Planked!

According to my wife: "Now it can float."
(Previously: "It looks like a shipwreck.")

Albatros' hull is completely planked. It took much longer than I planned, thanks to about 10% procrastination and 90% other real-world distractions like family visits and a new dog. Somewhere in there, too, a jaunt to the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose to see Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination. It was awe-inspiring to round a corner into the darkened convention hall and come face-to-face with a five-foot model of Wedge Antilles' Red 3 X-wing from the first Star Wars film. I was blown away by the detail that went into that model and into the similarly-sized Millennium Falcon. And I was completely chagrined by the Star Destroyer model from the first film: much of the hull detailing was simply yet intricately drawn on, much like the deck planks on Albatros. For The Empire Strikes Back, the placard said, Industrial Light & Magic had a much bigger budget to make more detailed models. I bet. Alas, they had no models on display of the A-wing, my favorite ship from the franchise: a Fantasy Flight miniature might be in the background of a few pictures on this blog.

Albatros right now is not without its kinks: as you can see at right, there are a few oddball perturbations in the hull. They'll be filed down (possibly as soon as I post this). You can see on the right, too, some signs of where a few of the planks had to be trimmed down to gel with the others. This was a lot smoother and easier than I expected. There are a handful of outrageous planks to fit oddball gabs toward the stern. But, they work! I realize, belatedly, that another anxiety I had about planking the hull was just running out of planks and nails. That, fortunately, didn't come remotely true: there are 15 full-length planks and dozens of nails that are just surplus now.

Busted nails from just one night's worth of planking

Once the filing is done, I think everything else that happens will be outward-facing, i.e. no more boards that'll be concealed behind a convenient deck plate, flashing, or layer of hull lining. How things go from there will determine, among other things, just how much lighting the final thing gets when my wife and I find a place to put it on display.