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Actually, weather here has been warmer than normal (50's) so am still doing maintenance stuff, which interferes with shipbuilding. Next week they say the shoe is gonna drop, so I might get more boatey stuff done At this point I have the bulwarks & deck fitted with positioning blocks; drilling holes for masts, keel rods, gun pins rudder. Doing more enlargement of the rudder hole through the transom. Didn't realize it, but when reading Howard Chapelle's The American Sailing Navy I learned about "plug stock" rudders, and the much larger transom hole required, unlike the later "rule joint" rudders. Bit of trivia, there. Howard is another of my favorite authors - He has written several books on ships, and included many nice design images. One of these days I will have to figure out how to post pictures on this site. By the way, I am soon gonna be at the point of sealing the underside of the deck. This sounds like a tricky process to do through the deck access cutout. Probably will try body filler. Any thoughts on this?

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Very interested in your deck installation experiences. I doubt I could have handled it.

I have gotten the black, yellow, and copper painting done. Will be working on scoring the bulwarks today, and hopefully painting them this week too.

Ray

This is the part I have been dreading. I have never gotten good at applying paint, either with a brush, or spray, but here goes.

I first scribed lines on the bulwarks. It would have been easy to scribe the plank lines on the bulwarks before they were installed, but since I had the deck installed I had to do them in place. I made a scribe holder from a 1/2" thick piece of scrap aluminum about 1.5" wide and 1 5/8" high with three 6-32 holes tapped on 1/2" centers to give 1/2" spacing to the scribed plank lines. I ground a sharp point on some 6-32 machine bolts, mounted them through the plate, held them up under the inner rail, and scraped the lines into the bulwarks. Worked pretty well, but I could have held it more steady.

I used acrylic enamel paint in spray cans, Rust-oleum Painters Touch for the flat black and metallic copper hull, and semi gloss Nason Ful-cryl II that was color matched to the yellow and red paint chips that came with the kit. The paint store didn't think the paint could be made flat successfully, so I took the semi. I had to buy the Nason in pints, much more than is needed, and had them put in spray cans for me. Rather expensive at about $25 per can total. I also got some good quality 3M masking tape. One was a very expensive flexible tape for using on the waterline and the yellow stripe which was a real help. I used cheap tape for applying the mask papers however.

I prepared the surfaces to be painted by giving them a light sanding with an abrasive mat, much easier to use on the many curved surfaces than sand paper, and washed them with SCAT degreaser. After masking off the deck, I gave every thing several coats of primer. Then masked off the bulwarks and painted down to below the waterline with flat black. This looks pretty good, but has proven to chip easily and show light scrapes. I wish I had used semi gloss instead, it would have saved me time patching, and given a more durable finish.

The masking must be applied carefully to make the yellow stripe along the side. The 1.5" wide stripe starts 1/8" below the rail from stem to stern. I made a flexible pattern to apply the lower tape mask. I took an 18" long 1/8x1/8" wood strip and glued four 1 5/8" long strips perpendicular to it. At the other end I glued short 1/8x1/8" strips that can be clamped up against the underside of the rail to locate the position for the lower edge of the stripe, and applied the flexible masking tape right against the pattern, moving it down the hull with me as I masked. The top of the stripe I marked by clamping a 1/8x1/8" wood strip up under the rail and marking with a pencil. What looked like a long touchy job to get smooth uniform curves was done in less than an hour.

After painting the stripe, I marked the waterline. For some reason I thought it was parallel to the keel, but you have to prop up the bow to make the waterline parallel to the surface you are marking from. The hull packing foam was just the right thickness, and helped hold the hull up while I leveled and braced it with paint mixing sticks clamped to the rail. Then I used a height gage to mark the waterline with a pencil. After masking with the flexible tape, I sprayed with metallic copper paint. I was going to put a light green wash over the copper to tone it down. But it is not as bright as I thought it would be, and I like it as it is.

The last thing was to paint the bulwarks red. I had only one problem here. The tape I applied on the outside of the gunports was too narrow and I had to apply two pieces to cover the ports. I didn't get a tight seal where the strips overlapped, and the red paint came out onto the yellow, which will take a lot of touching up. I would recommend 2" wide tape here!

After I have touched up the runs, chips and blemishes, I will apply some clear flat Painters Touch spray I found to protect the copper and flat black. Then I can get on with the fore and aft upper decks, and the few other parts left to be applied to the hull to finish it.
xhullx xbuildx

Thanks for the paint experience. I am not too confident with my painting abilities, and any tips are very helpful. Your pix sure look good! I'm just finishing the deck sealing process and will begin cutting gunports soon, then will probably follow with paint. Used the West System for sealing, which has gone well, but has taken alot of time due to the epoxy cure times. Did it in sections from underneath the deck after taping the seams from above with painters tape. Used a variety of crazy configurations to hold the hull in position to get the epoxy to settle properly, including hanging from the rafters for the stern. But it all worked - good sealing joints and no dribbles or seam leakage.

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Picture posting attempt:

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I noticed the pic could'nt be enlarged, but don't know why. Have to work on it. I'm using a Macintosh, maybe that makes a difference. The pic file is pretty close to the size allowed....

Looks like a nice place to work. Did you resize the picture before you uploaded it? I just upload the megapixel size original photo, and let the site resize it to what it wants. Otherwise I wouldn't resize it to less than 600x800 pix or so. Could be the Mac though, but I don't know why. That would be tough, not being able to see the details of your pixs.

I'm gonna try some stuff. I initially tried uploading the pic in its original file size, but it would not load. It was accepted only when I reduced its size.

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By the way, you guys with the SC&H boats: If you are not extremely scale-particular, there are a bunch of nicely detailed poseable figures currently available for about $5-7 each that are only slightly larger than those offered by SC&H. They are called "ZIZZLE" and are modeled after characters in the Disney production, Pirates of the Caribbean. With some modification, or not, they might be appropriate crew members, if the conscripting Captain ain't too choosy (Aarrrrg, drool, snort). I found them at Target.

So the captain prefers large muscular crew members. Most of them were rather scruffy anyway. Will keep them in mind.