Sloop Speedwell 1752 by Bahf - Syren Ship Model Company - 1:32 scale - POF Sloop

[Bahf]

After some delays due to Easter I collected my Speedwell kit yesterday and was able to get started today.

New to the forum, I noted that Chuck would like to see buildlogs and figured why not, I can use all the help I can get. This is definitely a deep end type project for me and I expect that I will be building quite slowly. Happily I seem to have gotten a generous amount of spare parts.

Started with the stem, not sure if I did something wrong but I ended up with a bit of a ledge along the curved inboard surface. Attempted to remove the ledge by sanding along the joint marked in red, which seems to have worked out ok.

 

 

This is where I'm at with a loose dry-fit, will sleep on it and try to refine the joint a bit more before glueing.

[JeffT]

Everything looks like a good fit.

[Chuck]

That looks very good.  You will always have various lips and small areas to be sanded like that.  
 

Also a Tip…sand both sides of the sheet before you remove the parts in order to clean the laser char spots.  
 

 

[Bahf]

Life finds a way (to get in the way) but some progress has been made, the keel and rabbet is assembled and I have sanded a first approximation of the head taper.
The scale of the model hit home in a different way when the keel was laid. Its quite large, in a good way. Having it occupying the desk is different from the theory of it will be 32"  :).

 

 

I'm not sure whether the taper should be continued down towards the waterline or stop roughly as it does now. Also unsure if it should be taken further towards the stern. For the figure to sit without any tension I should reduce the width a bit more, fractions of a millimetre, but I'm starting to eat into the thinner knee (correct part name? the fancy piece with notches). Perhaps that's as it should be?

 

Chuck, thanks for the advice on sanding parts while in the sheet!

When sanding the head I had to remove to much material around the box joint, I think I did a bad job when clamping the pieces during gluing so they were not perfectly in plane. I didn't really notice how much I removed at the time but it became obvious when mating the head to the keel. Next I plan to sand the keel around the box joint in the problem area to get a nice transition from head to keel. It will be a bit thinner that it should be but it is what it is. After that I will finish sanding the surface with high grit and apply some surface protection before mounting the aprons.

 

The kit came with enough spare parts for one additional complete head and keel assembly so I'm toying with the idea of assembling that and comparing the results. Possibly using poly for one and shellac on the other, for science as it were.

I'm greatly enjoying the project so far, it delivers on creating a sense of building the model, rather than assembling it, which is what I was hoping for.

Edited May 6 by Bahf

[Chuck]

That looks very good.  You can extend it a bit further down the stem if you like.  But its very nice.  Same with the thickness at the figurehead area.  Not much though.  
 

Dont be afraid to sand the gripe smooth at the keel

intersection as well.  There is plenty of meat on the bones yet.

[Bahf]

I have started assembling frames and getting ready to start placing them on the model.

 

Considering whether to coat them (with shellac) first. The fore and aft faces will be harder to reach later. But I suspect that the coat would interfere with gluing the ports and sills. So I will wait until a section is “done”.

 

Edited August 25 by Bahf