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[SailorGreg]

 Avid readers of the “Who’s building what at the moment?” section might have spotted a post from me revealing that I was about to start the Dumas kit of the Chris Craft Triple Cockpit Runabout.  So having made it public, here we go – the box.





And inside is a whole pile of wood strips and sheets of liteply, with all the parts neatly die cut, fittings, prop shaft and propeller, a full size plan, two similar sized sheets with loads of photos of the build and some very comprehensive instructions. I find Dumas instructions to be very well laid out, well printed and both complete and easy to follow. 10/10 for them.   


The first part of the instructions gives some detailed measurements to lay out the support pieces for the cockpit sides and floors on the various frames.  All the die cut pieces popped out of the sheets with little trouble and no damage. 









Then we glue the two halves of the sheer together as well as the forward part of the keel.





At this point, the instructions suggest pinning the sheer down to the building board, but I decided to fix it differently.  I cut up some of the scrap ply and made a series of clamps to hold the sheer in place, over a sheet of polythene to make sure the building board didn’t become an integral part of the hull.





The frames are then glued into their slots in the sheer.  They are not fixed at 90 degrees to the building board, but rather are given a slight rearward lean.  Dumas provide a simple jig to make sure the frames end up at the correct angle.





I am using Deluxe Materials’ Roket Odourless cyano, which not only glues well but means I don’t finish a session feeling like I have a heavy cold.  I also have a bottle of their ultra-thin to run into any seam which might need a bit of help to stay together.  I can vouch that the ultra-thin, as well as fixing wood very well, is extremely effective should you wish to glue your fingers together.   


With all the frames and the front part of the keel in place, this is what we have –





Next will be sheeting the hull – what could possibly go wrong?   
 
Greg

[Capt Podge]

Well Greg, you've made a good start on this one and positive feedback for Dumas.


Looking forward to seeing /reading more soon.
Ray.

[ChrisF]

Greg

I like your method for holding the deck in place. I'm also a user of that odourless glue as get similarly affected.

Chris

[SailorGreg]

 The rear half of the keel is made with what Dumas call a “butterfly keel”, two pieces that fit into the frames as you can see in the picture.





As you can see, initially I didn’t carry this far forward enough (read the instructions!) and had to add a couple of pieces to extend the butterfly bit.  Next came the chines, which are laminated in place from 3 pieces each side.  The three pieces are glued together for about 50mm then cut to fit against the keel at the front.





Then each strip is glued in place in sequence to give a good, robust chine.








The bottom of the hull is planked with liteply sheets and is fairly straightforward.  A total of 6 pieces cover the whole of the bottom, although the ones towards the bow need a fair bit of twist to get the right shape.











Once the sheets were in place, there looked to be a bit of a discrepancy at the transom.  The wood blocks attached to the transom are due to be sanded to shape to give the elegant curved transom of this boat, but it wasn’t clear to me that there was enough of the bottom sheets to fill the curve.






So I cut a strip from scrap to extend the bottom sheets.  If this turns out to be unnecessary, no problem, but fitting it now is much easier than trying to let a piece into a nearly finished hull.





The edges of the bottom sheets where they meet the chine were planed down to give a flat surface for the side planking.  The section right up in the bow is due to be filled with a block of balsa.









You can see where I added some strengthening pieces to the two frames with large cutouts as they seemed a bit flimsy on their own.  Then the side planking was started.  This is made of balsa strips, although these are shorter than the hull, meaning a joint has to be made along the way.  I followed the suggestion in the instructions by alternating these joints over frames 6 and 7.  The instructions also suggest that once you have 3 or 4 planks on each side, the hull is stiff enough to be removed from the building board.  I did this, and it certainly made fitting the subsequent planks much easier.





I did find that where the planks butted together at the joints there was a discrepancy in how the planks adopted the necessary curve.  Where a plank runs over a frame, it adopts a fair curve, but where it terminates at a frame, the last few inches are straight as there is no bending force beyond the frame.  I didn’t really twig this until I had several planks in place and ended up with a stepped effect like this –






After pondering for a while I opted to leave it alone and allow wood filler and sanding to solve the problem for me.
The instructions do warn that where these balsa planks meet the bow, the sharp curve and twist is likely to cause a few breakages.  They were not wrong.





