Coppering. I flipped the Theresa Marie upside down and applied two coats of black paint. That was the easy part. Transferring the exact measurements for the waterline from the two dimensional plans to the three dimensional ship via masking tape was more of a challenge. I basically just measured off one foot distances and connected them with tightly stretched tape.

I applied three coats of the same bronze paint I had used to cover the copper tape on the gun port lids. Going for that shiny new copper look. Everything looked good until I flipped it over and removed the tape, then the waterline didn't look so straight along parts of the curvy hull. So I applied more tape along the edges, using my Mark I eyeball this time, and applied three coats of bronze to the needed areas. Good enough for now.

And no, I wasn't about to spend dozens of hours painstakingly scoring simulated copper plate lines on the bottom.

Rudder and drive unit. Meanwhile up in Minnesota... Dan was kind enough to help drill a removable pin in the metal rudder axel and craft an attachment for the drive pod (that Rick at Scalemodelcastings.com had made for me over half a year ago). This was the part of the build that I would probably have voted "Most likely to fail doing it by myself". What a guy! If the propulsion system has to have a name, I guess it would now be "The Danrick Drive".

Week 35