The railing with the decorative ovals has been placed. The quarterdeck has been trimmed to follow the curve of the galleries. The kit comes with metal trim for the lower gallery decks but not for the uppers. Pieces of 4x1mm and 2x1mm are bent and glued together to make the trim, and then painted gold.
The transom has been planked on both sides because some of it in small spots will be seen in between the metal ornamentation to come. A whole lot of cutting and carving was needed to cut the planks around all of the odd shaped holes. This is why the transom and galleries are taking so long to complete. I have probably 100 hours in this part already and I am not half done.
Next up is to start adding the decorative railings and many more windows.
Still working on the transom and stern galleries. There are so many parts that make up this section of the ship. Since there are no instructions on the assembly, the order in which to place parts requires much study. Many of the parts require other parts to be installed first in order to get a proper location and fit. I would have thought that the large decorative statues would be somewhere near the end, but in order to place railings and windows, they need to be placed early.
Here, the four statues are placed and the balcony railing is placed.
The lower deck extension has been trimmed and contoured and a decorative strip has been added all around the edge. The strip is made from a piece of 4mm x 1mm walnut and enhanced with a 2mm x 1mm painted black.
The lower railing has stanchions added. I did not use the metal strips supplied by the kit, even though they are OK. I used wood 8mm stanchions from my stash. They match the side railings.
The 2 satellite windows are added to the top of the ends of the railing.
It is finally getting to look like the fancy stern of the RW.
I still have a long way to go with the transom and galleries.
Constructing and installing the upper transom railing. The railing itself comprises of 2 halves. The plans call for placing the half # 11223 on the port side and #11222 on the starboard side. By virtue of the shapes of these pieces, part # 11223 needs to be on the starboard and #11222 on the port side. The plans have the parts numbered incorrectly on the drawings.
I still have to fill in the center seams of both the lower and upper railings with some filler to make the joints less visible.
The upper side windows are added and the upper side balconies are compete. One of the side metal decoration strips (the last one) has to be added now and the side wall of the hull in the area has to be painted black now. The metal strip is painted black and the raised pattern is washed in a gold tinted solution. This actually completes both sides of the galleries right up to the poop deck.
According to the plans, there are no railings whatsoever around the poop deck. With the camber of the deck, the wind at sea, and the rolling of the ship, a sailor would just fall over the side with no support. I am choosing to add side and forward cap railings later on. The bases for the side rails have been added to the deck already.
The upper transom balcony bezel with the scroll end windows has been added. Two stanchions have been added to support the long ceiling opening. This is not part of the kit, so I used a couple of 12mm walnut stanchions from my stash.
There are 8 tiny windows that make up the upper gallery. Each one has a unique shape to match the cutouts in the transom. It is easy to mix them up. They are numbered on the plans and on each piece. Once I cut out the window panes and adjusted the cutouts in the transom, I placed them on the plan drawing to keep them in the correct place.
The plans don't really show how to place the little upper windows on the transom. I have seen them just placed over the openings and also reset into the openings. I decided they look better if reset into the openings, especially because the two end windows can be seen from both front and back. They are exposed on the backside in one of the little balconies. Also, these metal window castings are only detailed on the front side and blank on the back. I had to detail the backs of the two end ones and paint them accordingly.
The large heavy casting that makes up the top decorations is all in one piece and goes across the top of the entire transom. The one in my kit was cracked about in the middle. It did not break in half, but any rough handling would have done it. Since this piece has to be heated and bent to match the curvature of the transom, the crack had to be repaired first. Some thick CA and pressing the crack closed, and placing in a clamp for a few days did the trick. Once it was heated and bent, it was painted and clamped in place on the transom.
The transom and stern galleries are finally completed. While there has not been any easy steps yet in building her, I believe the transom to be the most difficult and tedious part of the entire build, but we will see. I am glad it is done and it took me several months and a couple hundred hours to do. It is not perfect, but I am happy with the results.
Working on the main wales. The stock used on these is 7x2mm walnut. This is pretty hard stuff and requires a severe bend and curvature at the bow. I had to use a mechanical bender as well as soaking in ammonia solution and heating to make the bends without splitting the wood. Once the planks were fitted to the hull, holes were drilled and toothpicks inserted for simulating the trennels. After drying, everything will be painted.
I did paint the top edge of the upper wale plank black first before placing on the ship. This way I don't have to tape it later. The whole set of lower wales are supposed to be black.
The middle wales are added. I have seen models with these wales both left unpainted and painted black. I decided to paint them black so all of the wales will stand out. Also, you can't really see the detail in the photos, but I used tooth picks to simulate the bolts that held the wales in place on actual ships. All of the wales have to be cut and notched wherever they intersect with a gunport.
Next up are the upper wales which are also the chain wales. They consist of 2 separate strips that will also be painted black.
The 2 piece upper wales are in place. To keep the spacing even, I put another piece between them while gluing. This finishes the wales.
Next up is to sand and finish the bare wood sides of the hull.
The fenders come next. You can see in the last photo, I have marked the locations with a pencil line. They go from the lower wales up to the top of the bulwarks and cut through the middle and upper wales. Since the wales are 2mm thick and the fenders need to be 2mm beyond that, the fenders need to be 3mm widex4mm deep. They have to be bent into an "S" shape to match the contour of the hull sides. Bending a piece of walnut 4mm thick is a little much, so I am going to construct the fenders from 2 pieces 2mm thick and place them on top of each other.
The fenders on the port side are done. Altough the plans are marked that the fenders are supposed to be 3mm wide by 5mm deep, on the drawings it is more like 2mm x 4mm. I decided to go with the later. Like I said before, because of the complex bending required, I made them out of 2 x 2mm stock and just glued 2 on top of each other after bending and placing on the hull. The bending can be done 2 ways; making a template and then bending around this, or using the hull to bend them. I chose to use the hull, and it was not too difficult. You also need to leave a little extra on the top to accomodate the bulwark railings later on.
