Quick question for everyone… Is there a name for the railings between decks or are they just called railings?
Buccaneer 1:100 by Occre - Build log
5/17 to 5/28
Been back in Vallarta about a week and finally pulled the Molino out. Just too many things going on to find some free time before today.
Started by putting the three wales on the stern and then put felt on the stand.
Making some minor modifications to the plans in regards to the ladders and to the railings.
First off there is not any ladders to the poop deck so I’m going to add one. I’ve known for a bit I was going to add one, and had been wondering about making one but instead I decided that I would take one of the two that went to the fore deck. This gives me one ladder to each deck.
The plans also do not have any railings on the fore or on poop decks so I’ll be adding them.
The ladders are approximately 9mm so I’m creating railings that will leave 10mm openings. I’ll place all three of the ladders on the port side.
I cut some 2mm x 7mm boards to create the bottom and top of each of the three railings and then 2mm x 2mm to make the balusters - the front two are 8mm while the one on the poop deck is only 5mm to align with the gunwale. All are stained walnut.
I glue the bottom of each railings to the deck, and the balusters to them. There are 6 on both railings on the fore and quarter decks; the poop deck only has 5.
Once dried, I glued the tops onto the balusters.
Onto (or back to) the wales. The next wale (4th down on the back half of the ship) is made with 2mm x 4mm board and runs from the balcony to the front of the foredeck, just below the bottom of the gun ports. While there is some curve “around” the ship (on the 2mm side), the more difficult bend is on the 4mm side as it curves beneath the gun ports. I put a number of straight pins into the board and then put a piece of masking tape under where the wake will be positioned. The tape is only to help keep glue off of the rest of the hull. Working from the stern to the bow, I position the wale and then push the pins in. At the overhang on the bow, I hold it in place with a rubber band and a small clamp.
While doing this, I ended up breaking the railings off around the foredeck as I mistakenly used it for leverage to hold/position the wale. Just another example of “it” being wood and glue and is an easy repair.
The wale on the starboard side was a bit easier and even though I tried to be careful with the railings on the foredeck, I again broke it and had to repair.
So if I had one mulligan for this portion, it would be to not build the railings until after the wales were completed.
While waiting for the glue to dry before going after the next wale, I thought try painting the gunport frames and lids. After seeing a build log with some after market frames and lids, I decided to give them a try. These are not provided by OcCre.
I start with some primer.
Then I paint the lids in much the way I painted the doors; adding a little paint in various spots using 5 different browns.
The frames are painted a dark brown.
Once the lids were fully dried, I added a wash of brown over everything to hide the primer.
To wrap them up, I painted “hinges” on both the lids and frames black. I want them to be noticeable, but not to stand out.
Overall they look ok, but not as good as the doors do.
I cut and stain the 4 remaining wales and bend them at the bow. While bending them my electronic bending iron broke. The metal shaft has always be wobbly but today it just broke off. Given I had only bent one of the four wales I was at as bit of a standstill. Sure I could buy a soldering iron down here in Mexico but I already have 2 of them at home so I don’t have to buy one if I don’t have to.
And then I remembered seeing at least one person using an actual clothes iron to bend boards so I gave it a try. And it worked. It didn’t give me as much control but it actually was faster.
They all needed a little touch up with the stain. Not sure why I stained them before bending, but I did.
While waiting for the touch up stain to dry I started working on the small wales at the very bow of the ship. There are actually 3 on each side that use 2mm x 2mm boards. A little measuring, sanding, and staining and they go on fairly smoothly.
The lower wales turned out to be challenging for me for at least two reasons…
It’s all about the curve at the bow. I can’t get the wale to stay tight against the hull. I can get one portion but then I realize it’s pulled away in another area. I decide to just work on parts of the bow and once it is dry, I’ll work on the rest.
To help hold the very front tip of the wale in place, I attached a small board to the top of the bow stem, leaving a gap the thickness of the wale. This plus a few pins and a couple of rubber bands gets the front inch or two to hold tight.
Once dried, the rest is easy to glue in place. To keep a consistent distance between the two wales I use a 8mm board as a spacer.
It probably took about 4 hours of actual work-time to get the 2 wales on the starboard side done.
For the port side, I’m going to use my freshly learned technique and attach a small board to the bow stem to keep the front tip-off the wale snuggly against the hull. I then puta number of pins into each wale, and the put glue on the front two inches. I put them into place (which is a lot easier since I removed the railings), and push the first few pins into the hull and then put a couple of rubber bands over the front curve.
