Hello dear shipbuilding friends
I trust that you are all in good health and exercising the necessary care to stay safe - trust me, these measures work. We are now for all practical purposes back to normal in China.
With the spiegel prepared for planking (the afschuinsing still needs to be done), it was time to move my attention to the boeg to fit the filler blocks. The instructions indicate that strips of balsa (15mm x 10mm) be used for this, but here I deviated. Reminiscent of
@Ab Hoving who said that "balsa and boxwood are not real wood", I chose to use the 15mm x 10mm strip of linden (supplied in the kit) for this. This of course does mean that I will have to order another strip from Hans, but seeing that I have to order extra cannons and rolpaarden in any case, this did not bother too much. As it turned out, there was another part that I would have to include in my order list (this time unplanned!) but more about that later.
For the placement of the filler blocks it was simply a case of following the excellent build log of Danny Mulders. He had photographed exactly how the filler blocks needed to be cut and glued into position to the front of bulkhead #1. After I had done that, I sent Hans a few pictures just to make sure I was on the right track and after that it was time to make wood dust.
And then there was sanding ... sanding and more sanding. My 180 korrel schuurpapier (the coarsest I could get at my local toolshop) made very little impression on the linden At one stage I even considered sending Hans a message asking him whether he puts his wood on steroids! After two days of sanding I had completed the bakboord side and was reasonably happy with the results. (See picture below)
It was only after I had downloaded the pictures that I had taken on my PC, that I found I have sanded half of the uppermost portion of the keel away in the process.
Words cannot even begin to describe how I felt. There are simply no excuses for this - it was simply a case of negligence and stupidity at its best! (In Afrikaans we would say: "Ek kan my eie gat skop!"
Hans - ever the gentleman that he is - tried to soften the blow, but I knew that I wouldn’t be happy with any “fix” to solve the problem. There was only one thing to do - that portion of the keel had to come out. Luckily my Xacto made small work of that and I didn’t mess that up as well. So, other than including a new upper part for the front keel in my order list to Hans, there was nothing else that I could do. Luckily my 80-grit sandpaper that I had ordered on Taobao, arrived in the meantime so I could start with the stuurboord side.
I really thought that the sanding would be much easier with the coarse 80-grit sandpaper. I was wrong.
This went a little easier, but only very little. The basswood still put up a formidable fight. After five days of off-and on-sanding - with some well-needed breaks in between - I was finished.
The aftermath of the sanding battle.
With that now done, it was time to build up the deck at the luizenplecht and make the hole for the boegspriet.
.
This time, I didn't second-guess the instructions and went straight for the balsa!
Forepart of the deck shaped and hole made at the correct angle for the bowsprit. With the balsa, the work was only a pleasure and took me all of 20 minutes to do.
The completed bow assembly ready for planking.
In retrospect, I am happy that I went for the basswood, even though it gave me a hell of a time. I now have a bow assembly that redefines Fort Knox in strength and I can really attach the planking aggressively to the bow without worrying about that balsawood giving way or being too soft. At the same time the removal of the keel, may actually be a blessing in disguise. Now I can do the planking first - a process which will be much simpler as I can simply butt-up the planks against the false keel. When done, it will also make sanding so much easier after which the new keel can simply be retro-fitted.
Now it is time for fairing the hull and painting the gunports black, but that is for another day.
As usual, thank you for following and for the reading the build log of the Haarlem. Your comments and inputs are greatly appreciated.
Kind regards - Heinrich