Post 4, Second Planking and Wales:
Thank you all for the plentiful resources and links. I do really like the elephant figure head, so I am going to use it. I decided to cut the bulwarks to be a bit more historically accurate. I don’t think I am experienced enough to edit the kit too much, but I do think the ship looks better with the historical bulwark. It appears I just needed to trim almost everything above the decorative scroll piece.
After finishing the first planking, I added the 5mm thick walnut stem and keel pieces. This made second planking easier as I could clamp the bow planks tightly. Sanding the MDF keel down at the stern was successful as my walnut second planking only required minimal sanding to be flush with the sternpost.
Second planking proceeded smoothly and steadily, with about 2 planks per day.
Other build logs showed an alignment issue with starting the planking from the top of the gunports as described in the instructions, so I started from the main wale. Had I started the planking from the top of the gunports, the planks would have been mostly parallel to the water line instead of the wale, which would have looked odd.
Above the main wale, the planks needed minimal tapering. Below the wale, the planks had to be tapered at the bow and eventually at the stern too. I used push pins below each plank so I could still use wood glue as opposed to cyano acrylate to allow time to adjust, and wedged them as tightly as I could against the previous plank.
Once the planking was complete, I sanded it with 80 grit sandpaper followed by 150 grit sandpaper, using some wood filler in any small gaps. After trimming the stern planks I was pleased to see the walnut rudder post fit with almost no sanding.
Bizarrely, the keel appears to be about 3mm too short. I can’t figure out where this missing length came from, as all other parts fit together neatly. Not to fear, I added a bit of extra wood to the bottom. This will all be coppered anyway.
For adding the wales, I measured from the forward side of each gun port down to the top of the wale on the 1:1 set of plans, and went from there. The main plans don’t show a 0.5x3mm thick walnut strip they require that sits immediately above the topmost 4mm plank on the wale. On the plans, the wale is 18mm thick, matching 2 x 4mm + 2x 5mm strips as described. The wales needed very little bending to get to curve to the right dimensions, and I used CA glue to attach them, as I didn't want any unsightly pin holes to mar the wood. Here the decision to line the gunports first came back to bite, as I had to carefully slice the wales at multiple gunports. Still, it was far less work than lining the gunports after the 2nd planking would have been.