The remaining portions of the wales go very smoothly.
I add in the beam for the emergency rudder chains but due to my modification of adding chase guns, the beam has to sit higher and be made with three pieces of board. One on each side and then a third between the 2 balcony supports. Since the beam can’t sit at the same height as the bottom wale, I add a small section of stained board right above the wale from the rear of the balcony to the stern.
I wrap up the wales by attaching the 4 vertical wales between the gun ports on each side.
It takes about an hour or so to clean up everything up; cutting, trimming, sanding, and staining on all the various wales.
Next up is staining portions of the top of the hull and somehow I manage to stain a little bit too much. So even though I like to say just about anything can be fixed because “it’s only wood and glue”, I found something that can’t be. Decorations go in this area at a later stage so it will end up being a minor thing.
My time this season in Vallarta is coming to an end, and I kept holding off on posting this in the hope I’d get more completed. I still may, but thought I’d post this now. I hate putting the Molino away until I’m back in October, but that just means that I get to start working on my Bluenose again.
So when I return, it’s time for the hull decorations, the windows, the door, and varnishing the hull.
Time for this portion: 18.5 hours
Total time to date: 163.5 hours
Been back in Vallarta about a week and finally pulled the Molino out. Just too many things going on to find some free time before today.
Started by putting the three wales on the stern and then put felt on the stand.
Making some minor modifications to the plans in regards to the ladders and to the railings.
First off there is not any ladders to the poop deck so I’m going to add one. I’ve known for a bit I was going to add one, and had been wondering about making one but instead I decided that I would take one of the two that went to the fore deck. This gives me one ladder to each deck.
The plans also do not have any railings on the fore or on poop decks so I’ll be adding them.
The ladders are approximately 9mm so I’m creating railings that will leave 10mm openings. I’ll place all three of the ladders on the port side.
I cut some 2mm x 7mm boards to create the bottom and top of each of the three railings and then 2mm x 2mm to make the balusters - the front two are 8mm while the one on the poop deck is only 5mm to align with the gunwale. All are stained walnut.
I glue the bottom of each railings to the deck, and the balusters to them. There are 6 on both railings on the fore and quarter decks; the poop deck only has 5.
Once dried, I glued the tops onto the balusters.
Onto (or back to) the wales. The next wale (4th down on the back half of the ship) is made with 2mm x 4mm board and runs from the balcony to the front of the foredeck, just below the bottom of the gun ports. While there is some curve “around” the ship (on the 2mm side), the more difficult bend is on the 4mm side as it curves beneath the gun ports. I put a number of straight pins into the board and then put a piece of masking tape under where the wake will be positioned. The tape is only to help keep glue off of the rest of the hull. Working from the stern to the bow, I position the wale and then push the pins in. At the overhang on the bow, I hold it in place with a rubber band and a small clamp.
While doing this, I ended up breaking the railings off around the foredeck as I mistakenly used it for leverage to hold/position the wale. Just another example of “it” being wood and glue and is an easy repair.
The wale on the starboard side was a bit easier and even though I tried to be careful with the railings on the foredeck, I again broke it and had to repair.
So if I had one mulligan for this portion, it would be to not build the railings until after the wales were completed.
While waiting for the glue to dry before going after the next wale, I thought try painting the gunport frames and lids. After seeing a build log with some after market frames and lids, I decided to give them a try. These are not provided by OcCre.
I start with some primer.
Then I paint the lids in much the way I painted the doors; adding a little paint in various spots using 5 different browns.
The frames are painted a dark brown.
Once the lids were fully dried, I added a wash of brown over everything to hide the primer.
To wrap them up, I painted “hinges” on both the lids and frames black. I want them to be noticeable, but not to stand out.
Overall they look ok, but not as good as the doors do.
I cut and stain the 4 remaining wales and bend them at the bow. While bending them my electronic bending iron broke. The metal shaft has always be wobbly but today it just broke off. Given I had only bent one of the four wales I was at as bit of a standstill. Sure I could buy a soldering iron down here in Mexico but I already have 2 of them at home so I don’t have to buy one if I don’t have to.
And then I remembered seeing at least one person using an actual clothes iron to bend boards so I gave it a try. And it worked. It didn’t give me as much control but it actually was faster.
They all needed a little touch up with the stain. Not sure why I stained them before bending, but I did.
