Palamos by djford - OcCre - 1:45 - first build

[djford]

This is my first ever model ship kit. I've recently taken a deep-dive into the hobby, and after doing a bit of research on this forum (and reading through many, many ship builds) I decided to reign in my enthusiasm a little bit and go for a 'beginner' ship. I'm interested in doing some more complex things later down the line, and I'd like to try my hand at some ships in bottles, but this will do as an introduction. This is also my first real foray into a forum like this, so wish me luck!

 

So! The Palamos is a 1:45 kit based on traditional Spanish fishing boats. It's possible to paint it, but I do like the walnut finish they show in the stock photo, so I'm tempted to leave it as is, with the natural wood colours. 

Lovely. 

 

Here's my first steps. 

 

I cut out the various bulkheads and keel. There was very little filing and sanding required, and the parts fit together perfectly without needing adjustment. A huge difference from plastic.

Note my improvised stand using clothes pegs to hold the ship upright whilst the glue dried. I think I got these about as square as possible, though even this felt somewhat fiddly. 

 

Whilst this dried, I started work on the deck. OcCre suggest laying the planks out and drawing in joins with a pencil. I thought that would look a bit naff, so elected to diverge from the instructions and cut the planks to 110mm lengths. There's not much of this wood provided, considering it's also used to plank the hull, so I tried to be as conservative as possible with the planks. 

In order to keep everything aligned, I drew alternating lines in red and black pencil, 55mm apart. I didn't really have a reference for where this planking should start, so I just eyeballed it - I think it will look fine.

I also took the time to coat the edges of each plank in pencil graphite to simulate caulking - I've seen this done in a number of build posts here, and it makes a surprising difference!

I cut out the battens for the bow and stern and labelled them all - glad I did as I nearly stuck them to the wrong ends! Also pictured is the deck before trimming. 

And here's the deck attached...

and the battens ready for filing down.

And that's a wrap on this session. I'll get the keel thinned down and the bulwarks added on as soon as I find some more time to work on this - thoroughly enjoyable thus far. Looking forward to learning more about the hobby!

 

Doug

 

[JacquesCousteau]

Great start! I'm looking forward to following this build.

[yvesvidal]

Great model, rarely seen on this forum. You are off to a good start.

 

Yves

Edited Tuesday at 12:11 AM by yvesvidal

[SiriusVoyager]

Welcome to MSW.  This was my fourth build and it is a pretty good one for a beginner.  Getting the Bulwarks on is a beast so be prepared for some frustration there.  I was as conservative as I could be with the supplied wooden strips and I had a reasonable number left over, so don't worry too much about that. It looks like you are off to a good start.

[djford]

On 7/23/2024 at 12:21 AM, SiriusVoyager said:

Welcome to MSW.  This was my fourth build and it is a pretty good one for a beginner.  Getting the Bulwarks on is a beast so be prepared for some frustration there.  I was as conservative as I could be with the supplied wooden strips and I had a reasonable number left over, so don't worry too much about that. It looks like you are off to a good start.

 

Thanks Eric! Yeah, I saw your build log before buying the kit, so thanks for the detailed walk through - very helpful. 

[djford]

Thanks for the encouragement guys!

 

Here's a quick update of the last couple sessions. I roughly sanded down the keel, bow and stern with a dremel. Writing this now, I know I didn't take enough off in the first pass, but that's okay - all a learning process.

 

And now, on to the dreaded bulwarks. I planked these as directed in the instructions, and began the bending process. In hindsight, I should have used CA glue for the planks here (instructions recommend contact cement, but I used wood glue) as I had some warpage here.

Nothing major though, and some careful cuts with a scalpel blade have settled the most egregious bends in the planks down enough that I'm happy with it. 

Now, on to actually attaching the bulwarks. Oh man. Whoever designed this kit was a sadist. The first one took me a good half hour of struggling, bending, struggling more, bending more...

And this is by no means perfect. Oh well - at least it's attached. On to the second one.

And there we go. I made liberal use of drawing pins for this, and found them far more effective than the tiny little brass pins provided in the kit. 

My bending skills require some work, however. For the life of me I couldn't get the bulwarks to meet perfectly at the stern, and I couldn't work out a way of clamping them so that they wouldn't slowly pull apart before the glue had time to dry. So, enter my slightly janky solution: I superglued some printer paper over the join as a brace. Not pretty, not very traditional, but it's going to be covered with planking later anyway, so who's to know?

And with that done, I glued in the uprights and the battens for each end of the deck. I had to file the stern one down a little to make it fit against my slightly-too-pointed bulwarks, but I think it looks okay. 

 

And there we go! On to planking next (I've actually already made a start at time of writing), so my next update will hopefully be the first planking layer complete. Stay tuned!

 

 

[djford]

And here's the update!

 

The OcCre instructions tell you to start planking in the middle of the hull. Every piece of advice and tutorial I've seen tells you to start at the gunwales, so that's what I did. I applied two layers at the gunwales and two at the keel before thinking about tapering:

 

 

To bend these, I held them over the spout of a kettle - it seemed to work reasonably well. The tapering plan I put together seemed to work reasonably well, though I'd definitely got the measurements a little bit off, as I ended up with a few gaps. Here it is halfway done:

Again I found drawing pins a great help in keeping everything aligned. 

I used thin offcuts to fill the more egregious gaps, but overall, as a first-ever planking job I think I did pretty well.

 

Definitely should have thinned the bow down more, but this is all going to be covered anyway, so I think I'll get away with it.

Here it is after some major sanding:

Not perfect by any means, but she looks like a boat now. I actually did a little more sanding after this photo was taken. Note the stern is significantly more thinned down now - I should have apparently had the planks meet each other past the false keel, as the actual keel sits a little further out than expected. I think this will be fine once the next layer of planking is on, but it's a little irritating, and wasn't clear at all in the instructions. The hull is a very strange shape at the stern, and the lack of a transom made bending, shaping and sanding very onerous.

 

Here it is on the stand:

I'm very pleased with how the bow came out. Time will tell whether my shaping of the stern will look good. 

In OcCre's instructions, they suggest planking and then adding on the keel afterwards. From reading another build log by SiriusVoyager, he recommends putting the keel on first. That's what I've done, and that's the last of this update:

As you can see, there's a few little gaps around the keel, but it's on now and I'm relatively sure I'll be able to fill those, either with shims of scrap or with the next layer of planking. Time will tell - I'm pleased with the progress thus far, despite some frustration with the weird-shaped hull. On to the next step!

 

 

 

[JacquesCousteau]

Congratulations on completing a very difficult task!

[SiriusVoyager]

Nice work on your first planking. You will definitely want the hull as smooth as possible so that the second layer of planking fits on nice and flat. Using some wood filler and sanding it down again will help with that. 
 

The gaps between the hull and the keel are exactly why I say to lay the keel first. You can use the second layer of planking to cover up those gaps. Had the second layer of planking be placed first, that wouldn’t have been possible.  Again, a little wood filler in those gaps can provide a bit of structure for the second layer of planking. A small rabbet along the keel, especially on the bow and stern will help hold those second planks in place.