Day 243.

The final building needed for the fore deck is the skylight.  This little building sits just aft of the companionway, and allows some light in to the lower deck through a couple port holes.

There really isn’t anything complicated about this building.  It uses the same techniques as the previous deck structures.

The side panels are cut from 1/16″ basswood sheets according the Model Shipways Bluenose kit plans.

Cutting side panels for deck structures from 1/16″ basswood sheets is becoming routine.

These are then glued together using wood glue to form the rectangular shape of the structure.  A machinist’s square and an angle bracket are used to keep it straight while the glue dries.

The sides are kept square as they are glued.

The structure is sanded down a little bit, and some internal braces are added to give the structure some stability while I work on it.

Support braces are added to keep the structure rigid.

The port holes on the sides are drilled using a small drill press.  The holes are located on the port and starboard sides, centered between the deck coamings (baseboard) and the roof.

Since I haven’t attached the coamings yet, I drew a line to indicate where they would go, then centered the holes in the remaining space.

Port hole are drilled on the port and starboard sides using a small drill press.

With the holes drilled, some additional sanding was done.  The plans call for some fancy corners, like it suggested for the cabin.  Once again I’ve skipped that detail and simply rounded the corners.

I also glued a piece of wire to the bottom as a ‘handle’ to use while I’m painting the piece.  That will be removed once the piece is completed.

Corners are rounded off and a wire is glued into the bottom to make handle (for holding the piece during painting).

The roof is made from planks, just the roof on the other deck structures.  Even though I’ll be painting this roof white and you won’t see the planks, I still made it using planks.  This was done to ensure the roof’s thickness was identical to the other structures.  (Making all the roofs out of the same material ensures this.)

The roof is made from planks, like the roofs on all the other deck buildings.

The roof is trimmed to size, sanded down, and installed.  The entire structure is given a coat of primer.

With the roof in place, the whole thing is primered.

The final steps are to airbrush the entire structure white and install the coamings.  While the plans call for some parts to be burnt umber, I’m going to keep this piece simple and paint the whole thing white (except the coamings).  The Bluenose had a number of different paint jobs over the years, so I’m just going to pretend that at some point it was painted this.

The coamings were made just like they were for the other structures.

The completed skylight with coamings installed.

The deck is starting to take shape with all these buildings.

This was a pretty simple structure.  Much easier than the companionway and hatches.

This completes the larger deck structures.  I made all these first because they are all self-contained, similar in design, and can be easily placed and moved.  The remaining stuff on the deck needs to be glued in place as it is built.

Doing all these first lets me get them all positioned, mark the spots, then seal the deck while avoiding the spots where these structures will go.  That will allow me to use wood glue to attach these (wood glue won’t soak in well once I’ve sealed the deck with poly).

So, the next steps are to finalize the positions for all these structures, seal the deck, and get these mounted.