Central anchor well - Step 1

After the last steps on the C deck bulkheads, which will have to be fitted and painted before the upper decks, I spent some time on the forecastle central anchor well. The original kit parts are very inaccurate here, and have to be heavily modified. Below, a view of the original parts.:

The general shape is quite correct, but it is far too small, and the borders are too thick. Besides, the metallic part is completely out of scale. Here is a comparison with an approaching scale, showing the problem.

The first step will be to remove those horrible borders, both from the deck and from the 24 shape. I took special care not to damage any part, because they will be useful later. The aft part of the 24 shape is glued under the forecastle deck, and will be sanded to the correct shape.

The next step focuses on the other half of part 24. The foremost part of this shape shall be kept, as it will give its shape to the hull. So, the fore part is kept, and the borders are sanded down to an inclined shape, as the bottom of the pit wasn't horizontal.

The new bottom is cut from a styrene sheet, it will lay on the former borders of part 24. A thicker styrene sheet is used to create the aft part of the pit, as we can see below (obviously, at this step, the pictures show only dry-fittings). This part will probably be modified, it does not satisfy me.

Another task of this step is to build a replacement part for the oversized metal part, using styrene card. Here is a first version of this part, it still needs to be finiched, but it's looking quite good. It is done with a styrene base, and two styrene strips that have been partially sculpted with and X-acto, then sanded.

That's all for the last two weeks, because I spent a (too short) week visiting the belgian and dutch trappist abbeys!