So, it's been a while since my last post, but that's because I've been knuckling down and getting all these pesky treenails done!
I haven't been able to get work done on it as much as I would have liked, so it seems like it has taken quite a while to do all the treenails, but in terms of actual modelling time it's been a relatively quick process. Much quicker than I thought it would be!
There were 1280 treenails in the end to do the whole of the false gun deck. The process went pretty smoothly. The only tip I would pass on is that I was having problems with treenails falling out when I tried to sand them down. Some people on model ship world suggested to glue them in place (either by dipping the wire in glue first, or just applying a coat of thinned paint before sanding. However, I ended up getting a better pair of nippers and find that because I could then cut the wire closer to the deck I didn't have any more problems!
Some pictures (Poor ones I know, I've been doing some reading about taking better pictures, so will hopefully start practicing soon!)
My next job was to give the whole a deck a good sanding. I started off with some medium sandpaper around a cork block and tried to get rid of any major unevenness and dirt. I had to abandon the cork block when sanding up close to and in between the bulkheads. I then repeated the whole process with 240 grit sandpaper and finally some 280 grit (for anyone like me who has/had no idea about sandpaper, the larger the number for the "grit" the finer the sandpaper)
I'm pretty happy with how the deck has turned out now that it has been sanded. There are some areas that are a bit lumpy, but that is mainly down to me planking badly. In particular, it is best to make sure that the pins which hold the deck to the keel are tapped completely flush, as I was a bit lazy with this some of the planks bulge slightly which is difficult to fix just by sanding. I'll might have another go with the sandpaper at some point, but seeing as most of it will be covered I'm satisfied.
I haven't taken a decent photo of the deck yet, but here is a quick one I took of the whole thing with the deck sanded:
This officially finishes the third installment of instructions and I have to face the scary reality that I'm going to have to start planking the hull soon! Very scary indeed.Speaking of which I've been reading an excellent beginners tutorial on hull planking which I would heartily recommend. It can be downloaded from here: http://www.modelshipwrightsdatabase.com/Page/03fp.htm
I will be following this technique as closely as I can, with reference to the AL instructions of course, and also to James Choi's build log to keep me in check.
Part 4!
The next big job will be to prepare the bulkheads for planking. This is described in detail in the tutorial above, and I will post next time to show how I'm doing it, but first a quick note about the instructions. As James Choi points out the instructions say to file and sand the bow section before fitting the bow strengtheners. This makes no sense since you would then have to sand the strengtheners again. So I have fitted them first as in the following photos:
A couple of things to note about this. The instructions aren't 100% clear about where exactly to glue the strengtheners, but they should be glued flush up against each side of the false keel and then against the winding frame.
I have been having a slight issue with the fact that I somehow didn't glue the winding frame quite square with the false keel. When I fitted the false deck this looked really obvious since it wasn't parallel to the winding frame. However, when adding these strengtheners I was able to fix it by first gluing the strengtheners to the keel and then adjusting the winding frame so that it came into contact with them. I then clamped it in this position and when the glue dried the winding frame was magically straight! Good news..I had been worrying about it for quite a while.
The final photo shows a pretty weird clamp position. When clamping the top of the strengtheners the bottoms moved out so I realised I needed to clamp them against the winding frame at the bottom as well as the top. However, since the surface is curved this seemed impossible. I tried a couple of clamps and they just sprung off. I would love to be able to tell you that I came up with an ingenious method to fix this, but what actually happened was show in the photo above. On one side the clamp just stayed in place on about the third attempt! I have no idea how it was gripping so well but I just backed away slowly and prayed that it stayed where it was! The other side actually ended up holding in position because I was holding it for so long while trying to clamp it..so it luckily didn't need a clamp.
Next Steps
The next thing that I will be doing is adding some balsa wood filler blocks in the bow section to make the planking easier. I will then need to do a LOT of filing and sanding of the bulkheads at the bow and stern so that I can start planking. This will involve quite a bit of patience and work but I will post a detailed description of what I am doing as I do it!
Fun times lie ahead!
Jonny.
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