What's on my desk? Part 58.

Inside: a new part! (Photo with the bad one for comparison). Very impressed with this level of customer service. All I had to do was fill in a webform, indicating which part I needed, and include a 'live' picture of the model box. One week later: voila!

On to the build then. I completed three things last week: the davits for the lifeboats, the bridge, and various railings.

Let's start with the davits. These are preformed metal parts, with a brass wire crossbrace and wood pulley blocks. All this needs to be lashed together with twine.

Here's how I did the pullleys: wrap twine around the block, then thread both ends through the davit hole (to enable a knot in between), make three knots in the front and back of the block. Pull on it slightly to make sure they're fixed, cut off any excess. A bit fiddly work, but pretty easily done.

Lashing the crossbraces then. The brass wire was already glued to the davit supports, so the twine is basically there for cosmetic purposes. I had a look on the Scouting webpage to get some inspiration on how to do this. I started with a timber hitch (as far as that's possible in this small scale...) and then wrapped the twine around the crossposts (square lashing), fixing the end on the rear with a drop of superglue. This felt a bit like cheating, but according to one of my wood-ship-building customers, that's how it's supposed to be done when building wood models. You use glue when necessary. All this is done while the posts are already fixed in place on the model:

Having now experienced my first bit of ropework, I moved on to the bridge structure. It's a open platform surrounding the mizzen mast, bordered with railings. You need to make the structure, then align the 'feet' and the mast and hope everything lines up more or less straight. The ladder is made up of photo-etched parts, primed, painted sand and then drybrushed with dark brown paint. The railings are where the struggle begins. They're photo-etch, ending in a spike. You grip the part in pliers, push the spike into the wood and fix it with a drop of superglue. This is harder than it seems and I bent a number of the railing supports (mostly because my pliers are crap for this kind of work). It's almost impossible to get them straight again. The one just to the right of the ladder, for example, is clearly bent out of shape. Anyway, once they're glued in there they're pretty sturdy, and the railings themselves (made out of brass wire) are easily inserted and fixed.

There are more railings around the stairs and doors, made in the same way:

These are a bit tricky to fix with all the deck furnishings in the way...

I was glad when these were done. There's more of these kinds of railings coming up, but with twine railings...

Last thing I did were the anchor chains. You need to drill two holes, make some guiding parts, and then wrap a length of chain around the winch and glue the other end into the hole. They're not going all the way through the hull, so this was relatively easy to do. Once again, the construction order of the OcCre instructions leaves something to be desired. It would have been easier to do this if all that stuff on the deck (especially the anchor cranes) wasn't in the way.

Lastly: I thought I had nicely sanded down the MT2 part of the bowsprit, when I noticed the thing was too short.  At first I thought the instructions were wrong (and corrected them), but no, I completely misread them. MT2 is a rectangular strip of wood, not a round dowel. I cut a new length of rod and it's back to sanding...

I got a tip from a customer to form the masts: put the piece into a drill, then slowly turn it on sandpaper. Just need to make sure the part is aligned and the drill doesn't spin too fast... Something to try out this week.

That's it. See you next week!

Oh, and happy Valentine's day on Friday.