I was trying to be as careful as I can be, but I keep messing up a bit.

One thing that I’ve been doing is to smudge the top surface of the wood with a combination of Wood Glue (Titebond II) and Graphite from my Graphite Pencil which I’ve been using to mark the sides of the wood to define it from each other.

I do quite like the effect that it gives the Deck. Sort of a rustic rough appearance that seems to comport with pictures that I’ve seen of ships of this era.

But, what happens is that as I work on it, I end up getting bits of glue on my fingertips and that in turn mixes with the graphite and creates these tiny black splotches. I’ve taken to getting up and washing my hands every few minutes in an effort to avoid making this mess.

Those little black spots are what I’m referring to. It’s really not that big of a deal but I am trying to avoid making any mistakes as much as I can.

Another mistake that I made was that I ended up getting misaligned. I didn’t notice until it was too late and I wasn’t about to pull out the Planks until I got to the offending one, which probably would have been difficult to find.

I ended up stopping the Staggering and just starting with a new row. It’s barely noticeable and besides this is a lower deck and won’t be that noticeable. Although, as luck would have it, I ended up starting this new row right where the Deck opening for the Lifeboat will be located. Oh well. I’m not worried about it, although my OCD Side has a difficult time of allowing me to accept it, but I’ve since learned through experience that you just have to shrug it off and keep going.

See how the line goes straight across?

Just finished the Line that goes straight across. I had to make a few notch-cuts along the way. Sort of felt like one of those Rock Cutters from Machu Picchu.

Really though??? Somebody would have to look really closely at in order to spot this mistake.