Looking back to the beginning of this build, the framing of this kit is pretty easy to put together. The hard part is the planking that comes later. At this stage, however, it’s pretty much a matter of fitting the nicely laser cut frames and keel. The kit use bulkheads which are specially designed so that after planking, the centers of the bulkheads are easily removed, leaving just the portion that act as open frames. These are then sanded thin to match the appearance of real frames.
Some people have opted to upgrade their kits using boxwood from Hobbymill. I remember Chuck Passaro commenting many times in his blogs that making the model with basswood would result in something just as good as boxwood, or something to that effect. I didn’t really buy that at the time, but I have to say, I’m really happy with how things turned out using basswood.
I followed the suggestions in the instructions to stain the wood with a 50/50 mix of Golden Oak and Natural stains using Minwax stains. I also pretreated the wood with Minwax’s Pre-Stain Conditioner.
After carving the rabbet and assembling the keel, I marked the centerlines of all of the frames to assure good alignment when assembled.
Test fitting the frames went very easily and it wasn’t long before I could begin the planking.
As you can see from the pencil and other items in the background, this is not a very big model.
Next step was to add the first planks at the gunwale to hold everything in alignment, then going back to the keel and adding the garboard plank. I’ll post some photos of that next time.
Ship Modeler 