Once again there is very little progress to report - which doesn't mean I haven't been spending time on my ship. Indeed, there has been a lot of head-scratching in terms of figuring out how to do things - and a lot of brain power spent on determining how I want the final ship to be presented (what will be covered with planking and what will be exposed).
In the 'figuring out' department was how to cut the notches for the upper and lower gunport sills. After some trial runs and experimentation, I ended up using an XActo knife and files - but I can't help but wonder if in the future it would be better to make these notches off the jig using chisels (that is, cut the notches before the frames are installed). I think chisels would give me a more precise notch.
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No, the upper sill is not upside down...apparently, it's supposed to be this way despite what intuition might suggest.
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With these gunport sills in place it was now time to do some preliminary fairing - but the slight forward tipping of the cant frames was like a pea under my mattress (translation: driving me crazy) so I added two full frames and everything is now perfectly vertical.
As you can see in the images that follow I have decided to add infill timbers between the frames at the floor of the ship (not a part of the kit). Right now the plan is to plank half of the ship, but I still chose to include the filling timbers on both sides because I don't know which side will show the frames - and I was also concerned about keeping the keel straight. It's not that much more work to cut out two pieces and it will give me some flexibility going forward if I end up changing my mind about planking half the hull.
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Thanks for visiting!
By the way, if for some reason you haven't seen the finish photos of the Bluenose model created by Peter Voogt you're missing out. Do yourself a favor and check these out:
Rivets: There are folks who make and sell rivets on decal film for the armor/military, railroad, and aeronautical modeling hobbies. The products essentially are 3D-printed pips on clear decal film and they come in a myriad of rivet patterns appropriate to the intended prototype and scale...
shipsofscale.com