Bertie Builds a Boat - Lady Isabella - Scots 'Zulu' Herring Drifter - Finished ! ! !

[Bertie McBoatface]

5 hours ago, Cerberus said:

 I was just thinking exactly the same thing 

 

 I daren't say anything because I seem to remember @Bertie Psmith saying that he wanted to keep this build log clean... ... 

 

Not me. That’s what I have to do in the other place. 

 

5 hours ago, Cerberus said:

 I lost some tea back into my tea cup at this comment... 🤣

 

Result!

 

5 hours ago, Cerberus said:

 I dread to think what he's saying on that 'other' more serious forum, I'm tempted to go have a look...

 

 Matt

 

So far Matt, I’ve been using the same text and photos in both places and answering the comments in the same manner in which they were asked. 

Consequently I’ve been a bit flippant for those guys and rather dull for over here. 
 

I seem to have changed course last night. 😁

 

In future I’ll write different updates to suit each audience. Maybe not in both forums on the same day though, that would be hard work!

[Bertie McBoatface]

9 hours ago, psdavidson said:

I'm glad to hear yours came off OK. 

The only problem was getting it off my fingers afterwards. 
 

 

 

The glue, I mean. 

[roginoz]

This just gets better and better !!

 

Shades of the Two Ronnies !

 

Oh, forgot, they're both shades now.....very sad !

[Bertie McBoatface]

I’m getting the impression that some of you are finding rude meanings in my nautical chatter. Shame on you! 😉

[ArnoldAmbrose]

14 minutes ago, Bertie Psmith said:

I’m getting the impression that some of you are finding rude meanings in my nautical chatter. Shame on you! 😉

Gidday Bertie, I shudder to think what they'll say when you get to the futtock shrouds and spanker boom. 😲 Purely nautical terms, I assure you. 🙂 Regards, Jeff.

[psdavidson]

4 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

The glue, I mean

The possibility that you meant something other than glue never crossed my mind

[Bertie McBoatface]

 

With the clamps out of the way and the glue dried I can show you the big awful horrible misalignment that I was concerned about last update. I'm still unsure how that happened but when it happens again I will not glue it down without taking remedial action. Instead, I'll soak the pattern for a lot longer and then try to form a compound curve in the dodgy area by the application of heat before committing myself with glue. Or I'll come up with some other cunning plan. As with plastic kits, there's a mabillion ways to make 'em, and a mabillion + 1 ways to ping them up beyond all recognition - PUBAR!

 

This particular ping-up I'll ascribe to inexperience of the medium. The pattern piece is so much wider than a plank that it's relatively inflexible and at the time I didn't realise how much bending it is possible to do on thin wood. Two planks later, I have a much clearer idea about that. When the plank was wet I could easily bend it across it's thickness AND from side to side AND in a twisting direction too. I've read about model shipwrights soaking wood in boiling water and then microwaving the soggy result well past the point of al dente. Just think of those bentwood chairs and you see what might be possible. What's the worst that can happen? The pattern might have broken - but this is wood, remember. I could probably stick it back together or even make another one. The kit supplies a full plan sheet for all the components just for such eventualities.

 

Remember too that at this point I'm still working on the inner structure of the boat. I may not have made that clear. First the spine and ribs in MDF make the fixed points of the shape. Then the FIRST planking, which includes those bulwark patterns, fills in all of the curves and makes the beautiful flowing shape of the hull. It IS beautiful too. I see and feel it growing under my hands day to day and I'm getting a lot of primal satisfaction from that. In fact that's the biggest difference between this build and all of the plastic kits I do - I mostly experience this part of the build with my hands, not my eyes. Anyway, once the hull shape is made with these limewood planks, I'll apply a second layer of planks on tip. These are more closely to scale, being thinner and narrower and they are made of pearwood, which has a lovely orange-brown colour and a grain as tight as the underneath of a duck. With luck, by the time I do the second planking, I'll be able to do it well enough that I can simply varnish it and leave the wood showing. The real fishing boats were painted all over so I have a plan B should I make a serious mess of it, but it will break my heart to cover up the inherent beauty of the wood. 

 

With these points in mind, I had to correct that awful step that I'd made in the flowing lines of the boat.

 

 

What a horrible mess.

 

 

Five mins later. What the ping?

 

 

That's a bit better, isn't it?

