Five trials for the windows

Tried out all the suggestions. From left to right in the photo:

1. Thin paper, greyed a little.
2. Plastic from black flock (for applying to fabric, I still had some lying around).
3. Clear plastic, lightly roughened (Hans Groenenberg’s tip).
4. Aluminium foil behind clear plastic (Building Mouse’s tip).
5. A grey haze on clear plastic with black and white paint (Jaques’ tip).

It’s going to be the last one. That way I keep the shine of the window (which disappears with options 1 and 2) and I can play with how dark the tint is, which doesn’t work with option 3. Option 4 I find a little too blingy. Hans Groenenberg thought I had made the right choice.

Next I fitted the windows in the transom. Because the deck still has to go on, the see-through effect will disappear here and there. Still very fiddly work.

I also took a photo with flash. The drawback is that every nasty detail becomes visible, such as the glue that ran a little in a few places. Best not to look at the boat under bright light too much, let’s say. My wife had already said it: just say it’s an old ship and that windows weren’t as nice back then as they are now.

And that turned out to be true. Hans Groenenberg told me that glass was only used in wooden glazing bars from the seventeenth century, in small pieces. The glass was cast on tables and polished with ever finer sand, reasonably transparent but nowhere near as clear as today’s float glass. Hans added that this is where the Dutch word ‘ruit’ comes from (it means both a window pane and a diamond shape): you cut diamond-shaped panes from the round slab of glass to make the best possible use of the material. So I had introduced a bit of authenticity by accident.

It didn’t help, by the way, that I knocked over my pot of black paint. I don’t have any large clamps to hold the pot down. acura had a better idea: use a hole saw to cut a hole the size of the pot in a bit of board, which gives it a solid base. As it happens I do have a hole saw. Never used it, but you never know, I must have thought when I bought it.