Rather than worry about this, I decided to ignore the broken bits and later cut them out and form the whole bow section from solid balsa, so planking continued up the hull.  As I got to the planks near the sheer, I could see that as I pushed the tapered pieces into place, the sheer was flexing slightly, so I clamped a stiffener along it to make sure it remained flat as the planking was completed.





That completes the first layer of planking, but as I have said there is now a fair bit of work to get this smooth and fair, ready to take the mahogany planks.  Lots of filling and sanding to come!


Greg
 
 
 
 

[Capt Podge]

Hmmm, interesting write up complete with problems encountered and solutions to overcome them.


Good work Greg 


Ray.

[JimG]

A couple of points for a possible future build.
The stepped joints can be stopped by joining the planks with a scarf joint instead of the butt joint at the former. this does rely on having long enough planks but the scarf joint makes it like you have one longer plank which will bend around the former. You can use the scarf joint between the formers as well giving more flexibility in using odd lengths of planking.
The stress on the planks at the bow causing breakage can be reduced by soaking the balsa first, this softens the wood allowing it to bend more easily. You do need to allow more time for the wood and glue to dry out so need to hold it in place with pins or a clamp. Once dry the wood will tend to hold the curve without stress. Using hot water to soak the wood can make it more pliable.
Jim

[SailorGreg]

Thanks Jim, you are quite right of course.  A moment's thought before I dived in and I could have used full length scarfed planks.      And I did think about soaking the balsa to get it to conform more easily and tried it on one plank.  That one broke more easily than the dry ones, so perhaps I didn't soak it enough, or too much...?  The balsa the planks are made of is pretty soft stuff and has no inherent strength - you can crumble it between your fingers.  On balance, I am happy with how I am doing the bow, but wish I had scarfed the joints.  Next time...!

Greg

[JimG]

Greg , sounds like some really poor quality balsa. Unfortunately since balsa has become a major resource for industry we are left with the rejects. I have had this bad balsa in some ARTF aircraft where the soft balsa used for covering will give a straight break across the grain as it was dried out and had poor strength.
Jim
 

[SailorGreg]

 A couple of the frames were not entirely flat, the worse one being the one that forms the front of the front cockpit, where the instrument panel is fitted.  I straightened it out by fitting a beefy beam to it.





I was now ready to fit the balsa blocks in the bow area, but I wanted to make sure that the balsa planks were secure where they met frame 1 before I cut out the broken or ill-fitted ends.  I mixed up some 30 minute Z-poxy and smeared it around the inside of the joints.





Then I cut off the broken ends ready to fill the bow area with balsa.  Here’s a sequence of pictures -














Interestingly, the balsa provided in the kit for this infill, plus a spare bit I used to fill the unplanned infill, were much harder than the plank material and carved to shape more like wood than a piece of expanded polystyrene.  I knew there were different hardness grades of balsa but I suspect I had examples of the two extremes here.


The instructions suggest now is a good time to seal the inside of the hull, so I did.  First, I taped up the seams in the bottom panels to stop any leakage from less-than-perfect joints then I used a slightly thinned epoxy to coat the entire inside surface.  I paid particular attention to the area forward of frame 4 (the one with the added stiffener) which will be completely inaccessible once the deck goes on. 






The epoxy helped to stiffen the balsa planking and I now faced a fairly tedious round of filling and sanding to rectify the undulations on the planking.  Teach me to take a little (lot?) more care in future.   








I started using the light coloured filler just because it matched the wood more, although of course that matters not a jot as it will all be covered by the mahogany planking.  I then used the darker one and found that better because it was much easier to see where I had sanded through to the balsa planking.  So I am sticking with the darker until I have a nice smooth, fair hull.


I have made complimentary comments about the Dumas instructions so I thought I would show an example of them.  They are comprehensive with clear diagrams, well printed and easy to follow. 





So just making dust at the moment.  Hopefully proper building will re-commence shortly.


Happy building and sailing folks.


