Just when you were wondering what happened to that ship I was building -
Well it basically sat for awhile for two reasons - first the port area was a mess and was awaiting a complete re-tracking, so no rush. Also, in my tradition of leaving the hardest for later, the stern section needed to be hand shaped. I talked of the new track for the port in an earlier post and will post a sketch in a future one, but with the new track, the work on the chemical plant, and the fact that this is the smallest section of the layout and hopefully the easiest and thus the first to semi-complete.
As you know, the core of the ship was MDF cut to the rough shape of the boat and laminated with styrene - this generally works well, except for the stern quarter of the ship where you have variable compound curves. Ship modelers usually attack this my building the ship in small lifts and using a plane and then sandpaper to shape - to do this you need to have good plans and lines for the hull. Seeing how I am doing this by eye it was easier just to glob a bunch of Bondo on there and sand away with 80 grit. The photo shows the Bondo applications and the mostly finished product - I sprayed it with some primer to check the shape and to make imperfections show up better. With this done I should be able to get back to work on the hull and the super structure.
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