A ton of holes need to be drilled for the hand rails and walkways. I spaced the holes out at about 19.5mm on the sides and 21 mm on the front. The height of the holes where set as shown on the plans.
The railing is made out of pliable brass wire. It's easy to put in but really tough to keep straight. I need to find something better as it's taking away from the looks of the ship.
The railing for the super structure is done but as you can see, it's not very straight. It's not that hard to straighten it out with some needle nose pliers but it's really delicate and will certainly get bent again from handling.
I was missing four of the five mounts for the hand holds in my kit. For now, I will just leave it as is. The life boat will be hanging in front of it partially hiding the flaw. One day I might just run across a suitable replacement.
Here are the lifeboat davits. Once these are attached, it's time to seal the wood on the superstructure, sand and sand and sand until smooth and paint it.
Prior to painting, the wood was sealed using two coats of a water based sealer. This sealer was quite thin compared to others and I found it only required light sanding to give a smooth surface.
The box photo color scheme is totally different then that of the real ship so I decided to paint it more like the original. With paint, it's starting to look like something. I'm not real happy with the way the rails look, I need to work on straightening them some more.
Here's a thumbnail of the real ship so you can see what I mean,
Now it's time to add the portholes and a few trim pieces. Some of the cast pieces are a bit rough but from a couple of feet away they look ok.
