Forgive me Followers - it’s been over a month since my last update!
In my last post I was experimenting with ways to make the baggywrinkles. I found this “cleaning mitt” which looked like an ideal solution. It would have been perfect, however the scale was way too big, and the pieces fell apart if I tried to cut them down. So I prowled the dollar store and found this cat toy. These little thingys would have been perfect, as they were about the right scale, but when I cut them off and attempted to thread them on the line, they just crumbled, so it’s back to the drawing board for the baggywrinkles.
At this point, the deck and hull are pretty much finished; later I just have to add the stanchions and rope railing along the rail.
I really hated the supplied life rings. They are cast, including the rope that surrounds them, which looked ridiculous to my eye, so I found these ones at Bluejacket without rope and then I added some rope myself. Not actually all that much fun to do, but the result is well worth it.
You may notice that I have omitted the airports that run down both sides of the deck. The ones provided have a large rim that protrudes above the surface, and I just hated the look of it. I did use them on the cabins, but I hated the thought of them on the deck. I know I can buy flush ones, but they would have required very precise holes to be drilled and I doubted my ability to do that 14 times. One misstep and the whole deck would have been ruined. The supplied ones with the large rim would have been forgiving and the holes easy to drill, but I opted to omit them nevertheless.
I was perplexed by the colour of the hull. It never appears the same twice in any of the pictures I find. It seems to change over the course of a season in the water. However, I found a picture of the hull being painted, so I used that one as my guide and managed to find a decent enough match.
I’m now well into the rigging and it’s always the same – as I near the end of the woodworking part of the build, I can’t wait to start the rigging and then as soon as I’m into it I wonder why I was so anxious to begin. In any case, it’s going fine.
I have been experimenting with upgraded blocks. On my CW Morgan I used Bluejacket cast blocks for the larger ones and Syren for the smaller ones. Both were great. For this model, I am trying Master Korabel which I bought from Vanguard Models. In addition to being good looking, these ones are also nice to use. They have very sharp grooves cut into each corner and the line really grabs. They never slip out of place. However, they are so finely made, that every hole has to be re-drilled to get the rigging line through.
I recreated the star decoration on the bowsprit on the computer.
So that’s it for now. Many thanks,
David