The Albatros Wooden Model Ship

So this is the kit. I've been reading through the instructions for a while, making sure I had all the tools I needed, etc.

Here's the inside, nicely organized. You can see a number of compartments, with spools of thread, many tacks and nails, metal pieces, and tools. Those pieces of wood above are to form the framework for the keel, and various items for and on the deck.

Here are those tacks... and you can see those small button-like pieces. those are going to be used for the rigging.

The M&M is for scale. You can see some metal pieces (canons, bells, anchors, etc.)

Here are wooden pieces used to construct the masts, and strips that will form the keel. I'm not yet certain what the wire is for, but the cloth for the sails is on the right side.

Here are the strips for the keel. They will require some bending.

Here are the instructions. They are in many languages, but fortunately English is one of them. This here is step one, which is relatively simply. Step two is tacking those strips of wood to this framework to actually form the keel. That looks kinda hard.

Here are the instructions for the rigging. It looks complicated.

Here's a close-up of some of the rigging instructions. Remember how small those little button pieces were? This is going to be awesome.

Here are some of the tools I've got. It came with a number of different blades, tweezers, a file, pliers, and a sanding block.

I've numbered the keel framework, and now I need to cut out the pieces.

No lie, this took me like an hour. I decided breaking the first piece would be a bad thing, so I took my time. Day 1 over!

Here I've begun to add the cross supports for the false keel. We've entered the third dimension finally.

As you can see, I'm now midway through step number one. I've not yet broken anything.

The show so far... More tools have shown up as well.

Not too shabby.

After some rough sanding and leveling.

After (no lie) a full day of searching all over the area, this was the only/best small hammer I could find. I saw it at the first store i went to, but refused to buy it because it looked ridiculous... but I could find nothing better... and here we are. It does work well.

The false deck has been added now, and tacked into place with flower hammer.

And now we play the waiting game.

Step one finished!

Tall view

The deck required slight bending, but nothing fancy.

I did some reading ahead, and found that I was going to be needing to drill some crazy tiny holes in pieces down the road... I did some searching at local stores and online, and found these mini drill bits online, and picked them up. No lie, many of the bits are thinner than a pencil lead. I will be breaking them, I suspect. You use that holder dealie on the left to manually turn the bit through the piece.

Next up was sanding down the supports to make for a smooth surface for the planking strips that will form the keel. This is the step that had me nervous.

Okay, the first strip has been added. I needed to glue the piece on, then then tack it into place so it would dry with the correct curve. After it dries, I then have to pull the tacks out, and work on obscuring the holes they left.

So far so good.

While I was waiting for the first strip to dry I looked ahead in the instructions, and ran across the one that involved this diagram... and decided that future steps would also be complicated.

Okay, both sides have been started.

Days later, and now we've got 2 strips.

4! It's starting to get tricky to make the planks follow the curve and stay flush with the other planks.

I've begun trimming the planks at the stem (that's boat talk for front) so the curve can be maintained.

As you can see, she's going to require some sanding when she's done being planked.

About a third of the way through. It's been weeks.

We're now a bit further along. Each piece requires some trimming at the front to fit well, and exactly how to orient the piece at the stern is getting kinda complicated, as the curve rotates the plants about 90 degrees (from flat to straight up and down) in a short space.

I've added some small shims in the front along the braces to support the curve in the front. They seem to be working well.

More tools have been added, more pins were required, and that flash is too bright.

We're getting rather close. Some serious sanding will be required to get this thing smooth.

Here's the stern. You can see at a certain point the planks just run flush against the false keel piece, and aren't supported by the braces any more. Trying to make that section smooth is proving difficult.

Here's the show so far. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through, and it's taken at least a month. Fortunately I have some vacation coming up that I intended to use on some other project around the house that i don't really feel like doing, so I'll almost certainly work on this instead.

We're nearing the end now. I've had to trim the ends of the planks to make room for the upward angle of the new pieces. There are some rough areas, but I'm anxious to finish this step.

Almost there.

Final pieces. The other pins have all been pulled.

The last few pieces required some serious shaping.

I also had to construct some pieces to hold the smaller filler pieces in place while they dried, as tacking them in place would split the piece.

One more to go.

And there it is.

I was starting to get creative with the items needed to force the pieces in place while they dried.

Not too shabby, but there are certainly some rough spots.

The pieces have all dried, and the pins have all been pulled.

I've trimmed and sanded down the stern.

I've begun sanding, and it's starting to look not too shabby. Many of the rough areas now look significantly smoother.

The general curve seems far better at this point.

After many (many) hours of sanding and filling, I've got most of the hull shaped. All that remained was the bottom/back section.

With the hull shaped, I soaked it a few times to force the wood to swell, filling in the tack holes, and making some of gaps between pieces shrink.

This continued for a few days.

And here she is. Pretty good, I think.

Fairly smooth.

Looks like a boat.

I'm rather pleased.

And took many pictures.

I picked up some varnish to seal up the hull.

Now she's all fancy.

The next step is to put down the wood planks that form the actual deck.

Half way through.

so far so good.

Now it's fully planked.

It now looks significantly less boat-like.

Trimmed and sanded, and we're back in business.

Okay, the next couple of steps require bending wood pieces pretty significantly. That involves soaking the piece in water, gently bending by hand, then either heating the piece with something to lock it in position, or locking it in place and letting it dry. I went the second route. Here's the two pieces... I decided to use the piece the deck was cut out of to shape the new pieces, since they'd be lining up with that curve. It seemed to work well.

The pieces are try, and curved.

While I was add it, I bent the next pieces as well.