While waiting for the touch up stain to dry I started working on the small wales at the very bow of the ship. There are actually 3 on each side that use 2mm x 2mm boards. A little measuring, sanding, and staining and they go on fairly smoothly.
The lower wales turned out to be challenging for me for at least two reasons…
- I don’t have a plank bender so they kinda are what they are.
- The railing KEEPS getting in the way / so I just removed it.
It’s all about the curve at the bow. I can’t get the wale to stay tight against the hull. I can get one portion but then I realize it’s pulled away in another area. I decide to just work on parts of the bow and once it is dry, I’ll work on the rest.
To help hold the very front tip of the wale in place, I attached a small board to the top of the bow stem, leaving a gap the thickness of the wale. This plus a few pins and a couple of rubber bands gets the front inch or two to hold tight.
Once dried, the rest is easy to glue in place. To keep a consistent distance between the two wales I use a 8mm board as a spacer.
It probably took about 4 hours of actual work-time to get the 2 wales on the starboard side done.
For the port side, I’m going to use my freshly learned technique and attach a small board to the bow stem to keep the front tip-off the wale snuggly against the hull. I then puta number of pins into each wale, and the put glue on the front two inches. I put them into place (which is a lot easier since I removed the railings), and push the first few pins into the hull and then put a couple of rubber bands over the front curve.
The remaining portions of the wales go very smoothly.
I add in the beam for the emergency rudder chains but due to my modification of adding chase guns, the beam has to sit higher and be made with three pieces of board. One on each side and then a third between the 2 balcony supports. Since the beam can’t sit at the same height as the bottom wale, I add a small section of stained board right above the wale from the rear of the balcony to the stern.
I wrap up the wales by attaching the 4 vertical wales between the gun ports on each side.
It takes about an hour or so to clean up everything up; cutting, trimming, sanding, and staining on all the various wales.
Next up is staining portions of the top of the hull and somehow I manage to stain a little bit too much. So even though I like to say just about anything can be fixed because “it’s only wood and glue”, I found something that can’t be. Decorations go in this area at a later stage so it will end up being a minor thing.
My time this season in Vallarta is coming to an end, and I kept holding off on posting this in the hope I’d get more completed. I still may, but thought I’d post this now. I hate putting the Molino away until I’m back in October, but that just means that I get to start working on my Bluenose again.
So when I return, it’s time for the hull decorations, the windows, the door, and varnishing the hull.
Time for this portion: 18.5 hours
Total time to date: 163.5 hours
12/13 to 12/20
Life is finally at a point where I can work on the Molino. It’s hard to believe that my 2 months here in Puerto Vallarta are almost over but it’s been a crazy couple of months, starting even before we came down. Most of the craziness has been good, but there’s been some bad too. But things are finally at a point where emotionally, mentally, and physically, I’m ready to work on the Molino.
I start by trying to correct a mistake I made “last” time (a little over 6 months ago!?) where I stained a little more than I should have. For the most part this area will be covered by the hull decorations, but I used it as an easing into “task” on the Molino. I mixed some paint to try to match the unstained portions of the hull. The goal was to make it lighter, and while not close to perfect, I feel better about it. The paint is noticeable in this picture but I’m hoping that when the decorations are in place, it will look better.
I then started on the hull decorations. OcCre gives you colored paper to do these but I planned (as many people have before me) to make these little triangles out of strips of wood. Heck, I had even bought the wood back in the States at least a year ago. But now that I’m at the point in the build, I switched gears and went with the paper ones instead. The biggest reason for following the directions instead of using the thin boards were that the thin boards would stick out as far as the existing stained pieces of wood - and I just don’t think that will look as good as the paper ones.
I first go after the smaller double triangles. I measure the length of the area to be covered with the decorations (8”) and then measure the width every 2 inches (as it tapers slightly towards midship).
I mark these measurements out on the paper decorations and then cut it out. I then cut the individual triangles out and test fit them into the area. Each needs to be just a little bit shorter and needs the trimmed.
I use as brush to apply a water thinned-down white glue and put two triangles (top and bottom) in place. Brush on a little more of the thinned out glue and repeated until the area is covered.
Not super fast, but what is in this hobby?
I then do the same with the short section at the bow of the ship and then repeat the process for the other side of the ship.
Next I follow the same process for the larger triangles. As the glue dried, I noticed a few did not lay flat or are not lined up well. For those I put a little water on the triangle that isn’t looking good, gently scrape it off, and then put a replacement triangle in place.
