This is really great Mike. Finally joined up on here to follow this build properly and see the photos.
I have been building one of these myself since 2009, and it has certainly tested my patience, but you are really 'sailing' through it. Looks superb and I only wish I'd had your build to follow while I was doing mine.
The problems I have had are as follows, this Amati kit is good but certainly not without (niggling) fault. This is one of my first kit boat builds, but I have done a couple of scratch models over the years, so I was expecting a bit better I think. For those thinking of tackling this kit, it seems deceptively simple, but it does need a bit of head scratching. Arguably that is part of the fun of course!
1. The kit is designed for RC but the installation seems to have been a bit of an afterthought - I am using the trans kit reduction units (they are too noisy, I hope to get rid of them) but I hated the oversize shafts and plastic props supplied - on the real boats the shafts are exposed on leaving the hull and at quite a steep rake to climb up to the engine bay (the twin V8's are installed under the sundeck, not under the passenger seat). There are no proper scale prop supports supplied so had to a lot of drawing and thinking to sort the whole thing out. It is a shame that the builder has to resort to making up his own brass bits and pieces, that isn't good enough at this price in my view.
2. The laser cut ply deck section shapes do not match the laser cut mahogany sections. Quite bizarre that. I considered the mahogany to be the master, and recut the ply ones from my own material. You've solved that one as well!
3. Different mahogany shades on the laser cut bits - my 'saxboards' wouldn't match left to right - I had to buy new mahogany, took an age to get some of the right shade. Same with the 5x5mm fender strips.
4. Variable mahogany strips - when varnished mine came out all sorts of different shades. Yours have a completely different grain to mine, but look an even colour so you should be good.
4. Not enough spare material for the 1x1mm lime - ran out despite being very careful and had to get some more from an Amati stockist; again wasted a lot of time on that.
5. Instructions go all the way to the end of the hull build, and then suddenly it turns into a lovely finished boat with some arrows pointing out where to mount things! I was hoping there would be some advice on finishing, some better photos around the bows (note they have the mounting height of the chrome prow wrong - it should fit to the top of the saxboards)
6. The chrome finisher strips look like someone has trampled all over them. I hope they look ok once fixed to the boat.
7. My windscreen was bent out of shape. The other fittings are nice, but the etch satin parts are too matt. They can be polished up, but then they'll go 'off' over time?
I had terrible trouble around the bow by the way, just trying to get nice even profile deck lines fore-to-aft is a big challenge while keeping the plan view deck shape curve consistent port to starboard. You didn't seem to have any trouble getting that right straight from the off Mike. Impressive. I spent many weeks on that.
Cheers, Colin