Greg

[SailorGreg]

 I’m not quite there yet with the filling and sanding of the hull – there’s only so much sanding I can take in one go – but I have been progressing some other bits of the build to keep my enthusiasm going.  The frames all have flat tops to make it easy to build the hull framework upside down on the building board, but they need curved tops to support the nicely curved deck.  The kit supplies the necessary add-ons, and the instructions say just glue them edge to edge on the top of the frames.  I was a bit dubious about this, as the die-cut liteply doesn’t have the neatest, squarest edges and the soft core of the ply is often ragged.  I sanded the edges as square as I could, and actually everything glued together very well, so I guess Dumas know what they are talking about.
 

 
 A stringer is then added to the sides of the frames, which stabilises everything nicely.
 

 
At this point, the three cockpits need to be furnished and finished, as once the deck goes on access to them is very restricted.  The front cockpit floor is glued in place, which gave me pause for thought as it isn’t a watertight fit but once glued in, there is no way to extract any dribbles of water that might find their way underneath.  I remedied this by firstly marking out where the cockpit seat would sit, then cutting a large hole that the seat will hide to allow the removal of any stray drips.  The seat will, of course, need to be removable, but that shouldn’t pose too much of a problem.
 

 
The cockpit floor was then painted and the gear shift lever added.  The instructions just have this sitting in a slot in the floor but I fancied something that looked a little more finished.  I took a piece of shrink wrap and superglued it into the slot –
 

 
Then fitted the gear lever on the underside of the floor –
 

 
And with some cautious application of heat, shrunk the shrink wrap around the lever to represent a gaiter of some sort.  I have no idea if this is an accurate detail, but it pleases me. 
 

 
I should say that this is not the gear lever supplied with the kit, as I contrived to lose that somewhere in the workshop.  This one is a piece of brass tube, squashed flat over most of its length and with a small dome of filler on top.  Once the floor was finished, I did glue it in place.
 
The cockpit sides are formed from fairly thin mahogany sheet.  All the mahogany parts are stained with a water based stain that comes with the kit.  The instructions say to glue these pieces in place before staining because, in their words, “the cockpit sides curl up like a potato chip when the water-based stain is applied…”.  Well, we don’t want that do we?  But I wanted to give a good varnished finish to the cockpits and doubted I could manage that with the pieces in situ, so I glued some stiffeners to each cockpit side piece to keep them flat as I worked on them.   When installed, these stiffeners will sit between the cockpit side and the hull planking, so won’t be seen.
 

 
While mahogany pieces are supplied for the cockpit sides, nothing is provided for the front faces of the second and third cockpits, which are formed by the liteply frames.  The instructions suggest staining these but I felt that was a poor substitute for real wood, and would not match the sides at all well.  So I took a piece of mahogany sheet and cut two pieces to size to fit the cockpit front faces.
 

 
It also seemed to me that some of the liteply would be visible around the edges of the seats when these were fitted so I added a few more pieces to hide these areas.  It might turn out, when I get to the fitting of the seats, that this is unnecessary, but it’s easeier to do this now than try and fit little bits once the decks are on.
 

 
All the mahogany pieces for the cockpits were then stained and have received multiple coats of varnish. 
 

 
I am currently up to nine coats of varnish on these pieces, and will leave them to harden for a couple of days then give them a cut back and polish, which should give the mirror finish that these boats always boasted.
 
One more pat on the back for Dumas – when searching out the gear lever among the bag of fittings, I noticed that three of the fittings, including the steering wheel, were damaged.  An e-mail to Dumas and replacements were quickly in the post – and they included a second steering wheel for my Chris Craft Runabout model, which I admitted I had broken by my own clumsiness, and all for the cost of the postage from the USA.  Thank you Dumas. 
 
Happy sailing folks!
 
Greg

[DJW]

Hi Greg


Coming along very nicely, always good to see the varnish going on..!


Best regards
David.