 

Shaping the bulwark to match the plank was a five or ten minute job with a cabinet scraper. My woodwork teacher in 1970 told me that sandpaper is not the best tool for the removal of material. He went on to say that it's not even very good for surface finishing, compared to a sharp blade. I still agree with him. Viewed up close, a sanded piece of wood is torn up, wooly and usually rounded while a surface cut with the blade of a plane, a spokeshave, a cabinet scraper, a chisel, even a sharp file is crisp and flat. Also, for lazy (read efficient) woodworkers, blades remove material much faster. Being almost indefinitely reusable, they are also more ecologically sound.

 

Of course, there are times when only sandpaper will do and modern papers are much better than the ones available in the woodwork 'shop in 1970, so I will continue to use it where I can't think of a sharp alternative and while I build up my collection of edged tools.

 

 

These are my tiny luthier's cabinet scrapers. 

 

 

And for those of you who have never used a cabinet scraper, here's a video of a large one in action. I've linked to the point I want you to see and you only need watch for five seconds to understand how brilliant they are.

 

 

These are my tiny shavings. One final advantage of edged tools is that shavings are less inclined to float to the furthest reaches of my flat than the dust of sanding. 

 

 

The pattern is now shaped to my satisfaction and flows into that first plank. That's my shim peeping through the scraped down pattern. I'm honestly astonished that I had the foresight to predict that would happen. Please don't expect that of me every time. 😁

 

I only did one side om Thursday, to prove to myself that it would work, thinking that I'd do the other when the whole of the first planking is complete. However, I can't bear to leave the other side feeling like that. It's catching in my mind like a broken fingernail and I really have to fix it before I do anything else. 😢

 

 

[Bertie McBoatface]

1 hour ago, Bertie Psmith said:

I only did one side om Thursday, to prove to myself that it would work, thinking that I'd do the other when the whole of the first planking is complete. However, I can't bear to leave the other side feeling like that. It's catching in my mind like a broken fingernail and I really have to fix it before I do anything else. 😢

 

Sorted. It was a very quick job at the second time of doing it. 

 

Incidentally, you don't have to spring for posh luthier's cabinet scrapers. It's easy to form a cutting burr on a scalpel blade, or a steel rule, both of which I use, and in many places on the world, a freshly broken bottle will be the source of half a dozen sharp and functional scrapers. (I stripped an refinished a rifle stock with glass scrapers when I was nobbut a lad. The only other thing I needed was some Elastoplast.)

 

 

Thinks: Do these things work on plastic? I know the scalpel blades do but I never tried the cabinet scrapers.

[Adm Lord De Univers]

8 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

And for those of you who have never used a cabinet scraper, here's a video of a large one in action. I've linked to the point I want you to see and you only need watch for five seconds to understand how brilliant they are.

I now know what I've been missing in my life. And purchased - thank you. Brilliant build too!

 

David

[Bertie McBoatface]

15 minutes ago, Adm Lord De Univers said:

I now know what I've been missing in my life. And purchased - thank you. Brilliant build too!

 

David

 

Let me know how you get on with them. All you need to know about sharpening and using them is on YouTube somewhere.

 

(I hope you didn't buy one of those hones. I use the round smooth part of a needle file to shape the edge.)

[Adm Lord De Univers]

4 minutes ago, Bertie Psmith said:

 

Let me know how you get on with them. All you need to know about sharpening and using them is on YouTube somewhere.

Thanks Bertie, shame I purchased a set before i read your previous post, I already have the elastoplasts so could've saved some cash.

 

David

[Bertie McBoatface]

16 minutes ago, Adm Lord De Univers said:

Thanks Bertie, shame I purchased a set before i read your previous post, I already have the elastoplasts so could've saved some cash.

 

David

 

You won't be sorry

[Bertie McBoatface]

I’ve been lying awake for hours in the early morning sunshine considering the geometry of the Lady’s bottom. This being a holiday, I’d like to lay a plank or two across it. In fact, I want to get the first planking completed before I think myself to a standstill. 
 

What’s bothering me is the shaping of the planks. The kit instructions suggest tapering the ends of the planks but then go on to say that I may need to fit ‘stealers’, short triangular planks lower down because I will have gaps at the ends of the long planks. 
 

Surely, tapering the ends of the upper planks will make matters worse lower down?

 

I looked at a real life boatyard blog last night and the shipwright was explaining how he reduces the width of his planks IN THE MIDDLE. And still had to put a stealer in despite this. 
 

Now I don’t know whether to follow the instructions, in which I have already found a couple of confusing errors, and which, in ship kits, seem to be little more than advice anyway, or to try and follow the techniques of real life boat building. 
 

