I really enjoyed building my Lilla Dan and I was lucky enough to see her in Copenhagen. It was only my second build so I was still learning the "trade" but the model came out very nicely and it is one of my favourites. I could not find a perfect match for the deck house cladding but, I found some light teak strips which were "good enough" and then used some watered down stain to give the contrast for the access doors. For the decking mine was a bit too dark, but I suggest going with some lime wood and use some very dilute light oak stain wash and then scrape it back with a blade which should give a reasonable match, I have used that method on some of my later models and it looks quite effective. My only regret with my model was that I used the Billing thread in the kit for the rigging and it would have benefitted if I had used some nice rope. There's not a lot of rigging so, it would not have cost very much to get some decent stuff from Ropes-of-Scale.
I did have a lot trouble finding a good colour match for the hull. The colour scheme has been changed several times on the actual ship but I went with the red upper hull, white water-line band, black lower hull and light grey for the top rails and gutters. I used car paint from spray cans and the best match that I found for the upper hull was Vauxhall Corsa "Flame Red" over a light grey primer and satin black for the lower hull. It came out very nice.
There were a quite a few differences that I found between the model plans and the ship as you would expect. In particular, the position of the Cats at the bow and construction of the rear Davits were wrong on the model but there was enough information looking at the pictures (probably the same that you are using for reference) to correct the model.
Good luck with the build, it will be nice to see how she turns out.
Thanks for the response.
I'll try to find some light wood myself, maybe saw up some of my firewood and try to use it, maybe birch, but not sure yet, have a few different types of wood lying around to dry, they have been laying for a few years now, so it's dry enough to try sawing it up.
but I also had an idea to find something and stain it. as you describe you have done, so I am not completely off track as far as that is concerned.
But it involves finding some wood suitable for the purpose, which I hope I can easily get hold of here in Denmark.
I have seen that there are different types of color themes that have been used over the years on the beautiful ship, but I think I'll go with trying to get it as close as possible to what color "she" is now painted in.
At the same time, I will try to modify it so that it will be as close as possible to how she is now, and I have found out that some additions are required.
Expect that I this autumn that will take a short week's holiday in Copenhagen, and hope she will be at the haurbor then, so I can see her for myself and take a lot of detailed pictures, but time will tell.
But thank you very much for your response, and I expect there will be a little more to my build log soon.
After 3 weeks of summer vacation,
But I hope I can post the whole building project on YouTube when it's finished.
