What's on my desk? Part 56.
Hello!
Fram! Forwards!
I've finished the hull. The reinforcement strips were all nailed into the bow. The ones near the bottom were again a bit harder to hammer, because of the harder wood of the spine, but it turned out alright in the end. Apparently I started just a bit too low, so the last strip was added on top. It's looking pretty good.
Some extra wood strips need to be added to the hull. These align partly with the black band. As I decided to first add everything and then paint, I needed to measure out the location. My makeshift plumbline tool consisted of a mechanical pencil taped to a steel ruler... Crude, but it went okay-ish. The anchor chain holes (which apparently are called 'hawsepiper' in proper parlance) were drilled out, and some small eyehooks for the bowsprit chains were measured out and glued in place as well. I did not sand enough away on the bow, so the exact measurements are a bit off.
The stern holds the rudder and screw and the supports need a lot of photo-etch bands. Here also I messed up this area and did not sand away enough of the wood. As a result, the rudder is too far down into the hull and would not be able to turn if it were workable. The screw has the same problem, but I can hide this fact a bit by installing it with the blades pointing sideways...
The wood supports here are 5mm thick: thinner than the nails. So the photo-etch bands need to be glued , and nailheads cut off and glued on top. Fun times...
With all the metalwork done, it was time for paint. First a coat of light grey primer, then three bands of red, black and grey. Here's an in-progress picture:
The lid of a jam jar makes for a nice cheap pallette. :-)
I noticed I knocked off a small piece of wood laminate on the upper railing, so this had to be filled, sanded and repainted.
I also decided the deck looked boring and too pale. I added a few drops of Sapelli dye to the Satin Varnish, and gave the entire deck an extra layer of this. Some more dye was added and a few planks were picked out with the darker mixture. Eventually, I got the deck to look just a bit darker and more interesting with some colour variation:
This marks the end of the hull construction. From now on we're going to be building and painting parts of the deck furniture. It's a mix of laser-cut parts, strips of wood and preformed metal pieces.
Here's where I am now. The hull has been painted, you can see the screw is installed, some chain has been added to the rudder and some deck fittings have already been painted and glued. In-progress hatches are visible below the ship.
That's all.
See you next week!