Drilling Holes for the Relingstütze On the lower decks, I used a template to drill the holes 11mm apart with the smallest drill bit I had, and for the four lower decks, broke 5 drill bits at $1.60 each. Click Once To Enlarge

The Relingstütze (railing supports) have very tiny holes for the railings or chains, and this is where I ran into problems. Canada, like Europe is metric. However, a great many of the commercial goods here are from the USA which uses the archaic (and painful) system of inches. So the .020 brass wire I bought, was actually .020" = 0.5 m. No wonder it would not fit. In inches, what I actually needed was .007" wire, and I had no luck find any. The smallest I could find, even on the internet, was .015". Once again, Peter saved me and sent me a bundle of 0,20 mm wire from Germany.

The Chains To make the chains: A piece of wire is removed from the bundle, which takes about 5 minutes of careful unwrapping. The wire when it was out was around 1 meter (39'). The wire is folded in half, looped over a small metal rod, like the end of a file. The ends are twisted together and inserted into a hobby drill. With the wire gently pulled tight, the drill is turned on in small bursts until it twists adequately to resemble a chain. The result: chains that hang realistically. However, as the wire is so fragile, typically I broke two for every one that turned out. Click Once To Enlarge

Running the Chains Running the chains was easier than I expected. At first I filled the three chains with the Relingstütze (railing supports), and moved them along the chains and glued them in, but the chains are not stiff, so for the remainder of the deck, I just glued all the Relingstütze in place and threaded the chains through. Once I ensured that all the Relingstütze were vertical and was happy with the chain sag, I gave each one a tiny shot of glue at the hole to set it in place. Click Once To Enlarge

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Completing the Hull Intro / New Rudder / Fixing the Casemates / Booms / Stairs / New Sponsons / Bugzier/ Portholes / Deck Fittings / Railings / Decals / Final Product