Earlier in this log we were talking about skills particular to this genre and I think I just found one. Geometry!

 

 It’s not critical on the first planking because it won’t be visible on the completed model so this is a good time to experiment. 
 

And I have two sides to play with before things do get serious. 
 

DECIDED: I will follow the instructions, do the whole of one side and see what happens. I’m not able to visualise it yet because I lack the experience. I shall learn first and then modify my technique if required. 

 

NB: There's a risk of warping the boat's frame by doing one side at a time instead of both at once, so I don't recommend it unless you think the risk is worth the learning opportunity, as I do.

[Bertie McBoatface]

Here's some interesting data.

 

 

I laid Tamiya tape down the ribs from the keel to the existing first plank.

 

 

Then I laid the tapes out on the 1cm grid with a line representing the keel. It was a crude way of 'unfolding' the hull and projecting it on a flat surface, like a map of the world. It's given be a better understanding of the shape I have to cover.

 

 

This was another way to try it on with the Lady.

 

My  planks are 5mm wide (nominally) and the numbers on the tapes are the numbers of planks required to span them. In fact, since I won't be bending the planks edgewise around the curves of the frames, nor will I be chamfering these planks at the edges to get a perfect fit, each plank will actually cover a greater distance than 5mm. I'm going to need only 12 and there were two spares provided in the kit. It's nice to have a little bit of spare on the side. The tapering of the hull is smooth overall with no surprise in and outs to worry about. If the planks are well soaked and floppy, twisting them around the stern (at the left of the picture, remember) shouldn't be a problem. Perhaps there will be no need for stealers if I keep any tapering to a minimum.

 

I'm writing this to kill time while I wait for this morning's wood to soften. It's in the washing up bowl at the moment, under hot water. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of Bertie and the Lady's Bottom.

[ArnoldAmbrose]

1 hour ago, Bertie Psmith said:

It was a crude way of 'unfolding' the hull and projecting it on a flat surface,

Gidday, I think it's a brilliant idea. 👍

 

 

And Bertie, with comments like these:-

 

4 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

I’ve been lying awake for hours in the early morning sunshine considering the geometry of the Lady’s bottom.

1 hour ago, Bertie Psmith said:

This was another way to try it on with the Lady.

1 hour ago, Bertie Psmith said:

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of Bertie and the Lady's Bottom.

    - You're your own worst enemy regarding us finding rude innuendo in your otherwise perfectly innocent comments. 😁

Mind you, a nice rounded shapely bottom can be very pleasing to gaze at.   In SHIPS! I'm talking SHIPS! 🙂       

 

And back to hull planking, I've been wondering if a similar method could be used with styrene for hulls. 

Regards, Jeff.

[psdavidson]

1 hour ago, Bertie Psmith said:

while I wait for this morning's wood to soften. It's in the washing up bowl at the moment, under hot water

I understand it's a common problem.

[Bertie McBoatface]

2 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday, I think it's a brilliant idea. 👍

 

I dunno if I like, learnt owt, burrit were fun!

 

2 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

 

And Bertie, with comments like these:-

 

    - You're your own worst enemy regarding us finding rude innuendo in your otherwise perfectly innocent comments. 😁

Mind you, a nice rounded shapely bottom can be very pleasing to gaze at.   In SHIPS! I'm talking SHIPS! 🙂       

 

I don't understand what you are getting at. But then, 'to the pure, all things are pure.'

 

2 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

And back to hull planking, I've been wondering if a similar method could be used with styrene for hulls. 

Regards, Jeff.

 

I don't see why not. A similar method is used on card models. 

 

2 hours ago, psdavidson said:

I understand it's a common problem.

 

Not so much since I reached retirement age.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

I wellied the first plank on without tapering the ends at all, and discovered right away that I'm more of a plonker than a planker. I immediately had an action replay of the bulwark incident but amidships this time. I had exceeded the ability of the wood to cope with curves in two directions at once. (This is why I no longer go to that kind of party.) As I often find, it didn't look too bad from outside but when I flipped her over and looked underneath all I could see was flanges.

 

 

That's almost all the way through to the other side. In a panic I slopped glue all over the potentially disastrous little gap. Clearly I'd have to resort to following the instructions, but now I'm not blindly groping along. I know why I'm doing these things.

 

 

A digression. Those little pins are the very devil to pick up when your fingers are shaking and sticky to boot. So I stuck them into my rubber. Now I can do it with one hand.

