After 2 years of being banned from the dining room table, I decided to indulge again in challenging myself to build another boat. I have recently demolished our small shed in the garden and have replaced with a much bigger one which means I now have a man cave and work space.
This OcCre Ulises boat kit is going to challenge my skills further as its a 1/30th scale of an Ocean Tug boat that is almost all planking....hull, deck, cabins etc.
All advice greatly received!!

After opening the Box and eager to start on the build, the first thing to note is that the kit is really nicely packed. It has a great instruction booklet, plans, parts lists and an itemised sheet of parts on the laser cut wood. All the numerous metal parts are neatly stored in solid compartmentalised plastic boxes, which can be re-used for storage boxes after the build. For a novice, makes starting this build easy. 👍😁

The build has now started from the new shed/workshop and the keel and hull ribs have gone together nicely thanks to the easy to follow instructions and the accurately, laser cut pieces. The Keel is in three parts with two sets of strengthening/connecting ply pieces, Bow, stern and midships. No adjustments or any other cuts required.....nice!! Now onto the rib strengthening and deck supports, plus extra stern and bow strengthening to securely attach planking. This should only take a day, so next update later.

So, rib strengthening bars fitted and all tied together with decking supports. This part of the build also included fitting the rudder servo housing and it was a good job I had the servo already, and tried to fit it while not connected to the skeleton. Some slight modifications were necessary to the cutout to make the servo fit, which would have been difficult once fitted into the build. Bow and stern decking base to fit next with more strengthening to attach planking for the hull. I'm also making good use of the keel clamp I recently bought from Amati.......what a great device this is. 😀👍

So this week hull strengthening has been added and bow and stern deck bases, but a bit of sanding required to get the bases to sit flat on the skeleton. The next stage it to shape the Hull before starting to add planking. I'm a bit hesitant to start this with a file or plane and it looks a bit time consuming to do by hand with sandpaper, so I'm charging the small electric Bosch sander I have to help with this bit ....... a little at a time!
The Skeleton does appear a bit "twisted" but am sure this is either an optical illusion or will sort itself out with the planking.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to progress much on the build for a few weeks, but I picked it up again last weekend by starting the hull planking and beginning the superstructure. Not much progress but have been told the you should only do small areas of planking at a time and keep it balanced by doing one side of the hull then the other to keep its shape. I'll have more time in the coming weeks.
The planking clamps are a great alternative to pinning... I starting pinning but every time the small brass pins bent while trying to hammer them into the Ply hull formers. I didnt want to hammer to hard as the hull skeleton is quite fragile. Any advice here please as I'll need to nail planks to the bow and stern.

I am really losing my patience with planking as cannot seem to get planks to line up with each layer going around complex curves at bow and stern, and planks dont seem to be too flexible for this and broken a few, so decided to leave alone for now and concentrate on the superstructure.
This is coming along quite nicely.... the engine cover is almost complete and am pleased with the main control room and the teak planking so far. A long way to go yet, but taking my time!😊

Again...sorry for the delayed update on this build....time seems to go so quickly that I have no time for myself!
Anyway, much progress has now been made on the superstructure and all is complete bar adding the 2 lifeboats which I'm now starting to build. These sit on top of the support brackets you see in the pictures, either side of the funnel.
I'm getting better at detailing and painting now, but still room for improvement, and some "touch up" required in places. Everything is small and fiddly and even with small tweezers my big fingers get in the way and cant seem to get things straight and perfect fitting. Once the lifeboats are built them its back to the main hull planking, but not really looking forward to that. Thanks for all the advise thought, I'll try a couple and see if it improves the flexibility of the willow planks.

After months of deliberations on planking and delaying and delaying I finally finished planking the hull and then filling and sanding 😊 . It’s not pretty, but once fibreglasses and painted it will look like the pictures on the box(hopefully).

It took many weeks of effort to actually get the first few rows of planks, but once I got going and mastered the pinning, I managed to do 2 rows a week! 👍

Decking has now been applied and first coat of yacht varnish added. The next coat will go on in 8 hrs and then a light rub down and wash with white spirit before the final coat. Next it’s adding the bulwark’s and then hull finishing, sealing and painting. 😎