9 - Building the Hull Part Six
Now comes one of the key sections. After looking into ship building a while you will soon discover a seemingly huge amount of references to how everything you do is absolutely key to the overall appearance of the model. The one area where they are right concerns the deck. When most people look at a ship their attention is drawn to the deck. It has the most going on and the most activity. Other areas are big sweeps of wood and rope and unless an expert will not strike attention as much as the deck and its furniture.
Now my books all seemed to separate at
this point. The first choice lies in how to
represent
caulking. This is the gunk that separated the planks and
made them water proof. The instructions did not mention this
at all whilst the other books provided several methods. In
the end, as I am a beginner, I ignored references to making
my own substance and scraping it off.... and decided between
felt tip and pencil. Of the two pencil had a black mark due
to its ability to influence the varnishing process plus did
not leave a very dark line whilst black marker was strong
and hopefully would not spread.
The next difference of opinion lies with the location of the start plank. The instructions and one of the books were both keen on what is essentially a King plank. One plank running down the centreline which the other planks lie the other side of. The other approach seemed to lie around two centre planks which lie either side of the centre line.
In the end I chose the first approach with the
main reason being that though the second
approach should be
easier to place (due to it being easier to place along a line) but as the
planks would be staggered it would create a visual
disturbance along the centre line. So first up I laid my
King plank. Before starting cutting I marked both edges of
the plank with felt marker and when I moved down the other
sides of the deck I marked one edge only. Use the line of
the keel (which can be seen through the deck openings) as an
extra visual reference that you are following the centre
line (which was added in pencil earlier in the process).
Plus remember to use a flat edge to ensure both sides of the
planks line up.
Once done I varnished the deck as certain areas would quickly be inaccessible. This did raise a couple of issues as the ink did 'leak' in some points.
After sanding the final task in this
section was to attach the rudder and here came the first
time that the plans annoyed me. First we had the first mis-numbering
with the guide stating that the tiller arm was part 63. No,
it is part 72 and secondly the plans are very un-helpful
with regard to the rudder. Looking at them you would guess
that you fixed (at the correct locations) the metal bits to
the hull and then the rudder itself would slot easily into
them. Wrong. I will not go into exactly how badly I mucked
this up but following the plans was a bad idea. The solution
(after the
event), to me, appears to be to attach both sections of each of
the four rudder joints together and then glue the unit (both
parts) into the relevant sections of the rudder. The pieces
are big enough that once the upper section glues then the
lower section will not fall out due to the size of the metal
involved.
Then, turn the hull upside down (and the rudder) mark the tip of the section of metal designed to go into the hull with some paint or similar and gently press this against the hull. This will show the locations where your holes will be drilled. Do not go for a tight fit as each 'rod' has to enter its hole simultaneously and the metal is soft and snaps very easily. If the above is followed then it will cause a lot less trouble.
The tiller arm snapped for me.... bad day... and I had to re-fashion one out of spare walnut.
