Aren't the knees and breast plate a lot of fun? There are all sorts of angles to keep you on your game, but I'm happy with how they turned out as I managed to get a reasonably good fit. It took me a good few hours to make and fit them though. They should look pretty good once they're all sanded down.
I was planning to do something different with the breast plate, but once I started cutting and planing that lovely piece of yellow Hoop pine that I had, I just knew it had to be kept simple.
OK, what else did I do? Aah yes, I cut the hole for the mast and I filleted the seats. Mmmm, for those fillets I made up a paste of epoxy and micro balloons, tinted with some epoxy dust from the sander bag. It was looking OK until I decided to sand the fillets smooth, and they turned white! Yikes, I don't think I've read about this before! If you look at the enlarged version of the picture, you can see the difference in the colour of the fillets on the rear seat (sanded) compared with the fillets on the mid and front seats (unsanded). AAARRRGGGHHH! What to do about that now? Any suggestions?
I also needed a piece of hardwood for the bow capping. Whilst rummaging around, I found an off-cut of Kauri from an antique table I restored a few years ago. Whilst Kauri is not classified as a hardwood, it’s pretty tough stuff (used for flooring) and it looked fantastic once I’d planed the paint off down to bare wood. That will do just nicely!
You know, there are still no screws in the hull! The marvel of epoxy…
I’ll post some more close up and detailed pics once I’ve planed down the gunwales, knees and breast....thingy.
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