River-boat Scratch Build

Then I had to level the upper edge of the walls. I also had to put a styrene strips behind the walls to cover any gaps left between the walls and the deck. When this was done I painted the interior with chocolate brown DupliColor spray paint.



I had cut two pieces of roof from styrene and reinforced each with few ribs.



After the lower portion was glued in place I fitted the upper front wall and covered the rest of the superstructure with the remaining piece of the roof. After sanding smooth all the joints I added trimming on the roof edges made out of 2mm wide styrene strips. It was also time to make some 'smaller' details from styrene sheet such as: masts nest, forepeak hatch, two 'doghouse' skylights.



At that time I had also fitted the boat with 3mm cardboard lining around the deck and the mooring bollards foundations made of the same material. It was the time to start building front portion of the wheelhouse. I had prepared the walls from my blueprints and fitted them with appropriate ribbing to match the photos I had. This was again made of 2mm wide styrene strips and was quite a straightforward task. I also made the wheel post out of drinking straw and some smaller styrene bits.



Rearmost portion of the wheelhouse was a bit of problem, as the blueprints were quite different in this part from the photos and the customer asked me to do the version from the photographs. I drew the template using front portion blueprints as a guide for windows and some of the dimensions. The biggest problem here was the rounded corners, so finally after I had ruined 3 templates I produced the one that was spot on. With all the appropriate ribbing installed, and rear wall designed, again based only on pictures, the wheelhouse was almost finished. The roof with ribbing, the stern hatch, sunshade over the front windows, followed by 2 mm wide trim strips just below the windows and on the roofs edge were the last touches over my wheelhouse.