Working on constructing the gunport doors. Made from scratch of course. There are 4 gun decks and each deck has different sized gunports.
I did not use the door hinges supplied in the kit because they are chunky and only one size is provided. Different sizes are needed for the various sizes of gunports on the 4 decks.
Hull preparation
1. I used small eyebolts and pieces of 1mm brass wire which were blackened, to make the hinges on the hull above each gunport.
2. The rain gutters are placed on those ports that require them. I bought these and blackened them as well.
Door construction
I start out on each deck with measuring the opening of the gunport in the hull.
1. A piece of 2mm thick walnut plywood is cut to size and painted dark red to match the inside of the bulwarks.
2. Planking strips are placed over the plywood to match the outside of the hull and trimmed to the correct size for the ports.
3. Hinge plates are glued to the outside of the doors and cut down eye bolts are placed for the pull open ropes. Smaller ports have 1 and larger ones have 2.
4. Pull closed ropes are attached to an eyebolt on the underside of each door. ( This is a feature that is left out of most models because of either scale size or the fact that they can't be seen easily.)
Door placement
1. The pull open ropes are attached to the hull above each port.
2. The doors are hung in the open position and the pull open ropes are secured to the eyebolts on the doors.
3. Once all of the doors are placed on each deck starting from the top, the false guns and blackened and mounted in each port.
Vince P.