Frigate Chapter Seven: Coppering
I must admit that I love coppering. I normally plank the ship upside down and copper 1 row either side a night - any more than that and not properly set plates tend to move around leaving gaps. Doing one side a time keeps me honest and is one of my ploys to prevent one of my biggest weaknesses - my habit of wanting to get things done yesterday.
This time I decided to re-use my handy coving laser method of marking the waterline and to leave the last pieces of each row blank - basically anything that required cutting as I knew I would at some point be keen to finish that row and also knew that could make me cut corners.
I still feel I could slow down on some of the sections but am noticeably less hasty on this model. A lot of this is just down to the confidence that I firstly have a better idea what I am doing and also have a better appreciation of what tools are good.
Notice with the next shot the masking tape covering the original black marker pen line at the waterline along with the copper paint covering over the maskig tape. Ths shold hopefully provide a clear target line and help mask any dscrepancies within the final layer of coppering.
One thing I am definately considering for the next model (always the next model) is a better way of sorting out the waterline. Currently I am thinking putting 2 strips of full size copper plates accross the waterline and then sorting out the odds and ends would be smarter than trying to cut the strips to match when I hit the waterline. It could be down to my tools but I cannot seem to strip really thin lengths of copper without getting wierd bends into it.
The rudder was the fruit of knowledge gained with my last model. This time I attached the entire metal connectors with the rudder upside down first then I coppered before putting some blobs of paint on the end of each piece. Pressing this against the sternpost made the targets to drill allowing the rudder to be fitted (to the ship upside down)
