While this is a group build that I’ve been working on together with 4 other people in a local group of ship modelers, a couple people have fallen behind and we haven’t had a group build meeting in many months now. So, I decided I should be making some progress. I know a couple others have made headway on their projects, and I figured I should get caught up a little
I began by working on the gratings and also planking the main deck piece, which glues onto the top of the hull. The kit includes walnut for the planking. Some builders had been discussing the idea of planking the deck piece topside and bottom side, since it’s just a piece of thin plywood. I decided just to plank the topside. The only visible issue of plywood is the edge, but that is to be covered with a small walnut strip all the way around.
The biggest issue I ran into was that the walnut planking strips are a bit splintery along the edges, so they don’t necessarily make a good fit between planks. I edged the planks in pencil, like I did with the floor earlier. When the planks are glued in parallel, there are often small gaps in the planking. Trying to build this using the manufacturer’s materials, I just worked to minimize any gaps as best I could.
Gratings are not out of the ordinary. I built mine up to fit the openings in the deck and edged them with 2mm x 3mm beechwood strip. I used the beechwood because there looked like there might be a shortage of walnut if I tried to use that. But, the beech was too light, so I darkened it with a wood dye mix I had on hand.
One thing I tried to do with the gratings was to keep to ledge pieces running side-to-side and the batten pieces running fore-and-aft. Now, the battens are really just the same interlocking pieces that make up the ledges, but on the completed model gratings, they are the pieces that run unbroken on the top side of the gratings. On all gratings, not just on this model, the battens should run fore-and-aft. After the gratings were constructed, I cut the coamings to fit around them, and then glued the completed assemblies down to the boat’s floor.
One departure from the kit was that platform on the boat’s stern extension is a laser-cut piece that is supposed to be planked over and glued into place. On the plans, the platform actually looks like it should be made from thick wooden planks bolted together. So, I discarded the laser-cut piece and just glued up some 2mm x 3mm planks, cut them to shape, and glued the assembly into place.
To do some of this, I ended up having to use some additional wood strips, other than what was provided in the kit.
So far, the rest of the work I did according to the plans.
Ship Modeler 