Transom and galleries finished

It’s done: both the transom and both galleries. All the ornaments are on, including on the right now that the replacement set has arrived. Because I’m rather pleased with it, a few extra photos, with a suitable backdrop of course. All the tips and suggestions for improvement have helped considerably.

Piet thought it looked magnificent, but spotted one thing I had forgotten: a planksheer still has to go on, which runs to the lower moulding of the quarter gallery. In my photos the upper moulding of the gallery is therefore too long. In this case they are too long on purpose: I want to cut them to size once I fit the planksheer, which seemed safer to me than accidentally making them too short now. Piet found that a slightly illogical way of working, because the mouldings are metal and already glued, so taking a piece off is no easy matter. He fitted the planksheer first and then the mouldings.

Something else I noticed: Piet placed the small cross ornament one level higher than on the drawing, so it’s more visible. That’s the only thing I would have done differently in hindsight. The lower tier of the gallery has ended up too low in my view; it could have been a bit higher so the ornament was more visible from the side.

What comes back to bite me here is that I find it hard to deviate from the manual. That’s down to my inexperience. I haven’t even found the fitting of the planksheer in the manual yet, and I didn’t know the English term for it. Piet built the Diana without the manual, from the drawings alone, because he could make little sense of it. He always tries to think a little way ahead so he never has to tear anything out because the sequence was wrong. That remains a puzzle for me. Now to start reading up on the mouldings for the hull. That’s going to be quite a job, I fear.