As promised, some pictures of my M.A.S. build.
I bought this plan some 15 years ago:
Having no experience with building from scratch/plank on frame, I started with a small version made out of cardboard.
This 75 cm long hull was then covered in candle wax and covered with glassmatt and polyester, working with the left-over material at my work at the time.
This resulted in a bomb proof hull, which I used as a test platform for various motors, from a geared down 05 car motor on 7 cells NiMH to an 900 motor on 12 cells NiMH:
You see I abandoned the two shaft set-up from the start, as a single large motor and prop is more efficient that two smaller ones, having a minute budget also had to do with it
Having goofed around with it in the local marina, the hull proved very fast on 12 cells and very nimble on 7 cells, but too heavy to carry a deck and superstructure without looking as if it was on the edge of sinking...
Together with my son, who started in the hobby around that time, running my boats, lacking one of his own, we started out building two of these boats, slightly bigger to avoid weight issues.
The picture shows the present state of my son's build; after he'd gotten this far, running FE got his attention and pretty soon the both of us were racing our boats in the National competition.
Needless to say that building and maintaining a fleet of FE boats and battery-packs took a lot of time, which took it's toll on the M.A.S. build.
I kept working on mine every now and then and eventually the hull was sheeted but for the bow section:
The transom was easy:
Notice the camera angle, (almost) not showing the unfinished bow...
As I used the cheapest and lightest ply I could find, the 3,2 mm poplar ply was not just very soft surfaced, but also very reluctant to bend around the bow section, so I had to work around that:
The sheets and stringers ended at the first former and I used 6 mm ply to extend the lines of the stringers, giving a hold for the strips of poplar ply, which were sanded to fit snugly next to each other, forming the curvature of the bow section.
The top view shows, my accuracy on the curve wasn't too good at the time.
I left holes, so the interior could be waterproofed with epoxy once the bow was closed.
In this shape, the hull sat on the shelf for a number of years before I had time to work on it again, between moving to another house and racing six sundays a year.
Next was sanding and glassing the hull.
As I had changed jobs and working with polyester had made me allergic to the stuff, I chose glasscloth and epoxy, far less smelly and it didn't trigger an allergic reaction.
I started with glassing the transom and the steps, once this had cured, I moved on to the sides.
As I wanted to keep all edges sharp, I made templates for the glasscloth and cut the parts with a very small overlap, so it wouldn't bend over the edges. Once cured, I cut the overhang with a sharp (razor) blade and used sandpaper for the rest, carefully watching not to sand through the glasscloth.
Once the glassing was done, I added two thin layers of epoxy to cover the weave of the glass; as I had to work in sections and sand and degrease prior to every coat, this took the better part of a week, one flat surface a day.
Now the hull looks like this:
The rough patches is where I sanded through the glass, exposing the wood, so a few sections were re-done with glass and epoxy.
A close up:
This has been sanded last week and covered with a final layer of epoxy.
Once the epoxy has fully cured, I'm going to do some tank tests to establish the position og the motor, propshaft and batteries.
As the hatches are very small, access will be an issue once the deck is in place, I'm thinking of making a larger section of the deck removable...
Next is filling and sanding before the first coat of paint.
Regards, Jan.