[SailorGreg]

 Thanks David, and yes, I always enjoy the anticipation of putting the varnish on.  Here are a few shots of the polishing process.  As I said before, there are 9 (I think) coats on the cockpit interior pieces.  As I could lay all these flat when varnishing I didn’t need to worry too much about runs, although the horizontal surface is great for settling dust!  I left them all to harden off for about 4 or 5 days, then attacked them with wet and dry paper with lots of water.  I started the first couple with 600, then went 800, 1200, 1500, but after a while I decided that as the surface was already pretty flat, I only needed 1200 and 1500.  Here is one of the pieces after an initial rubbing down.
 

 
A bit more rubbing and the whole surface is matt.
 

 
Then the polishing compound to give that lovely shiny finish.
 

 
(The polishing compound I use is from Easy Composites but I bought it some time ago and I can’t see the same thing on their website.  I think this is the equivalent, and is what I will buy if my current bottle ever runs out.)
 
Incidentally, I mentioned before that the instructions suggest that these pieces are glued in place before finishing as they will curl up otherwise.  The pieces I added in for the forward faces of the cockpits are to be glued flat on the frames, so have no stiffening bits on the back face to keep them flat.  Sure enough, when I was wet sanding them, they curled up “like a potato chip” in the words of the instructions.
 

 
Fortunately, most of the curl disappeared as the wood dried, and the last vestige of it was no problem when gluing in place.
 
While I was waiting for the varnish to harden thoroughly, I started on the hatches which are built in situ to ensure a good fit.  The hatch over the engine compartment was first and the frame is glued together from the supplied die cut pieces.
 

 
When I had finished the framework. I noticed one of the butt joints of the cross pieces was not properly glued, so added a drop of thin CA to fix it.  Well, that was the intention but that thin stuff don’t half run when you tip the bottle a little too quick.  I successfully glued that whole side of the hatch into the deck frame.      I did try prising it apart –
 

 
But that didn’t work and the only thing I could do was cut the whole glued mess out and start again.  Fortunately I could recover all the curved beams so I didn't need to cut new ones.  Second time lucky!
 

 
All good this time,      so on with the hatch panels.
 

 
I wanted the engine compartment painted grey and figured I would get a better coverage before the decks were put on, so I masked off everything else and sprayed the compartment.
 

 
Before I glued the cockpit panels in place, I taped a short piece of line between the stern area and the engine compartment so I could pull servo leads (and possibly water cooling tubes) past the rear-most cockpit.
 

 
I then glued the finished pieces in place, using scrap pieces to keep the slightly curled pieces flat.
 

 
Then the tops of the finished pieces were planed down flush with the framing ready for the deck to be added
 

 
And here are the finished cockpits –
 

 
Next will be fitting the deck pieces, then we will be perilously close to starting the mahogany planking.  That should be fun!
 
Greg
 

[Tworrs]

That is looking so good Greg.

[SailorGreg]

That is looking so good Greg.

Thanks.  I hope the finished article lives up to your praise!

[SailorGreg]

 The last bit of construction before the mahogany overcoat goes on.  Firstly, the beams and frames are faired ready to take the deck pieces.
 

 
Then the die cut decks are glued in place.  Everything lines up very well, the cutting of the deck pieces is spot on.
 

 

 
Before gluing down, I sealed the underside of the deck, as well as any unsealed structure, with a coat of this –
 

 
I bought this to see if it could be used in place of epoxy when glassing the finished hull, but although it fixes the glass cloth to the wood very effectively, it doesn’t make the glass cloth vanish as epoxy does, and it doesn’t build up a finished thickness like epoxy.  To be fair, it’s not intended to be used for that sort of finish, so no criticism of Eze Kote is intended – I just wanted to try it out.  It is obviously very good for its intended purpose (skinning balsa and foam for model aircraft), and is very handy for sealing those hidden areas.  It cleans up with water, so no sticky mess left over.


With the decks in place, the two hatches were trimmed and sanded to a comfortable fit.
 

 
The shape of the curved side decks is created from laminations of balsa strip which are then carved and sanded to the correct shape.  Dumas provides a set of templates to help make everything correct and symmetrical.
 

 

 

 
I took off as much as I dared with a plane to keep the dust level down before resorting to sanding.  After some careful final shaping, the decks are ready for the next stage.
 