 

 

Having inserted an untapered plank and found out that it was not a good idea, I should have withdrawn it, wiped it and started over. However, I left it there and tried to  compensate by tapering the next one. That wasn't enough, being only about the amount I should have taken off all of them. If I continued like this I'd take the clinker effect all the way down to the bottom. (A clinker built boat has overlapping planks but this is supposed to be carvel built, with smooth butt joining.) In desperation I tapered away about a sixth of the length, at each end, of the next one. That only left me with two more wet ones ready for use and I really wanted things to be back to normal by lunchtime.

 

 

Normal? Not really. This is going to be one of those 'cover it with putty and sand it back to shape' rescues. That's pretty standard in the build logs I've seen for this kit in the other forum. One guy, an architect, presumably with a brain well adapted to thinking in three or four dimensions, did it perfectly from the start, but most beginners fumble around and produce something like a washboard. Then with putty and patience, they sort themselves out. So in a way, I'm on the right track.

 

 

Cheered by this positive thinking I got my big pink one out and prepared it for the evening session with Isabella.

 

                                                       

 

And do you know, in some lights and the appropriate distance, she doesn't look half bad...

 

 

Not bad at all for a beginner.

 

There's not much in plastic kits that baffles me these days. Some things are hard, but I know what to do even if it's going to take a lot of effort. This wooden stuff has made me feel like a teenager with his first, model. again. I know what I want to do but the mechanics of it all are just beyond me at the moment. However, each time I try it, I get a little bit further and I find out how to do it better next time. Later today if I'm up to it, I think I'll turn Lady Isabella around and do the same to her port side. Perhaps I'll get it right next time and then there will be nothing to stop me going all the way with her. 

 

 

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Bertie, another simple but clever idea - the pins into the rubber. And as I understand it this layer of planking is the first of two, the under-layer so to speak? Then it seems to me that every little thing you learn here will be of benefit when you do the outer layer, the layer that will be seen. Think of this as the training layer. And in all seriousness I say to my colleagues in the bushfire brigade I'm in that "If you're going to make mistakes, make them at training. Learn from them, and get it right when it really matters". 

     And you are correct, she's shaping up to be an elegant ship.

Regards, Jeff.

[Bertie McBoatface]

31 minutes ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Bertie, another simple but clever idea - the pins into the rubber. And as I understand it this layer of planking is the first of two, the under-layer so to speak? Then it seems to me that every little thing you learn here will be of benefit when you do the outer layer, the layer that will be seen. Think of this as the training layer. And in all seriousness I say to my colleagues in the bushfire brigade I'm in that "If you're going to make mistakes, make them at training. Learn from them, and get it right when it really matters". 

     And you are correct, she's shaping up to be an elegant ship.

Regards, Jeff.

 

Thanks Jeff,

 

You are correct about this underplanking. It's just a way of transferring the shapes of the frames into the shape of the boat as a whole. Joining the dots, if you sectioned the thing lengthways. You are also tuned into my way of thinking about this being the place to train myself. The top layer is made from much thinner and narrower planks and goes on dry, with no possibility of pinning through it. Cutting it to shape will be much more critical, though easier perhaps on thin dry wood.

 

I've already unpinned the work I did this morning. Modern wood glue sets really fast, too fast for me in fact! I gave it a quick going over with a scraper and...

 

 

Bingo! The planks being quite thick has allowed me to smooth things out quite easily.

 

 

However, I'm still plagued by  gaps. Sometimes wide enough to jam and glue splinters into as a stop-gap measure (hoho). Where are they coming from? There were no gaps when I pinned the blanks firmly abutting each other. The wet planks....

 

I measured a spare piece of planking at 5.2mm wide. After soaking briefly in cold water it was 5.5mmwide. It's still damp now but already has returned to 5.4mm after half an hour. That's where the gaps are coming from, shrinkage of wet wood.

 

 

And there's photographic proof. The digital calipers are set to 0.3mm but the shrinkage might have been double that after a long soak in hot water. Look at the pattern of the glue in the gap. I believe that indicates the planks have drawn apart as the glue dried. I see that sticky yawn in all of the gaps. This is why everyone has to use that beastly wood filler on the first planking. So my next experiment was to go in dry and see how that turns out. 

 

If it worked it would mean that I'll be able to chamfer and thin the planks as well as cut them precisely for length and even plane off the tapers one slice at a time. I couldn't do any of this when the limewood was wet as it resisted the blades.  

