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.