Hull Staining, Painting and Trim Work

As usual, it was again time to clean-up the work area a little bit before starting on the next phase:

Before staining the hull, I started on cutting, painting and staining the various strips of wood that will form the trim work.

 

The wales.  These will be painted black and one will go above the cannon ports and one below the cannon ports on each side; all 4 were curved at one end to go around the bow.

Priming the wood, which is basically just painting them with a thin coat of primer before doing the final painting.  The first layer generally soaks into the wood a bit, so by giving it a primer coat first, the subsequent coats will look better.

The wales and some of the other trim work all primed: 

 

With everything primed, I began to paint the trim work... Some is just painted white (the top strips), the wales are black (the bottom strip), a couple are just red and some of the trim work is patterned (white and red, or white and green).

 

In between painting all of the trim work, I moved on to preparing the hull for staining and painting.

 

The first thing would be the stain, so I used masking tape to block off the areas that would later be painted as there is no need to stain those (I changed the tape in the top picture after this so that the strip of green tape matched the bottom picture):

 

Dreading the results (after my experience painting the stern and the glue blotches), I finally went ahead and stained both sides, using pre-conditioner and 2 layers of Colonial Walnut Wood-sheen.  I was actually pleasantly surprised with how it turned out!  There are a few minor blotches, as you can see in the pictures below, but nothing major like on the stern!

 
Holding one of the trim strips against the stained hull - looks pretty good. 

With all of the tape removed:

 

 

After the stain had a chance to try (a couple of days, I think), it was time to tape everything up so I could start painting the hull:

 
As with the trim work, I first applied a primer coat to everything that would be painted:

Speaking of the stern, I should have paid better attention to the instructions and pictures... after the problems with staining the stern, I ended up painting over the top part (after first sanding it).  This is where some of the trim work will wrap around the stern.

The first bit of painting is the black strip along both sides, which included painting the inner part of the window black.  You'll notice there is some white above and below the black line - this is where the tape wasn't quite perfect.  Some of the trim work is going to run above and below the black strip, which will cover the white, so I am not worried about it. 

 

The forecastle railing - as with the stern, I had to sand the stain off the front and back rails so I could paint them a matching yellow (FYI: the colours used are the ones recommended in the instructions, and with the exception of the black, are the paints that came with it when I bought the model - I think the black that came with it looked too grey).

 

The aft part of the ship will be a mixture of colours - one strip of red, then one of yellow, one of green and then the rest will be yellow.  Also, the minor imperfections will be covered up by the trim work.

 

 

 

  

 

 
And that's as far as I've got so far, at least in pictures.  The green strip is done (which is the first one to wrap around the stern), so once that has dried I will do the rest of the painting.  I will probably also paint the bottom of the hull white (it currently just has a coat of primer) so I can attach it to the stand before I start adding the trim work.

 

Final Planking

With the stanchions and pre-planking all done, it was time to move on to the final layer of planking.  Unfortunately, this didn't quite turn out as good as I would have liked, especially the port side... on the plus side, I've hopefully learned a few lessons for my next build! 

Note: After my blotchy stain problem on the stern, I had a suggestion on one of the modelling forums to maybe stain the planks first and then attach them.  I seriously thought about doing that, but decided to do the planking (being careful with the glue!) and then stain.  I wasn't sure about bending the wood (before or after the stain?), ensuring all the treenails were lined up, etc. 

The first step was to run one plank along the bottom of the bulwark template; the curve of this plank will ensure the rest of the planks have a smooth curve.

With the first plank in place, I began to work my way up.  I could have done each row as a single strip, but instead I decided to cut them into shorter lengths as that will look better on the final model.  Most of the individual strips were long enough to stretch across 4 bulkheads (about 10 cm), but some were slightly shorter or longer, depending on the particular area being planked.

 

 

 

 

 Almost done the upper section:

 

The forecastle:

 The stern done:

The entire upper part complete:

The section below the first plank (you can see where I messed up around the 1st gun port): 

 

Laying the first plank on the port side.  As you can see, the curve towards the stern isn't as smooth as the starboard side.  Unfortunately, I didn't quite notice how bad it was until I was a few rows in...

 The finished upper area of the port side:

 At least the bow doesn't look too bad:

 Finishing up the port side:

 

 

Looking like crap... I'm guessing that side will be against the wall... Luckily, there will be a fair bit of trim and the top part will be painted instead of stained, so hopefully the worst of it won't be as noticeable...

One of the important things was to ensure the bottom run on both sides was even, as there will be a piece across the back which will join them up (the lower wales).  Also, you'll see I did not do the entire hull - adding planking below that last one is optional, and I am still happy with how that first layer turned out...

 With both sides done (and sanded), time to move on to the treenails... 

After all of the treenails were filled, time for more sanding and then used some paint thinner to clean things up a bit and see if there are any glue blotches (hopefully the thinner doesn't cause any problems when I go to stain it - most folks were saying they use mineral spirits, but after some research, thinner is about the same and was referenced on some general woodworking sites as an alternative).  There were a couple of minor glue blotches, but with some sanding I think I got them all.

Ready for staining (almost):

While I procrastinate with the staining, I'm going to move on to preparing the gun port covers (not sure if I'll have them all open or closed - maybe one side of each?), the wales and the trim work, which will probably take a week or so.  The wales need to be bent to the shape of the bow, and then painted black, while some of the trim work needs to be stained (I haven't decided on the colour yet - the instructions say use the same colour as the rest of the hull, but since I'm going with a darker stain for the main planking, I want to use something a bit different) and some needs to be painted (some white, some red, some a red-white pattern and some a green-white pattern).  Oh, and the bottom needs to be painted white, but I haven't decided if I'll do that at this point or a little later after I add the rudder and the beakhead (the front part of the ship) so the white is consistent.