 

 

Well, I fitted the garboard strake dry. The plank closest to the keel needs to be right, that's why it has its own name, I suppose. I thought it would be useful to have this in place so that if a narrow plank has to go in, it will be in an easier to access position. I chamfered the side that abuts the keel, then thinned the two ends where they are required to twist, finishing paper thin to blend them into the keel. They were too thin for pins at that point, hence the clamps. Then just for insurance I backfilled the triangular spaces behind it with dilute glue. It looks like (messy) carpentry now, instead of papier-mâché modelling. The edges are sharp and lovely and I'm a much happier Bertie than formerly!

[Bertie McBoatface]

Is this the fourth update of this exciting day?

 

 

I fitted three more planks above the garboard. All dry and none of them tapered. I'd gauged the gap with some plank offcuts held in my fingers and there was room for four planks if the last one was carefully fitted. There would be a slight gap in places as a result of the wet planked mess I made earlier but I'd fix that later. You may be wondering how I was getting the planks to lie down against the frames at bow and stern? No? Well, I'll tell you anyway. 

 

 

The trick was to bend the planks sideways. The 'O' tells me where the plank is rising out of the slot and therefore has to bend in order to stay next to the one below it. The down arrow tells me which direction to make the bend.

 

 

The plank is then clamped down to a board, the front cover of an old book as it happens, and a bend forced into it. The orange clamp prevents the plank buckling upwards, which is what has been happening when I've forced a bend into it on the boat. Then a tiny bit of water is applied with a finger dipped into a jamjar.

 

 

My variable speed soldering iron flashed the water into steam while applying pressure to the wood.

 

 

Clamped, the bend is quite severe.

 

 

But most of that springs back on release. This gentle swerve is all that's needed to make the ends fit perfectly on the hull.

 

Since the plank was dry, I could then cut the ends to fit, chamfer the edges to mate up with the adjacent plank(s), and thin the ends out too, so that they blended into the keel and will save me the bother o sanding them.

 

 

There's no time pressure involved this way. I'm not worried about the plank drying out or the ones in the sink getting too wet. It's a process that you can do slowly or as fast as you like, and it's amazingly satisfying. Compare the lines of the five, nailed planks which were put on dry to the seven wobbly lumps of driftwood above. Remember that the seven have already been sanded down and the five are 'as fitted'.

 

 

Of course the seven tapered planks had already made it necessary to have their compensating stealer fitted in that triangular gap.

 

 

But working with a dry off cut, that was a two minute job.

 

 

With the last of my strength, I filled the gaps that opened out this morning, sat back and just admired all those tight butts. (There just had to be one last, in-your-endo!)

 

I'm absolutely delighted with the day's learning and the difference twelve hours have made to my abilities as a boat builder. Tomorrow I'll plank the other side in this new and effective way and then....

 

And then have to wait a bit for the contact adhesive for the next phase. I never expected to make this much progress so I didn't order in advance. Silly me.

 

 

 

 

[Bertie McBoatface]

I actually got up early today because I wanted to get the pins out of the boat. In the time it took for my breakfast cereal to go soggy in its bowl, I scraped, trimmed and sanded the half hull to this standard.

 

 

I took the photo backlit in an attempt to show the contours. It's now very obvious which planks went on wet, but only from the gaps, they have almost  all smoothed out and shaped very well indeed. There's one rogue plank that's a little thinner than the rest and that will need a touch of filler, dammit. I was too lazy to grade the material by size, as the experts recommend.

 

I will also have to use a little filler between the planks nearest the bulwarks and at the stern, which is to the left of this picture. I want it smooth all over before I apply the second planking, to give me the best chance at making it good enough to leave 'in the wood'. If I get away with just varnishing the wood between the waterline and the rail, I will have reached 10/10 on my personal scoresheet. (Most likely, I'll paint it, as in the real thing but I can always dream.)

 

The planking gave me some trouble but it only took a day to find some techniques that worked well for me. There's a YouTuber called Chuck Passaro who taught me about edge bending. And another one, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten who explained real life boatbuilding to me. The University of YouTube is a great resource.

 

If you are thinking about trying these wooden kits, you may be wanting some particular answers.

 

Is planking easy? No, and it will always be a challenge because different hulls will have their own little challenges.

 

How difficult did I find planking? Tons easier than learning a three chord song on a guitar. About the same as a MiniArt full interior kit. Easier than cooking a romantic dinner when you are trying to impress. Harder than any Tamiya kit. Easier than sewing anything. Easier than fitting a new kitchen. Easier than all but the simplest PE. About the same as weathering a plastic kit. Remember, I'm only talking about the planking process, not the whole of the build.

