to roll a consistently size cylinder of plasticine - my skills have obviously faded over the decades! I'll come up with a better version in due course and I have an idea of how to trick it out to make it even more realistic, but that will have to wait until much later in the build. And I also have 499.5g of plasticine left over for more attempts! 😃

I was pleased to also find some time to start working on the bowsprit. I had previously cut a length of 4mm oak dowel to use for this and began by marking out the points at which holes needed to be drilled into which eyebolts would eventually be fixed. I use a small drill bit in the Proxxon mill to make sure that the dowel was level and that the holes were drilled centrally. I find it is easier to drill these holes into the dowel before it is tapered to shape - it seems easier to keep everything square and centred that way. There were various holes ended at both ends of the bowsprit and these were drilled and then I moved over to the lathe to taper the dowel to a 2mm thickness at one end.

When I cut the dowel for the bowsprit I had deliberately left extra length at each end of the dowel as I know from previous experience that putting the dowel in the lathe to taper it can often result (for me at least) in a breakage at one end when the tip gets thinner and thinner. This did in fact happen this time too but luckily the break took place past where the end of the bowsprit needed to be.

There are three brass collars that need to be fixed to the bowsprit into which the eyebolts are mounted. I had some brass tube on hand and was able to drill and cut a section of 3mm tube to act as the collar at the thinner end of the bowsprit. I did the same with some 5mm tube for the inboard end of the bowsprit but found that this was a bit too loose. I therefore cut through the section and removed a slither of the tube so that it could be squeezed more tightly onto the bowsprit. I mocked up these collars on the bowsprit and put it in place to see how things were looking so far.

I need to paint a few more eyebolts with the brass paint in the next couple of days and then I can fix the collars onto the bowsprit properly and secure the eyebolts in place. The third collar sits near the middle of the bowsprit and actually include a vertical section pointing up from the bowsprit into which two eyebolts are fixed above the bowsprit. I will need to make this from some brass strip rather than a section of tube so hopefully I will be able to get to that in the next few days too.

At this point I glued the deck fixtures mentioned previously into place on the stern part of the deck. That is almost all of the deck fixtures finished now apart from a few blocks that need to be attached to more eyebolts in the deck. So here is where things stand now.

And also a bonus picture with the lifebelt in place just to see if it was a great idea or a ridiculous one 😃 It will get better - trust me!