| The superstructure is made out of precut wooden panels. I'm impressed with the quality of the die cuts but I did notice a few minor flaws with the window cutouts; nothing terrible but noticeable because everything else is so good. The superstructure build up starts with these 4 panels. I had to lightly file the slots that the tabs fit into to get the pieces to fit. The piece that is standing up between the two outer walls has a top and bottom side that are different and it is tough to tell just by looking at it. If you install it upside down, you will notice that it pushes the floor too far down. The floor should not be deflected by it. Note: Looking back on the superstructure construction after I was finished, there are a couple of things I would have done differently. First, I would have painted the pieces before putting them together because it's tough to paint the decks after it is assembled. The other thing I would have done was throw away the brass wire coil included in the kit and buy some stiffer wire from my local hobby shop. The supplied wire is much to flexible and hard to install straight. Even if it does get installed smoothly, it will bend the first time anything touches it. |  |
| The instructions shows photographs of each step. It's pretty intuitive and easy. |  |
| I started building the kit some time ago and put it away for several months. Unfortunately, I did not lay the wood part sheets flat so over time they warped a bit. To get the parts to go together correctly, I'm forced to use a bunch of clamps as seen here. |  |
| At this point, I decided to do some surface prep work. I uses a product called plastic wood. It went on easily although it is a little thick for balsa wood. It sands easily enough although one should be careful not to apply to much or else you will be sanding for longer then you want. I used it to fill in the slots for the wood tabs and for a gap where the slanted woof joins the flat one. |  |
| A couple of brass pieces needs to be bent to form the top railing. To get a decent bend, I used an old battery and bents the brass strip around it. It would have been nice if a template for bending this piece was included on the blue prints. I did not get the bend to match the floor exactly but it is close enough. I probably could have used the sheet of plywood that the floor came from as a template but I didn't think of it till after I had the piece glued in place. |  |
Here the brass piece as been glued in with some epoxy (T-88) and wooded slats have been added to make the rounded corner. | 
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| Making the wells for the navigation lights was just a bit tricky. Some of the panels on the bottom lip fell off while cutting the slot. I just glued new one back on and sanded them smooth. |  |
| The inner walls of the wells where not parallel to the boat. They look a little odd when viewing them from the upper deck. It's hard to tell from the instructions if this is correct or not but that is the way mine turned out. |  |
| I found the wood diecut for this top house of the superstructure to be cut poorly. It looks like the die was made by a somewhat intoxicated worker. Many of the straight lines aren't. Some of the window openings look like a Dali original. The rest of the wood looks great, it was just this one sheet that was messed up. For the hidden seams, I started putting some Titebond wood glue on them to strengthen them. It helps a good bit. I found the Testor's wood glue joints would sometimes fail. |  |
| Titebond II is not waterproof but is water resistant. I think that if the joint is covered with paint, it should be fairly waterproof but I would not use it for under or near the waterline regardless. |  |
This picture shows the deckhouse cap molding being glued down. There is a trick to getting the wood to bend without breaking. (Can you tell that I broke it the first time I tried?) You have to soak the wood in some water first for about 15 minutes. Once it is good and wet it can be bent slowly. | 
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| The next thing to build is the exhaust stack/mast. This structure holds a couple of fire monitors plus the antenna stack so it is a prominent feature of the ship. To start off, the internal structure is build. I used a small right angle to make sure I got the parts on correctly. |  |
| The pieces are all slotted which keeps them in the correct position. This makes it easy to get it straight. |  |
| Here is the completed internal structures. If you are going to run lights on your boat, you may want to drill holes in them to pass the wire though. |  |
| I decided to go ahead and drill for wires to operate lights. Notice that I did not drill the top plate as this piece is glued directly to a small deck. |  |
| The next step involve gluing the cover onto the exhaust stacks. Clamps and rubber bands come in handy as the outside covering wood panels needs to be curved to match the internal braces. Good solid glue bonds are a must. |  |
| The next thing to build is the antenna platform that fits onto the top of the stacks. |  |
| Once the stacks are completed, they are glued to the superstructure. You want to align the stacks at the rear so that the curve will blend in with the edge of the superstructure. This will lave a gap at the front but it's easy to fill. |  |
| The edges of the stacks should be aligned with the outside of the superstructure. While gluing the stacks to the superstructure, I also glued the antenna platform to the top of the stacks. This helped me get it aligned properly. I put an old battery laid on top of the antenna platform to hold everything in place while I made the final adjustments. |  |
| With a bit of filler to blend in the stacks with the superstructure, the end results looked acceptable. The platforms under the exhaust exits are a little to high judging from the plans. Unfortunately, I glued these in place before fitting the exhaust exits so I did not notice till it was too late. It may be best to glue the exhaust exits in place before adding the platforms so one can better judge where every thing should go. |  |
