Canoa de Rancho by JacquesCousteau - Scale 1:32 - Lake Chapala Fishing and Cabotage Vessel

[JacquesCousteau]

2 hours ago, Glen McGuire said:

Whether they are visible or not, you know what they look like and the high quality of work you put in.  To me that's what really matters.  It seems like half the details I put on my SIB ships are almost impossible to see one it gets in the bottle.  But I know they are there.  You are doing beautiful work here.  Keep it up, JC!

Thanks! I'm finding that it's ultimately more about the build experience than the finished product.

[wefalck]

For some people, building a model is mainly the means to consolidate in a tangible form the results or their research. So it is more about the way than the actual product at the end, although this can also be an aesthetic pleasure, of course.

 

Other people build models to exercise and demonstrate their skills and other just want something pretty on their shelves ...

[JacquesCousteau]

Still trying to figure out the sail material. On the other hand, I think I have the yard finished. I was able to most sand off the reddish stain, although some did stick to parts of the grain. I then added a very heavily thinned layer of gray stain (along the way managing to spill turpentine all over the office--quite a pain to clean up, I will definitely try sticking to stain pens in the future). As can be seen below, the yard looks pretty close to the mast color now:

 

There are still some slight differences, but at least some of it is because the mast and yard are made of different materials that seem to have taken up the stain slightly differently. The mast came from a dowel, presumably birch, while the yard is basswood. The yard looks like a pretty good match for the basswood deck planks, which received the same stain as the mast. 

 

So, all I have to do by now is to glue the furnishings in place, make the sail, and attach the (very simple) rigging.

 

 

In any case, I recently received some very welcome news back on a job application, so I'll be staying in Mexico for at least the next year abd a half. To celebrate, I figured I would start my next build log, for a Chilean coastal sloop (lancha chilota, link in signature). Given that material issues have held up the canoa for now, I don't think a new build will interfere with finishing this one, and I'd already made some progress. Size comparison between the Canoa and the Lancha's skeleton, below: