The general procedure for ‘aging’ the hull is to use a sander to produce scuffs, gouges, and worn spots in areas where there is high traffic, or friction, such as by ropes or sailor’s feet rubbing the paintwork. Here you can see that the focus is on the floorboards and decking, the edges of thwarts, and the gunwales. Especially around the thole pins. Once the selected areas are sanded down to the right degree, the bare wood and remaining paintwork is ‘soiled’.
The technique I use for giving an aged or weathered look a to many surfaces is to go over it with water with just a little black acrylic paint added in. If you slather this over everything liberally, wait for a moment or two, and the dab away the excess with paper towel, some of the black will remain in cracks or crevices to emphasize them and you usually also get a slightly grimy appearance where the most of the colored water has been removed. Bare wood also gets a ‘weathered’ appearance as well.
The interior of the hull and the gunwales are largely finished for now (although I may ‘stress’ some other areas after the mast and other fittings are installed). The exterior of the hull will involve largely the same process, but with minor differences.
I did the same sort of sanding on the hull to wear away some of the paint. At the black strip on the sheer strake, I only did a very light sanding to suggest faded, slightly weathered paint, while I was a little more aggressive with the white portion.
I didn’t take the sanding to bare wood in as many locations as inside the hull, but I did do a bit of ‘chipping’ and ‘gouging’ along the water line as, on small wooden craft, this area seems to get damaged and eroded more than elsewhere.
Once place where I did simulate some damage is the stem. This part frequently takes hard knocks from collisions and the like, and also tends to get worn spots from ropes and anchor chains.
Below the waterline was handled a little differently than above. I didn’t really wear away any of this part of the hull except at the waterline itself, but the ‘wash’ technique was different in that I used green on the wash water along with black in order to simulate algae build up. I let the was sit a little longer at the joints between planks so that the color ‘took’ there a little more strongly, but I gave the whole of the lower hull the treatment.
Moving on, we now return to some construction with the making of the mast. The kit provides some dowel for making the two masts (or the one, in this case), but this needs to be tapered after having been cut to the right length. The plans indicate the diameter at both the base, and the narrower top.
After shaping, I painted some of the upper portion white (as was done on the kit model pictured on the front of the box). The rest was stained a natural dark wood color and given a light coat of varnish.
Here is the metalwork for the mast. In the center is a bracket for holding the mast to the thwart, along with the nails for securing it in place. There are also two metal hoops, made by soldering strips of brass into rings. The larger one will anchor the two eyebolts to which the port and starboard stays will be attached, while the smaller one will circle the last at the very top and hold an additional eyebolt facing aft. This is for securing the block (pulley) through which a halyard rope will be passed.
All the metal parts were made from brass but I want the pieces to simulate ironwork so I gave each piece a coat of matt black enamel paint.
This picture shows the components I used for making the masthead halyard block.
I used scraps of wood to form the general shape. On the left, you can see one ‘cheek’ of the block with pieces glued to the top and bottom to form the inner part of the block, and a tiny piece in the center to acc as the ‘wheel’. The right piece of wood will be glued to this to form the other cheek. The edges are rather rough here but this is not an issue as we will be sanding the block into a more oval shape after the halves are glued together.
In addition to these parts, there are also two small nails and an ‘eyebolt’. The latter is one of a batch of similar pieces I bought at a jewelry store. It will be used to form the ‘hook’ on the block that attaches to the masthead eyebolt, and, quite obviously will have the straight section cut much shorter.
My original idea was to use these small planking nails as central bolts, but I later decided they were too big and used smaller nails, also cut very short, as bolts the end of the block.
Here you can see the completed block after being assembled and stained a dark wood color. The hook part has been opened up slightly so that I can pass it through the eyebolt on the masthead and then close it once in place.