All wet

Bulwarks attached

The bulwarks are bent and attached. Huzzah!

Bending involves heat and/or water. Some woods -- like the thin renin lining the decks -- don't need any special treatment except for major twists and turns. Some thin woods soak for while -- 20 minutes up to several hours -- and then are fixed in place in a jig or on the ship with pins/clamps until they dry. And a few approaches involve heat. Heating the wood permanently changes its structure, which offers the advantage of it not trying to pull back to its original state.

I tried three methods for bending. The first was to wrap the bulwarks in wet paper towels and microwave them. This didn't do squat. Cross that off the list, at least this time.

Next, I let them soak in a casserole dish for a couple of hours. This definitely got them a bit pliant, but the time was insufficient to get to where I needed them to be. Furthermore, I don't have a jig or other mechanism to keep them in shape while they dry (and, even if they had bent far enough, I was disinclined to let them dry in place).

So, then to turn to the electric plank bender. It worked pretty well. The process was simple: take wet wood, place it in molding block, press down with the bender, and the slight bend in the wood eventually becomes permanent. Very important to keep the wood damp; there are a few spots where I didn't that are now slightly burned.

The hull and bulwarks meet; the plank bender is in the
background in its cradle.

My concern about the different woods warping against each other was justified. Fortunately, a little extra glue -- and the renin's own sponginess -- made this easy to address. In the the photo at right, you can discern some of the warps; all of these were flattened out with some glue and the wood drying overnight. In the background, you can see the plank bender resting on its cradle.

One little bonus: I jumped ahead a few steps and drilled two small holes through which the anchor lines will eventually run. The pin vice and drill bit were surprisingly adept. I suppose the wood isn't all that tough (the thicker wood in this model is plywood), and definitely the weight of the pin vice itself does most of the pushing (kind of like the heft behind a safety razor). I needed a 2mm hole but the largest bit is only 1mm, and I didn't feel like getting out a drill bit from my kit outside -- so, I did the finishing touches with a small, round file.

Drilling holes for the anchor lines