Progress on the Amati Venetian gondola kit continues with the addition of various hull details. The model has a lot of various panels that need to be added to the basic hull. As with nearly all the parts in this kit, these are laser-cut pieces, and in some cases, fitting them to my imperfectly built hull takes a little fiddling with.

These decks at the ends of the hull are the last of the parts that make up the “basic hull”.

But, the part that I was most apprehensive about, was the addition of what might be considered a rub rail, which is a set of pieces that line the upper edge of the hull. Again, these are laser-cut plywood piece, and I was a bit concerned that they might not fit my hull very well, since I still feel that my initial placement of the hull pieces might be off, and the metal pieces at the ends don’t fit exactly as I think they should.

End pieces of the deck don’t line up exactly, but the edge will be hidden by other parts.

Still, things seem to look okay, and I seem to be able to adjust the parts so that they seem to fit. I just keep getting this feeling that I’ll eventually run into a problem because I didn’t mount things quite right, and it’s difficult to tell for sure from the instructions and drawings. This may just be my paranoia from having built other kits using all laser-cut parts.

At this point, I’m mostly dealing with the placement of detail parts, which go on pretty easily.

Next, we get to that rub rail I mentioned earlier. In the photos below, you can see that I didn’t get the starboard side piece correctly mounted, and you can see a gap at the stern. I wasn’t going to worry too much about this, figuring I could use filler to close the gap. But, then it dawned on me that there are some photo-etch pieces that will be added to this rail, so I can’t be changing the length. Instead, I’m removing the piece and adjusting it to fit better.

Since I’ve been using slow-curing CA glue, as recommended in the kit instructions, I had to use a little bit of CA de-bonder, which actually works quite well. Applied with a cotton swab, it was enough to soften the glue. Then, I could separate the piece from the hull using a knife blade. Afterwards, I made sure to clean up the area well, so a new glue joint would hold, but had not problem re-gluing.

After that, I added all the various details at the stern of the gondola. I think this mostly has to do with providing a solid foothold for the gondolier, and providing him a place to maybe sit while he’s not working, but that’s just a guess. I wish the instructions were a little more explicit about what each of the parts are for. I think that would make it easier to build, because logic and knowledge of the use of the parts can aid in making sure the parts are correctly fitted. But, a bit of Internet research helps, as there are many photos of Venetian gondolas posted online.

All these parts look something of a mish-mash of pieces stuck to the aft deck. Once things are cleaned up, filled, primed, sanded, and painted black, it will hopefully start looking like the unique and beautiful canal boats it is supposed to represent.

The next step is to seal/prime the whole thing. There’s still many things to add before painting begins, but I’m getting kind of anxious to get the first layers of paint on the model. Won’t be long now…