Its been a long day working on the making of templates for the wooden decking and test fitting it before we even think of marking it up, due to the fact it took three days of research to find the last 4 packs in the UK.
Once the templates were complete they were set aside so I could move onto the next part of the build to start building the basic structure. I first started by marking up the full deck layout indicating where a lot of the larger items would go, and this included drilling the holes in the hull to take the anchors and chains – This was one area I was not looking forward to after all the finishing work on the hull. This turned out better than expected as only one hole was slightly out of kilter, which will not show once the decking is finally fitted with the plating under the chains.
We are commissioning a set of brass etch water tight doors as none can be found to match this scale of model, I can find smaller or larger doors to suit the period, so there will be a few hours work in front of the computer designing the etch.
I have added a few photos to show the progress with the basic structure, the build has taken over 80 hours so far which does not include a massive amount of time researching the ship and reviewing plans and photos.