 

Is it satisfying? Certainly, yesterday was the best moddelling day I've had in years and I'm very proud of the unique result that you get from this sort of building. It's definitely mine.

 

Will it put me off plastic kits? No. plastic is still fun and I have no plans to sell off my stash. I also still enjoy figure painting, and all my other hobbies and genres of hobbies. The only problem is finding more than 24 hours in each day.

 

I've found nothing in this build so far to make me regret trying it. I've found many things that make me want to build many more of them. I'm still a little nervous about the rigging.

 

The one snag is the cost of the kits. They ain't cheap! BUT they are made for a small customer base so there's little economy of scale. Raw materials have to be sourced very carefully and repeatedly, to maintain this level of quality. Most of the manufacturers are tiny organisations with just a handful of dedicated staff and they don't get rich doing this. Costs can't really be lower. On the other hand the results are spectacularly satisfying to the builder and impress everyone that you mention them too. They are actually cool! Imagine that, a cool model! And they seem to take a lot of time to build so pound per hour, they are still a good cheap hobby.

 

At this early stage in the building of the Lady, and based only on my personal experience, I wholeheartedly recommend this particular kit, or a similar one from the same manufacturer, to anyone who's made more than say, fifty plastic kits in any subject area. I don't think it will be beyond your capabilities to enjoy building one.

 

Fair winds and following seas, me hearties!

 

 

 

 

[ColonelKrypton]

Good morning ( actually afternoon now where you are ) Bertie,

 

Very nicely done. Isabella is really starting to look good. 

 

Your build has sent me off to do some research and reading on the subject of model ship building. I am not a stranger to some of the model ship building forums as many Google searches have pointed me in those directions from time to time.  However, your posts on planking sent me looking for more detail information - one versus two layers of planks, the use of contact adhesive to affix the second layer of planks, and planking in general. All very interesting and some valuable insight into the world of model ship building with it's similar and unique skills and mind set. 

 

A bit too distracting however as my other projects have suffered from a lack of attention of late. Still, that is half the fun and pleasure of making stuff.

 

I am glad to see even with all of the little set backs that you have persevered and have gotten so much pleasure from you dalliance with Isabella.

 

cheers, Graham

 

[Bertie McBoatface]

1 hour ago, ColonelKrypton said:

Good morning ( actually afternoon now where you are ) Bertie,

 

Very nicely done. Isabella is really starting to look good. 

 

Thanks Graham. I'm now pretty certain that it will look like a boat when I've finished with it. 😁

 

1 hour ago, ColonelKrypton said:

Your build has sent me off to do some research and reading on the subject of model ship building. I am not a stranger to some of the model ship building forums as many Google searches have pointed me in those directions from time to time.  However, your posts on planking sent me looking for more detail information - one versus two layers of planks, the use of contact adhesive to affix the second layer of planks, and planking in general. All very interesting and some valuable insight into the world of model ship building with it's similar and unique skills and mind set. 

 

The instructions suggest superglue gel but I'm reluctant to use so much CA, even when ventilated. I've heard of people having quite serious reactions to it. It's not something that I enjoy using either. I prefer something with a little more adjustability, even contact adhesive is a bit more laid back then CA.

 

1 hour ago, ColonelKrypton said:

A bit too distracting however as my other projects have suffered from a lack of attention of late.

 

Same here. There's still so much to do in the worlds of our hobby and a little less time every sunrise...

 

1 hour ago, ColonelKrypton said:

I am glad to see even with all of the little set backs that you have persevered and have gotten so much pleasure

 

It's exactly right, the setbacks are minor and serve to make the triumphs greater.

 

 

[psdavidson]

1 hour ago, Bertie Psmith said:

a little less time every sunrise

Very philosophical, and now I have an irresistable urge to listen to Pink Floyd

[Cerberus]

 For the love of God Bertie slow down the Lady spa.... planking, I've hardly digested one update and you bang out another one...🤣 (that's an unfortunate turn of phrase, but then I might as well continue the theme...)

 

5 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

The one snag is the cost of the kits. They ain't cheap!

 

 I have to admit that this is the one thing that puts me off having a go at a wooden boat build (but then plastic kit prices are going through the roof) and I suppose that the time/fun ratio is very good with these kits, you can spend a huge amount of time fettling things and getting it all to look just how you want.

 

 But the main selling point for me is what you have at the end, you have something that can be placed in a nice glass case if you want, and it will appeal to a wide range of people, even those that have no interest in model making will look at the finished result and see something nice to look at, very pleasing to the eye