Jaureguiberry IV: Deck Surgery

Hello again and welcome back! This is just a small update as I haven't had much time to devote to the model this past week. Let's begin with a picture:

Eeeeek! What a mess! Furthermore, what have I done?? First off I pulled out the good old Dremel tool and ground away everything on the deck, followed by sanding it all smooth on heavy grit sandpaper glued to a wooden board. This destroyed the pronounced flair at the forecastle and actually sanded through the deck (an ever present problem with hollow hulls). Luckily it didn't really matter as we will see. I studied the Marine Nationale drawings as best I could and settled on two places where the kit needed to be cut apart at, corresponding with a pair of hull frame lines shown on the drawings. As previously mentioned the fore section is too long and misshapen so it had to go. Likewise the aft section was a bit too long and the shapes seemed a bit off as well. I figured seeing as I already had the saw out why not make another cut! These two pieces will be discarded. After this had been accomplished it was time to cut some holes in the deck for the staircases. This took a bit of trial and error to get them in the right place. They have to be as close as possible as several superstructure parts lay between them, any major error here would translate to a major error in the placement of later parts. The deck was then covered with Evergreen strips of 0.25mm x 1.0mm and 0.25mm x 1.5mm sizes. As you can see in the photo above the cutouts are a little rough but hopefully they will look more pristine and uniform once the actual decking is applied. The staircases themselves are formed by 0.25mm x 1.0mm strips layered together to look like steps, then sandwiched between strips of 0.5mm x 4.0mm styrene to form a box of sorts. One completed staircase is visible in the furthest forward cutout. That is about it for now, until next time!