Hi all i bought this off my brother (he decided it was too frustrating for him) there are a few problems to sort out on it (I need to strip the decking off and square the frame up , it's a bit warped) he took the planking off which has saved me a job (he bought some really thin wood for the planking as he struggled with the supplied wood but it's so thin I can see it disappearing when sanded do I'm going to use the supplied wood) here are some pics, I've managed to get the deck off fairly easily getting the wood off the deck and squaring the frame may be quite a bit harder.
This will be a very slow build.










I think the pins hes used in the transom are way out of scale.

Interesting project. I've done a couple of rebuilds of started ships from estate sales. It can be a bit frustrating in the beginning, but once you get it straitened out and start the build again, things usually go quite well.

I'll be following with interest.

EJ

Hi all well I've removed the deck planking squared up the frame and are attached the front decking. I thought I would get away with doing nothing to the rear deck but on closer inspection I think he put the last 2 bulkhead the wrong way round since the second to last is narrower than the last (the phrase one step forward 2 back comes to mind) anyway I managed to get the rear deck off now I'm not sure what to do the frames seem to be impossible to unglue, any suggestions (I've tried steaming over a kettle but they won't budge) would it hurt the plywood if I soaked the stern in a bucket over night.

You could talk to a professional restorer for suggestions.

Marcus

You could always cut them away, make new ones and glue them in the proper position. Wood is very forgiving for stuff like this and all that internal structure will be hidden by planking. A site that might be of interest is modelshipworld.com

If I were to do this I would get a set of hull lines and check all of those frames and make new ones as needed.
If there is only a little missing from a frame I would glue strips of wood to the edge and then file/sand down to the correct shape.
Cutting away the whole frame as suggested by Grant above is probably easier than messing around with fixing big errors.
/ Robin

Hi all corrected the bulkheads next problem, now the side panels are correctly installed you can see the stern is too shallow so I will probably build this up with wood filler.

Hi Ken,

another special project of yours.
This certainly looks like a tough start - I've never done anything in wood, so I can't give any advice, but I'll be following your work!

Cheers
Jan

Ken,

Glad to hear you resolve the problem with the supports. How did you manage to get them unglued? Would be nice to know in case I get a case of the crazies and start building one of these.

Mark

I didn't unglue them I reduced the last bulkhead and increased it 2nd to last which had the same effect of swapping them round.

Well 1 step backwards leads to another step backwards, deck had to come off again. I was about to start planking it again and I thought surely that hump shouldn't be there.





Also I dont know if you can see it from the photo but there is a gap between the bulkhead and the deck (I thought the small oblong hole in the decking was a hatch or something at first but now I see it is a locating peg for the decking) another wrongly glued bulkhead. 

I managed to get the bulkhead off (it wasn't fully home due to wood dust and glue formed at the bottom of the joint) (all nicely held in place with dried glue) took ages to cut it all away, anyway as you can see it's all nicely flush and fitted now.





Hopefully I can now proceed as if it were a new kit (apart from the splits in all the bulkheads due to where it was planked before cant think of anything to do about that, if I glue them back together I think it will make it too hard to put new pins in) I'm hoping when its replanked I can drill holes for the pins (they will only be for show anyway) 

Ken,

The deck does look flat now in the picture, nice recovery.

Mark

Ok so I've decided to start decking it, the instructions are not at all clear it shows you decking over the false deck by 2 mm for the first 120 mm and no longer mentions that afterwards (I can understand that as the planking for the sides is 2mm thick) but why stop that overlap at 120 mm, I looked at pics of the waterways on the actual ship and it looks like there is a wooden strip all the way along the ship from the front to the stern step so I decided to continue the strip all the way along, first problem was keeping a 4 mm wide strip at 2 mm on the deck and 2mm in the air so I decided to add the first plank on the sides and put the waterways over that, I figure the more accurate I can get the first plank the rest must be better so I took great efforts with the first plank.

Ken,

Sounds like a very workable plan. I bet it must feel better to be building than repairing. With all the bad things I heard about Artesania models your build will either confirm the stories or put them to bed.

Mark

Hi all whilst waiting for my planking to come I decided to start on some of the many other things in this kit, here is a start on one of the cabins.

It's like a kit in its self, I have a feeling I'm going to love this kit, for the calking between the planks I used a lead pencil and just ran it along the edges of the planks.

Ken,

Very nice work on the assembly and great idea about using a pencil to simulate the calking.

Mark

Ken,

very nice work indeed, looks really good!

Cheers
Jan

Hi all I have done some of the planking I've cut the planks at 70mm which I think in this equates to 10 yards at this scale (although the planking supplied is I think is over scale at about 12"wide ) I'm not going to add the nail heads as I've seen on the printed decks available in this scale as I dont believe a nail with a head diameter of 6 mm would be visible at this scale at.

The planking is very slow going but quite satisfying.

Ken,

Nice work on the planking, the boards are looking uniform.

Mark

Ken,

My hat is off to you taking on this challenge. I recently started a U.S. brig Syren wood kit for my dad and WOW, the skills needed are so different from my accustomed plastic models!

Anyway, your efforts on the Cutty Sark are looking better and better!

Hi all well this is as far as the decking can go at the moment as I've used all the wood left in the kit for this (they were very generous with wood as it was already fully planked so they nearly give you double what you need) I just hope when the new stuff comes it's similar coloured unlike the last bit (for the waterways which were completely different colours) I realise wood is a natural product so can differ I just hope it's not too much different.

Tim, Is the Syren at 1/2000 scale as the others?

Mark

Hi all well the planks arrived and I was happy the colour was the same but they must have used the other 3mm because these are narrower also they are not 1mm thick either ( not that that matters much once sanded down) I managed to get a knife under a few of the stuck planks and shave some off the inner sides and squashed them together I'm hoping it will be enough so the thinness of the new planks won't notice.

While I was waiting for these planks I planked some of the sides (I must say I'm quite pleased with the results.

I bought a sprung pin pusher for inserting the pins, I intend to drill the holes for the pins first as the ply on the bulkheads is all split and separated from all the pins used to plank it the first time (I would have glued and clamped them but figured it would make them harder and therefore make putting the pins in harder) I think it's all starting to come together.

Ken,

The planking on the deck is looking good. I really can't tell the difference between the old and new.

The planking you have done on the hull looks great. Did you already pulled the pins as I don't see any or did you glue and clamp these in?

Mark

I haven't pinned it yet just glued and clamped, I dont know why the previous owner used so many pins(it was almost like a test for him to see how many he could fit in the smallest space) I've not used a single pin to hold planks in place to give you an idea look at the last pic in the first post, why so many pins just to hold the deck on, I mean there's 6 just in the prow ?