Sounds like an excellent progress, my friend @clipper!

Thanks Spiros (@fiveten) and George (@gblair).

I am sure at least part of the problem I am having is from three main reasons.

1. My CA glue is somewhat old, resulting in a longer time to set before a part can be let released to hold on its own. This means there is a higher chance that my hand is going to move enough to displace the PE part before that "set" takes place.

2. I have not found a good way to dispense thin CA glue. I have one of those flexi file applicators with the forked end (like the end of a sewing needle with the hole that has had part of that end cut off). It works sometimes to release the glue right away. Other times, it acts like there is no glue there at all. And it clogs up quickly requiring me to burn the CA off frequently with a lighter. But the end result is again, more tries to get the glue into place (or a longer time trying to get the glue in place), upping the risk that my hand will move before the part can set.

3. Working with head magnifiers creates a situation where field of vision is very limited. Depth perception is also affected so it becomes harder to judge small movement corrections when holding the parts. The end result for me here is that I find it far too easy to apply more strength than is needed to hold the part in place, thereby increasing the risk of inadvertent movement and possibly damaging the part.

There is one other thing which I have to always be cognizant of. No matter how good the tweezers are, they have a limited contact surface and the pointiest ones tend to separate at the very tip if the tweezers are pressed too hard, resulting in the part dropping, invariably on the floor!

I will say that preforming the parts, helps, as does securing at least one point on the part with CA before trying to place it into final position, but this last bit is not always possible.

It looks like you have the problem diagnosed, Carl (@clipper). I got rid of my head magnifier and just got magnifier glasses on Amazon. I call them "Drug Store" glasses, because you can also find them on racks in the drug store. They are basically just reading glasses, but you you can get them up to +6 magnification or so. I find they don't have the same field of view issues that I had with the visor. One of the videos that I watched on YouTube recommended using a piece of copper wire in an Exacto handle to apply thin CA. That is what I was using and it seemed to work fine. The tear drop shaped applicators never seemed to work very well for me. There has to be a better glue to cement rails to the model, but it seems like CA is what everyone uses. I had a fresh bottle of CA, but who knows how long it had been in the hobby store. Good luck with the rest of the rails.

I spent some time yesterday researching and learning techniques for weathering ships. I don't claim to know a lot about this yet, and I am sure to make some mistakes, but what I did learn looks fairly easy enough to do. The trick of course is doing it in a manner that is subtle, relatively correct, and doesn't paint me into a corner.

I was originally thinking of doing some lightened base coats in a similar manner that I use on aircraft, and I may still do this on the deck. But the hull bottom and sides seem to call out for a different approach using mainly filters, washes, and various forms of streaking. So this is the approach I am going to use initially, and then evaluate it afterwards.

To address the desire to be able to back out, I will be using oils which can easily be removed as long as they have not yet been over coated. The photos I have of the ship show a splotchiness on the hull which I am not sure I can replicate using these techniques, but the rusting and salt spray techniques look effective in the tutorials. So we'll see.

First up however was to get the decals on. I had already gloss coated most of the model so it was simply a matter of adding the hull numbers and the name on the stern. Unfortunately, the white stern lettering was not provided as a decal. But the decal sheet had the name of the ship printed in black at the bottom edge (to identify the decal sheet) and the lettering appeared to be more or less correct in size and font, if not in color.

So I used a white marker and lightly traced over theses black letters, then sprayed over this part of the decal sheet with a decal fixative. I was able to successfully use that for lettering on the stern. The lettering looks a bit rough when viewed up close, but at a normal viewing distance looks fine.

This is the second time I have had to find some sort of solution for small white lettering. I wish I could find a more accurate means of doing this.

Anyway, the decals were gloss coated and I will be starting the weathering process later today.

You are really creative, my friend @clipper! Awesome result so far!

Thanks John (@johnb), Spiros (@fiveten), and George (@gblair).

I've finally gotten to a point on this where I have something to post again. I've applied weathering to the hull and flat coated it afterwards. I wanted to get this done before moving on to adding the next level of details because of the amount of handling needed for weathering.

I've never weathered a ship model before so, I am not sure exactly what I am doing, but it looks okay to me, if perhaps a bit overdone. It's hard to judge what is right because photos I have of the ship after the battles at Guadalcanal show an extremely heavily weathered ship. I was afraid if I tried to replicate that, it would end up a mess, so I limited myself to rust streaks, salt spray, and washes. Of course, as I add more components on the hull, they will need to be weathered as well.

The paint looks awesome, Carl (@clipper), as does the streaking and the weathering. Everything is coming along nicely.

Thanks John (@johnb), George (@gblair), and Spiros (@fiveten). It was a bit scary doing this, but I figured, "What the heck, I might as well give it a try".

Today was fairly busy doing other things, including going to a local model club meeting for the first time in 10 years. But I did get a little bit of work done on the lifeboats. The kit comes with six boats. Two 40 foot launches, two 26 foot launches that set on top of the 40 footers, and two more 26 foot launches that hang from davits.

The Flyhawk kit only supplies PE for the 40 foot interiors and two resin replacements for the 26 footers. I wasn't happy with the kit parts as they are pretty plain. So I've ordered two 3D pieces to replace two of the 26 footers. I'll use the Flyhawk resin parts for the other two 26 footers. The 40 footers got the interior PE and I've added a rudder and keel skeg to dress them up a bit.

There are PE parts for the supports for the two 40 footers and two of the 26 footers. There is also PE for the davits for the other 26 footers. So hopefully, once all this is painted and added, it will look better than the kit original parts.