[mdesaxe]

As soon as I had assembled the framework I realised that I had not allowed for the fact that this ship model was going to be rigged as a sailing vessel. I had not opened holes in the deck for the masts, so I had to use a drill to make them at the correct angle (using a guide piece whose rake was taken from the sail plan). Drilling card or paper is not a good idea because the holes invariably are not clean circles, so I will have to make some cosmetic repairs to the deck.

In order to provide proper support for the masts when they are installed I inserted thick card doublers on either side of the model’s central spine to make sure the masts would not move when I was adding the rigging. I also cut away some of the framing in the bow immediately under the fo’c’sle to accommodate the forward firing gun fitted there. In retrospect, it would have been much easier to do all this before fitting the decks.

I now could add the hull side plates. Test fitting the provided parts revealed that they were very slightly too long, which actually was advantageous. I decided to divide each of the provided single hull side pieces in two, fit them starting at each extremity, and adjust the lengths approximately amidships for a tight fit.

Despite my initial concerns, I found that shaping the different curvatures at the bow was simply a matter of using my fingers to manipulate the card into the proper form.

The counter stern was another matter. The designer set up the shape for the side plating in a petal form. The basic concept was that the builder would join the edges of the petals and the result would be a proper form for the stern. The reality was much more complicated.

For a start, the shape to be made was not a series of flat planes but a continuous curve. This was relatively easy to form by using an appropriate tool (the end of a paintbrush handle in this instance) to press the requisite curvature into the paper by rubbing the tool over the card on top of a resilient pad of paper towels. The real complication was joining the edges; the card is only about 0.015mm thick, which is a very marginal joining surface. Fortunately, I have done this before, so I knew a good solution. One cannot simply add tabs or something like that because the tolerances are too small. What I did was to use joining strips of tracing paper (which has effectively negligible thickness) to reinforce the juncture of the petals. I should point out that it is critical to apply the glue to the card, not the tracing paper, and give each connection time to dry before moving on to the next. The final parts of the process were to again use the end of the paintbrush handle to refine the inside of the finished piece and to burnish the exterior over an appropriate former (the end of one of my wife’s wooden cooking spoons, on this occasion).

As planned, I fitted the sides starting at the extremities to make sure they fitted well and adjusted their conjunction amidships—a simple process because the sides are virtually flat there. I should indicate that the finished model will look tidier than this—I will use a fine pointed watercolour brush pen of a suitable shade to eliminate the starkness of the joints and I may well try out an idea a fellow paper model maker has suggested of coating the counter with acrylic floor polish (to stiffen it) and then very lightly sanding over the edges to smooth them (I would eliminate the glossy finish later because I always give my paper models a final coat of lacquer flat varnish to preserve them from both moisture and the detrimental effects of sunlight).