 
I will now give everything a final fill and sand (why is it that however hard you looked last time, there are always a few more bits that need filling?), then we are on to the mahogany planking.
 
Happy building folks
 
Greg

[Stuw]

Really enjoying seeing your progress and quality of workmanship 

[SailorGreg]

Thanks Stu.

And if anyone thinks I am a bit OTT about getting a nice shiny finish, take a look at how the experts do it on the full size boats!

Greg

[SailorGreg]

 The Dumas instructions are very detailed on the procedure for adding the mahogany planking.  On the basis that they know a lot more about building this boat than I do, I followed the instructions to the letter (well almost – see later!).  Most of the planking is done with ½” planks, with some 3/8” and 1/8” pieces as well for the trickier areas, all 1/16” thick.
First I jumped ahead in the instructions to a bit of wood bending.  The bow is covered with a lamination of three ½” strips which need bending around a supplied jig.  I fixed the jig to a piece of board, lifted on spacers so it was in the middle of the strip to be bent.
 

 
The instructions suggest two methods for making the mahogany more flexible, soaking in water and ammonia or hot bending over the shank of a soldering iron.  I am sure both will work fine, but I tried a technique I have used before involving steam bending the wood using a microwave.  Here is how it works.  First, make sure your length of wood fits in the microwave!  Then take a piece of paper towel, wrap it around the wood and soak it in water.  Put this package into a plastic bag, but don’t seal it (unless you want to make a mess of the inside of your microwave!).  Put into the microwave for 2 ½ minutes on full power, then remove (ideally with gloves    ), take off the paper towel and bend the piece around the jig.  I am happy to report that my 1/16” thick pieces bent easily without any sign of cracking or splintering, and I did all three pieces in rapid succession.
 

 

 
I left the pieces overnight to dry and when I took them off the jig, I tied them in the curve to prevent any tendency for them to relax back to their original straightness, as it will be a while before I get to fix them in place.





The first step in the planking instructions is to fix a ½” plank along the chine and a 1/8” strip along the very top of the hull where it joins the deck.  The flexibility of the thin strip made getting an even curve tricky, but as a first step this was straightforward.
 

 
The next couple of planks are fairly easy as they follow the line of the chine plank without any issue.  The instructions would have you continue planking the hull sides up to the 1/8” strip, then go on to planking the hull bottom.  I reckoned I needed a little practice and decided to do the hull bottom (which gets painted) after doing the first three planks on the sides.  If I missed out on perfection then a little filler would be hidden from sight.  So on to covering the bottom.  The planking stock had quite a few strips that were a long way from straight, so I sorted through to find the straightest ones and put those aside for the sides, and used the wavy ones for my bottom planking.  The first bottom plank is placed a carefully measured distance from the centreline and just touches the chine plank at the bow. I didn’t try to do the full length in one go on any of the bottom planks.  The straight piece from the transom is easy, but the forward piece which twists as it approaches the bow I did separately.  Much easier than having the full length of the plank waving around as you try to finesse the fit of the forward taper. 
 

 

 
Then planking continues outboard to the chine.  Most of these planks need fitting against the chine plank.  I did a little smoothing work on the hull before fitting the tapered forward end as the hull wasn’t always flat where I wanted it to be.  But fitting the short forward pieces went along fairly well.
 

 

 
I found that doing these planks in two pieces meant I could glue each piece down in one go.  I marked on the plywood base where the plank would lie, spread CA over the full length and laid the plank in place beginning at one end and pushing 6-8” in place at a time, making sure it was snug against its neighbour.  I found the glue grabbed quickly enough for this to work well.


Once planked out to the chine, the gap in the middle of the bottom is filled.  First, a 1/8” strip is laid along the centreline.  I gave the centreline a gentle sand to make sure there was a flat surface for this trip to attach to.  I also drew some tramlines along the centreline to make sure the piece ended up straight and central.
 

 

 
The just fill in the gap with planks.  The final gap filler is less than a full plank width, and it was a lot easier to do this in short lengths than to try to cut a full plank to fit.
 

