Mayflower Full Ribs Scale 1/48 31” ZHL

[Elelid]

Greetings and thanks everybody, who looked at my last work – the ship looks like La Couronne.

I continue almost without brake. I'm going on a very dangerous journey which calls Mayflower Full Ribs Scale 1/48. Like those pilgrims who in 1620 boarded a ship Mayflower and set out on a long journey, not knowing whether they would reach their destination. I never did so complex and precision work with wood. And I found only one short log from Master – Bob Hunt - https://shipsofscale.com/sosforums/threads/chinese-mayflower-pof-kit.1412/.
Some predicted problems were cleared for me by this log, but I am sure a lot of them ahead.

I bought the kit Mayflower Full Ribs Scale 1/48 31” from ZHL for $350 including shipping. It come to my home in just 2 weeks. The packaging was perfect. I show just three photos, on you tube you can see more detailed look - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI8CMGlDpXg.
The kit doesn’t have instruction, but 63 pages format A4 of plan clearly shows all sequential steps of building. On four photo I randomly choose one page to show quality of printing.

 

[Elelid]

The slipway was assembled easily in one hour. The parts fit one to another perfectly – not too tight, not freely.

 

[Elelid]

The surface of my working desk built with tempered glass – it’s the best which could be used to glue 60 cm length kill. All the parts fit well. Note that the upper parts have a line etched along the inner edge to indicate the bevel line. After gluing all the parts together, a groove is formed in the middle of the keel for shaping the outer planking.
The only problem is precision gluing the two halves 60 cm long together to form a finished keel. I processed the glued keel very carefully with file and sanding paper.
The kill fit the slipway almost immediately, just made docking places a little wider.

 

[HornOfTexas]

This looks fun. Forgive my ignorance, is the box just a holding place as you build or will it be part of the final build?

 

[Elelid]

Hi, HornOfTexas
The seller ad consist this picture of final product. I consider the slipway/box as accesory/tools to build the ship. May be you choose to bulld panorama with slipway. It's up to you

 

[Elelid]

The drawing of the bow was clear. This time I understood I have some problem. The keel material is 3.1 mm thick, and after gluing the two halves together, I ended up with a keel thickness of 6.3 mm. Meanwhile, the grooves on the ribs (I measured several) for joining with the keel are 5.8 - 5.9 mm. I had to decide whether to thin the keel or grind down each rib. I decided to leave the keel as is.
I assembled rib #2, widened the grooves and assemble all parts of bow together, first glued 3 horizontal planks, then glued in sequence left and right planks. The rib #2 still not glued.

 

[GrantTyler]

Good morning. This looks like a very interesting build. Good luck, have fun. I will pull up my chair and follow this. Cheers Grant

 

[Elelid]

This package contains pre-cut ribs parts, but there are no templates at all. Clearly, the likelihood of errors during gluing increases greatly. I made a little mistake from beginning, but fix it. Then on a few ribs I set the order – how to glue all the rest.
The model has 40 ribs at all. The main difficulty – ribs are so thin 1.8-2.5 mm. Cleaning the blackness of laser cutting is a difficult problem. It's very easy to break such a rib. That’s why I first glue full rib and then clean and sand it. I do it with grinding head of my Dremel.

 

[Elelid]

Finally, I glue all 3 levels of hanging knees and the lowest beam. Only then I place rib in slipway and glue it to the kil
On second photo I glue the first rib, on fourth – base of fore mast.

 

[Elelid]

I'm continuing to make the ribs. At rib 20, I installed the top keel plank, the mainmast support, and started forming the gun ports.
The last shot shows five broken ribs out of ribs 30. In my opinion, the cutting could have been done better, so that the thinnest parts of the ribs lay along the wood grain. Currently, they lie at an angle of 30-45 degrees. Two ribs broke when separating them from the main board, and three were my own efforts.