Frigate Chapter Eleven: UpperDeck
Before putting the upper deck on the beams had to be placed. These are all larger than the alloted space so you can size to fit. I did notice that some of the beams are actually supposed to go under the gun deck... woops, nice instructions guys. Anyhow I was not to bothered as the gun deck has a lot of rigidity anyway.
For security I actually placed some of the beams in holes cut into the side planking and I also, as is my want, stained all the pieces before placement. The upper deck was then placed on though not before I managed to forget about the capstan and had to reset.
After this the ridges over the sides are placed using a wonderfull wood called flexible birth. 2 pieces are supposed to be provided with the kit and I only found one but a quick call to Jotika and another was winging its way to me. This sort of customer service is excellent to receive. Once these were painted I glued them on with the standard helpfull masking tape to hold them securely and then had to extend the forecastle bulwarks as I had unaccountably made them far too short.
Eventually I arrived at the upper deck planking. I had decided to do this with a different wood to the kit wood going for a pear variant that was very light. I did this because I felt this wood wood be most exposed to both cleaning and the elements and so wood be noticeably lighter than the gun deck wood. (in much the same as if you pull a chair away from where it has sat for months the carpet underneath would be a lot darker than the carper that has not been 'hidden'.
I followed the same method as before with a dark liner pen marking both sides for caulking and shortened lengths. One thing I did notice that I would adjust in future is that the gun deck has a small opening to the captains cabin. Due to the amount of dust produced when sanding the upper deck I noticed that some of the windows were picking up some of this dust from the inside so next time I would block of the captains cabin entirely, perhaps even set up some sort of dust sheet to prevent to much crud falling onto the now inaessible gun deck.