Before beginning these decorations I felt that the paper ones would be a bit easier than creating wood ones (which also played into my decision of using the paper ones), but in retrospect, the paper ones were possibly a bit harder as it’s much easier to trim and sand small pieces wood than to cut and trim very small pieces of paper. I ended up using a few knife blades on the process.
I didn’t get a lot accomplished, but all in all, I’m pleased with the results.
These last two pictures show that the painted section that didn’t seem to match in the first picture of this post, blend in as I had hoped they would.
Unfortunately it’s now time to put the Molino away again as we only have two days left and we still have a bunch to do. The biggest time consumer we have is that we recently bought a second condo in the same building, and are trying to both upgrade and move into it - while juggling renters in both units.
I plan on working on my Bluenose back in Colorado but we’re only going to be there for about a month before we leave on our next adventure… a month long cruise from Chile, and then across the Drake Passage to Antarctica, and then up the east coast of South America to the Falkland Islands and wrap up in Santos (Sao Paulo), Brazil.
Next up for the Molino (probably when we return in late March)… the windows and the door of the Captain’s cabin.
Time for this portion: 8 hours
Total time to date: 171.5 hours
Life is finally at a point where I can work on the Molino. It’s hard to believe that my 2 months here in Puerto Vallarta are almost over but it’s been a crazy couple of months, starting even before we came down. Most of the craziness has been good, but there’s been some bad too. But things are finally at a point where emotionally, mentally, and physically, I’m ready to work on the Molino.
I start by trying to correct a mistake I made “last” time (a little over 6 months ago!?) where I stained a little more than I should have. For the most part this area will be covered by the hull decorations, but I used it as an easing into “task” on the Molino. I mixed some paint to try to match the unstained portions of the hull. The goal was to make it lighter, and while not close to perfect, I feel better about it. The paint is noticeable in this picture but I’m hoping that when the decorations are in place, it will look better.
I then started on the hull decorations. OcCre gives you colored paper to do these but I planned (as many people have before me) to make these little triangles out of strips of wood. Heck, I had even bought the wood back in the States at least a year ago. But now that I’m at the point in the build, I switched gears and went with the paper ones instead. The biggest reason for following the directions instead of using the thin boards were that the thin boards would stick out as far as the existing stained pieces of wood - and I just don’t think that will look as good as the paper ones.
I first go after the smaller double triangles. I measure the length of the area to be covered with the decorations (8”) and then measure the width every 2 inches (as it tapers slightly towards midship).
I mark these measurements out on the paper decorations and then cut it out. I then cut the individual triangles out and test fit them into the area. Each needs to be just a little bit shorter and needs the trimmed.
I use as brush to apply a water thinned-down white glue and put two triangles (top and bottom) in place. Brush on a little more of the thinned out glue and repeated until the area is covered.
Not super fast, but what is in this hobby?
I then do the same with the short section at the bow of the ship and then repeat the process for the other side of the ship.
Next I follow the same process for the larger triangles. As the glue dried, I noticed a few did not lay flat or are not lined up well. For those I put a little water on the triangle that isn’t looking good, gently scrape it off, and then put a replacement triangle in place.
Before beginning these decorations I felt that the paper ones would be a bit easier than creating wood ones (which also played into my decision of using the paper ones), but in retrospect, the paper ones were possibly a bit harder as it’s much easier to trim and sand small pieces wood than to cut and trim very small pieces of paper. I ended up using a few knife blades on the process.
I didn’t get a lot accomplished, but all in all, I’m pleased with the results.
These last two pictures show that the painted section that didn’t seem to match in the first picture of this post, blend in as I had hoped they would.
Unfortunately it’s now time to put the Molino away again as we only have two days left and we still have a bunch to do. The biggest time consumer we have is that we recently bought a second condo in the same building, and are trying to both upgrade and move into it - while juggling renters in both units.
I plan on working on my Bluenose back in Colorado but we’re only going to be there for about a month before we leave on our next adventure… a month long cruise from Chile, and then across the Drake Passage to Antarctica, and then up the east coast of South America to the Falkland Islands and wrap up in Santos (Sao Paulo), Brazil.
Next up for the Molino (probably when we return in late March)… the windows and the door of the Captain’s cabin.
Time for this portion: 8 hours
Total time to date: 171.5 hours
Nicely done Hugh! Have a safe trip back to Lakewood. Your trip to South America sounds amazing. Magic Mike