And now I've added the first piece, and it fits quite nicely.

Both pieces are in place, and are taped into place while the glue dries.

Perfect! The ends were both snipped, and the joining piece was shaped and added. Looking good.

And now on to the bulwarks.

So the next step was the bulwarks, which required a decent amount of bending to fit properly on the curve of the deck. Bending requires getting the wood very wet, shaping, then drying in place... too much force and wood breaks... I managed to get one piece in place, all shaped and pretty, and then realized it was on backwards. In attempting to remove it and reshape it, the piece was destroyed. So I wrote to the company, which turned out to be in Spain, and I got a reply a few days later saying they'd send me a new piece free of charge! A few weeks later, this arrived at my door from Spain. Huzzah, Diset!!

This is the piece I needed (Well, the board that had the pieces I needed, along with the false deck which is already in place.

Here you can see the new pieces correctly shaped, and the remains of the previous piece which did not survive the process.

Now they've been added and tacked in place while the glue sets. I verified like a thousand times that they were going on correctly.

The front end required some sanding to come together at a proper point.

The stern was shaped, and the rear piece of the bulwarks was put in place. Now the stern can be planked to finish the hull.

Once again a lot of filing and sanding was required.

The final planks went to seal the area between the hull and the deck.

All the planks are now in place.

Now the planks have been shaped, the hull has been sanded down, and a new varnish has been added, making it all snazzy.

The work area has become... somewhat cluttered.

A timely visit by my folks has resulted in a cleaned-up work area.

The next task is applying a thin wood veneer to the bulwarks, which is somewhat similar to the original hull planking process. (Read: slow moving)

Two strips.

Four Strips

With the strips on one side added, I have to notch out the openings again.

Almost done.

Now the other side is lined.

This side is now done.

Now this side has been sanded and filed, and just needs the sections cut out. Then on to the stern.

Planked.

Sanded and shaped, and we're all set.

I patched the corner a bit, as it was chipping.

This step was hard. You can see the shaped wooden piece, which is to run along the bottom curve of the hull and rise to the tip of the bulwark ... only that curve and the curve of my hull are not very close.

After much filing and sanding, I've got it about as close as it's going to get, and it's now attached. Not too shabby.

Another piece lines the rear of the ship.

Now the full keel is added, joining the other two pieces.

And here we are after some cutting and sanding. I've added another line of glue to seal the joint.

Next up I drilled a smallish hole (6 mm) in the front through the bulwark that will eventually allow the bowsprit to pass through.

Now I've got to line each of the canon openings in the bulwarks with these tiny strips I've cut. I've added the bottoms to each so far.

You can barely make it out, but the strip below the bulwarks (dividing the veneered bulwarks from the hull) has been added as well.

All the linings for the openings have been put in place and now they need to be trimmed and sanded down.

Everything is trimmed, not time to sand... again.

Now it's all been sanded smooth on the tops and sides.

And after a light sanding, the hull is sealed a [hopefully] final time.

Now small strips are cut and put in place along the inside of the bulwarks. It looks nice, but taked forever.

About a third of the way done.

Half way done.

Two-Thirds done.

Strips are in place, and now they need to be trimmed and sanded.

These pieces needed to be bent to the shape of the top of the bulwarks. I soaked them for about a day, and then gently bent them around a paint can.

Add I had was Christmas tap (with decorations on it) but I used it to hold in place the strips that lined the top of the stern bulwarks.

Now with 3 strips secure on the stern, I've added the first long strip (that had been shaped earlier).

This was also held in place with fancy tape.

With all 4 pieces (and inner and an outer strip on both sides) in place, I added some glue to the bulwarks along the curve towards the back (where there was a slight gap) then used a piece of scrap wood and a strong rubber band to pull the strips down onto the bulwarks.. it worked nicely.

And now all is try, and it just needs to be trimmed, sanded, and rounded.

You can see that curve of the bulwarks near the stern.

Bending those small strips on the end was also a challenge.

Looking fancy. The new top strips have now been sanded smooth, and the outer edge has been rounded.

These are some of the pieces for the next step: Attaching the rudder.

I was going to have to drill a hole from the bottom through the deck.

Here's the deck, pre-hole drilling.

This is the rudder. I finally got to use my new hand drill set, to drill this small hole at the top of the rudder for the handle.

And now I've drilled the hole in the deck. It turned out okay.

Placement was more or less perfect. Huzzah!

These are all the pieces for the step, and a quarter for scale. I needed to cut 3 small pieces from that thick piece of metal tubing to act as hinges, and a longer piece to shape into the rudder handle. Then the metal V shaped pieces needed to be snipped into proper sizes to form the hinges.

Here is the rudder with the handle attached. The handle itself still needed to be shaped a bit.

Grooves were filed into the rudder to fit the hinges.

Hinge pieces have been attached. I used an old nail clippers to shape the metal pieces. I had to drill new holes onto the metal pieces for the smallest [highest] hinge... and broke a bit in the process. This step was complicated and frustrating.

The pressure required to get the metal hinges attached eventually snapped off the read wooden piece the hinge was attaching to. That actually made it a ton easier to attach the rudder, but getting it all back into place was rather complicated. Once in place, I rigged up this monstrosity to hold everything firmly in place while the glue dried.

As you can see, two rubber bands are pulling the top section against the hull, and tightly wound twist ties are holding the bottom part flush. It worked surprisingly well.

And here is the hinge.. which actually works and everything.

And here is the handle, now shaped and bent into place.

This is the boat so far.

Front View.

Rear View.

Deck View.