1 - Starting the Hull

Caroline was impatient to get started on our Virginia 1819 schooner as soon as we had returned from M&M Hobby Center in Houston with our tools and books. This would, of course, be a problem since we still had to get everything home to Dubai. We didn’t want to take a chance of breaking anything during the trip so we decided not to just get started building the frame. So she studied the instruction book pictures and browsed the other books we picked up on building wooden ship models.

We decided to try to build a caulked deck and experimented with markers before deciding on construction paper for the caulking. See our construction article “Caulked Deck for a Wooden Ship Model” for details on how we did it. So we completed lining the deck.

We still had a week before we left for home, so she got some small plastic bags at a jewelry supply store and started cutting and separating the parts in sub-assemblies and placing them in separate bags. She labeled them by instruction page numbers.

Then she noticed that some of these sub-assemblies could be assembled now with no risk of damage during travel. So she skipped right to pages 18-19 and built the cargo hatch. She also attached the handles and cannon balls so as not to lose them. These went back into the same plastic bag.

By this time, she had built a deck, the cargo hatch, and cut quite a few parts for future sub-assemblies. Caroline decided to take a crack at building the companion, so after studying page 17 she assembled it. This kit is entry level, so although it will look great built right from the box, Caroline had been inspired by looking through other books and decided that we could improve areas of the model with a little extra effort. Not liking the plywood walls, her first decision was to add planks to the outside of the companion. She was very pleased and encouraged with how this turned out.

When we got home to Dubai and got an area we could use for the build, we started on the frame of the hull. No problems occurred during steps 1-8, which left us with a hull with the first level of planking strips. We used a little of my Squadron’s MMD white putty, which stuck to the wood quite nicely, to fill in low areas and then sanded the hull smooth. It looked a little messy, but since the final strakes were so thin, we knew we had to have a very smooth surface to begin.

When we came to the bulwarks, Caroline noticed that there were scuppers to drain the deck shown on the box top but not in the instructions. We figured we could easily add these and improve the appearance a little. So we carefully marked on the bulwarks exactly where the deck surface would be after they were glued in place. We then marked where we wanted the scuppers and drilled two holes for each scupper the width apart of our flat file.

We cut out the material between each pair of holes with a knife

and then finished up with our flat file.

We wanted the scuppers finished and exactly in the right places before gluing the bulwarks in place. This would keep us from accidentally scratching the finished deck planks while finishing the scuppers. This meant we jumped ahead to page 11 and lined the bulwarks before fitting the second lining on the hull. As with the deck, we cut the lining strips into 50 mm lengths and staggered them. We thought this looked a little more realistic, simulating boards about seven feet long. We lined the inside of the bulwarks and re-cut the scuppers in the lining. Then we lined the outside of the bulwarks and re-cut the scuppers again. When the bulwarks were lined and the scuppers shaped on both sides, we attached them to the hull and deck.

We were pleased with our progress thus far. These pictures show the

deck and bulwarks at the bow and stern. The upper stern was also lined inside and out.

The stem is shown in the photo, but it is not permanently attached yet. As you will see in the next chapter, we fitted it in place as a guide to the final planking but removed it for sanding the hull.