 
I suspect I have done the easiest bit of the planking (as well as allowing myself a few mistakes which will vanish under the paint  ) and will embark on the side planking next.  In the meantime…
 
Happy building folks!
 
Greg

[Daleb]

Great work Greg, she's coming along nicely


Dale.

[SailorGreg]

 Well, building has been a bit off and on recently, more off than on actually.  Lots of other stuff to do!  But I have completed the mahogany planking of the hull, so here are a few of the steps along the way and some of the lessons I learnt in the process.
 
Before moving onto the side planking, I gave the bottom a preliminary sand.  I scribbled all over it first so I could see where I had been, and most of the sanding was done with a small oscillating sander.
 

 

 
I did end up with a fair number of hairline gaps between planks like this 
 

 
I filled them with wood filler.  I resolved to pay more attention to the plank edges when I did the sides to minimise these annoying little gaps.  I started off using a mahogany filler I had used previously on this type of build, but it seemed very pale in comparison to the wood, so I moved quickly on to this –
 

 
Which matched the wood rather better.  You will see plenty of examples of its use in upcoming pictures!  Once the bottom had been fettled a bit, I moved on to the sides.  You might recall I had already done 3 planks a side, working up from the chine, before deciding to complete the bottom, but these 3 were the straightforward ones.  Plank 4 was persuaded to lie alongside number 3, but plank 5 was never going to follow along, the exaggerated flare of the hull making it lie entirely differently.  This is, I should say, all described fully in the instructions, with the addition of stealers at the bow a necessity to plank the flared hull.
 

 
Plank 5 was the last one fitted in one piece.  All planks after this were fitted in 2 or 3 pieces, so that the tapered ends could be fitted without worrying about getting the other end to fit properly.  Incidentally, I fitted the planks, including the full length ones, by marking on the sub-planking the edges of the plank, applying CA to the whole area and then laying the plank in place, starting at one end and holding each short section in place until it grabbed, then moving on along the plank.  I found this easier than trying to add the glue under a part-fixed plank, which is what the instructions appear to suggest.  Here’s a sequence showing how a plank tapered at each end was fitted in 3 bits.  The final piece was shaped to fit the taper but left over-long, then carefully trimmed to fit by repeated gentle touching against a disc sander.

 

 

 

 
In the last picture you can also see the stealer fitted between planks 4 and 5.  As I got closer to the top, the spaces to be filled got very long and thin –
 

 
You have to just creep up patiently on the right size and shape to fill these gaps.  I used scraping to do the fine tuning –
 

 
The blade is moving from right to left in this picture.  I did break a couple of pieces just as I was getting to the perfect fit, but in the end I got there.  (This one below was actually done in one piece as it was fairly short, although I was prepared to scrap it and do a 2 piece job if I went a bit too far with the scraping.)

 

 
Once I had all the hull planking complete, I dug out the steam-bent strips (see previous exciting episode) to fix around the bow.
 

 
A few scraps were added to fill in some small gaps, although most of these were planed/sanded away as the bow was shaped.  Here it is nearly finished.
 

 
As you can see, I also did a little experimenting with the mahogany dye provided in the kit.  More on that later.  Now was the time for some serious sanding to fair the hull, remove glue and filler marks, and generally make it look presentable.  The flat areas were easy enough with the electric sander, but for the flared forward hull I used a custom sanding block.  This was a section of cardboard tube cut from the container of a whisky bottle, which was firm enough to support the paper but flexible enough to adopt the curve of the hull.  (Don’t worry if you haven’t got a cardboard tube – just send me a bottle of whisky and I will send you, entirely free, the cardboard tube.    )
 

 
I am still doing the final sanding.  I started out with 80 grit paper, but was continually aware that the planking is only 1/16” thick, and I was scared I would go right through if I was too energetic.  I moved on to 120 grade, which takes a while to cut out the blemishes but keeps me from cutting too much away if I suffer a fit of enthusiasm.  I also keep finding places where the seams between planks need a touch more glue, or a little filling. This bit seems to be going on for ever, and I suspect I might be getting a bit fixated on perfection when the epoxy and glass sheathing will actually fill and reinforce minor imperfections.  Time to grit my teeth and move on!   
 
