The work has stopped, the thinking hasn't

Since early April, work on the hull has been at a standstill. The fine weather of late made the garden grow like mad, and that’s where the weekends went. What did happen was the planking of the gun deck: the first planks in early April, the rest in early July. That’s a story of its own, but it was essentially practice for the visible decks. You’ll see hardly anything of it later, so if it had gone wrong there would have been no great loss.

Although the work has stopped, the thinking carries on. That produced the following question. The Diana had a copper-sheathed hull and the Caldercraft kit supplies, I believe, 2500 copper plates for it. A shame not to use them. It’s just that I find them far too shiny. My idea was simply to put them in salt water and leave them there until I need them, and that could easily be another year or two. It seemed to me the most true-to-life way of reproducing the colour of the original plates: those were sitting in salt seawater too, after all. Sailing is not the same as lying still, but even so. I know there are quicker ways of growing patina (boiled eggs, for instance), but I thought I’d just use time.

Hans recommended trying it with a few plates first, or leaving them outside and letting nature do the work, although that’s awkward with such small plates. Jan Veraart fitted them on his HMS Victory cross-section straight from the packet, without visible glue marks, and let them dull down by themselves indoors. Treating them may in time actually look unnatural. So perhaps not after all, or at least try it with a few first. The coppering is still a long way off anyway.