Happy sailing folks.
 
Greg

[DJW]

An exciting part of the build when the mahogany planks are going on..!  Like you I found it hard to find a filler that matches the wood, some are so far off the mark, closer to a purple colour...  Best match I found and use is from Osmo.


But the build is looking good, look forward to more progress..!


Best regards
David.

[SailorGreg]

Thanks David for the encouraging words!   

 Having completed the hull planking, the instructions suggest going on to plank the deck, but I decided to do the basic fitting of the propulsion and steering first.  A couple of reasons for this – firstly, I just wanted a change from planking, and second I thought it would be better to do the cutting and gluing inside the hull before the final decking was in place in case I slipped or dribbled epoxy.  So first was the rudder tube.  Just a brass tube set into a block of wood inside the hull.  I replaced the kit supplied block with one just a little more substantial.
 

 
The tube isn’t glued in place just yet – I will probably leave that until after I have glassed the hull.  I also soldered the rudder blade onto the shaft.  Yes, it needs a bit of cleaning up!
 

 
The internals of the hull at the stern are designed to accommodate a standard size servo for the steering.  Interestingly, I found that standard size servos are not all the same size.  The first servo I tried (a Hitec one) was a fraction too big to fit between the support pieces, but a Turnigy one fitted nicely (although the screws did come perilously close to the edge of the support pieces, and I added an extra piece where one screw broke through the side of the wood).  I wonder why manufacturers don’t stick to a common size? 
 

 
The kit provides a full length prop shaft and tube as well as a propeller, but all use those quaint old imperial dimensions and I have a small supply of propulsion bits and pieces that are all metric so I put the kit pieces to one side and ordered a new M4 shaft and tube from Prop Shop.  I also wanted an exposed shaft under the hull rather than the full length tube as provided, so went for a short tube.  I already had an M4 P-bracket and a couple of candidate props.  Now that bit where you start cutting big holes in your carefully constructed hull.
 

 
And then the tube was epoxied in place.  I put the shaft and prop in place while the glue was setting so I knew it was aligned properly and at the correct angle to give clearance for the prop.
 

 
Next was the hole for the P-bracket.
 

 
I then test fitted the whole lot with the motor temporarily propped in place to make sure it was all lined up.  I taped up the universal joint (another Prop Shop product) so that the whole drive train was nice and rigid to give me an idea of motor placement.  As you will see later, I turned the motor mount around for the final fitting.
 

 

 
I didn’t glue the P-bracket in place yet as I felt it would make the glassing of the hull a bit tricky in that area, but I did glue in a block to support the bracket internally and also built a small box that will later be filled with epoxy to lock the p-bracket in place.
 

 

 
The motor base (a piece of 6mm ply) was set into a bed of thickened epoxy.
 

 

 
With the drive train sorted out as far as I could at this stage, I returned to the mahogany planking of the deck.  This starts with several die cut pieces which are glued in place to form the outline of the areas to be planked.
 



Then some more die cut pieces are added to fill in large parts of the areas around the cockpits.




 
The foredeck comes next with planking strips alternating with the styrene strips representing the caulking of the original.  This bit is fairly straightforward, just cutting and shaping to fit.
 

 
I found the trickiest bit was cutting the very acute angle on some of the styrene strips to give a neat join with the styrene border, such as the ones on the outer edges of the planking in the picture below.  I had to have several goes at most of them to get a decent join.
 

 
This picture also shows the shape of the last pieces needed to complete the foredeck planking.  I traced the shape on a piece of paper, cut this out and fine-tuned its fit to the space, then transferred the shape to a piece of waste mahogany sheet (as the spaces were just a bit wider than the 3/8” planking being used).  Here’s a piece on its final fitting –
 

 

 
And that’s about as far as I have got.  The deck planking will continue and I think the rolled side decks will be a bit of a challenge to get the strips in place without any gaps, but isn’t that all part of the fun? 
 
Happy building and sailing folks
 
Greg
 

[SailorGreg]

 Wow, a month since the last post.  Not sure where the time goes.  Summer (even the poor apology we have had this year) is to blame I reckon.  Too many distractions.  Just a note – if you pay attention to the pictures that follow you might notice sometimes a step I just described hasn’t been done in later pictures.  That’s because I tend to do a bit of one job and then a bit of another.  I have tried to be a bit more organised and sequential in this log.
Now to shape the cockpit openings.  I very quickly discovered that I needed to mask off the carefully finished cockpit internal sides to prevent scratching them.     So I did.
 

 
The instructions suggest a Dremel sanding drum to shape the curved corners, so being an obedient sort of chap, that’s what I did –
 

 
Although I found a small aerosol can was best for finishing them off.
 

 
Next I sanded the engine hatch to a comfortable fit – close enough to look good but loose enough to allow for some finish on the edges (I hope).  I did need a temporary handle to lift it in and out as I sanded, tested, sanded, etc.
 

 
The hatch was then planked, a straightforward job as everything was – well, straight!
 

 

 
I did a similar job on the rear trapdoor (as it is called in the instructions – the hatch over the rudder area).  The planking here carries on to the edge of the rear cockpit, so after each few planks I cut through at the join to keep the hatch separate.
 

 

 
This completed all the planking on the relatively flat areas of the deck. I did some initial scraping of the plastic strips now, just as a break from gluing on planks.
 

 
Then moved on to what I suspected was the trickiest part of the planking, which was the rolled deck edges.  The kit supplies 1/8” strips for this, and recommends bevelling the edges to get a close joint.  The instructions also suggest not attempting to fit a single strip but to do each strip in 2 or 3 pieces.  As the strips also need tapering at each end, that seemed an eminently sensible precaution, so I set off doing it that way.
 

 
I quickly discovered that the 1/8” strips had quite a lot of wild grain in them, leading to several annoying breaks as I worked on them, like this –
 

 
This fragility really started to annoy as I accumulated more and more broken bits.  Of course, mostly they never broke when I started working on them, only when I had shaped a piece and was creeping up on the final fit, then snap!     But persevere, you’ll get there!  Actually, if I was careful and the strip was ready to be fitted, I could reassemble the broken bits in place on the boat with no discernible break.  As the planks were added, the gap left became a long thin one like this –
 

 
This now became less of a skilled fitting exercise and more of a random selection of different sized splinters and slivers to see which best fitted the gap left.  The “2 or 3 Pieces” became “as many as it takes to fill the gap”.  On one side, the final gap was filled with a short piece –
 

 
Looked horrible, but wasn’t too bad once planed and sanded down –
 

 
As I mentioned above, each plank (at least those that qualified for the term, rather than the slivers!) needed a bevel on one edge to snug up to its neighbour.  It took me a while (and many snapped pieces) to work out the best way of getting this bevel on the edge of a fragile 1/8” by 1/16” strip.  In the end I developed a technique which is almost impossible to describe, but this link shows a video is worth a thousand words (although there was a minute of your life you will never see again.  Sorry).  I used a folded sanding disc to do the sanding as it had a lot of rigidity, and moved my supporting finger back and forth so that the area being sanded was always supported.  (And I am left handed, so all you dextrous folk need to watch that in a mirror.)

Finally, I had persuaded all the planks, strips, splinters, wedges and just a little bit of filler into place, and the very last gap of the planking looked like this –
 

 
And then it was done.  I can’t pretend that the fitting of the 1/8” strips was easy and ended up more like assembling a sort of free form jigsaw, but when it was all done, it didn’t look too bad.  I have started a vigorous sanding of everything now to get a fair surface and lose all those glue stains.
 

 
I still have to plank the transom, but that ought to be a doddle after the last bit of planking.  The next big job will be glassing the hull, which I will do outside so I can work all round the boat, so I need some calm, warm, dry weather – you know, summer weather.  Remember that?
 
Happy building and sailing folks
 
Greg
 

[derekwarner]

Greg......that white caulking after the blade shaving & sanding looks superb  ...well done!


Derek

[SailorGreg]

Thanks Derek.  It is always satisfying to take a sander to some messy woodwork and see a nice even finish appear.  So many little messy bits hidden in the overall effect!   

  Greg