Next up is a couple of coats of white emulsion, to help the eyes judge its size and shapes and a few attacks with the sand paper again and we are ready for the fibreglass. The costly stuff. I brought a 5kilo bucket of fibre glass from fleabay and with a ten pound delivery fee from Belfast we are hit with a massive £35 bill. I know its a heady cost, but this boat is about to get even more expencive as I also buy a box of fibreglass off cuts for another tenner but this time i go and collect it. Yes I know £45 for a whole bespoke hull its outragously expencive, but some times my wallet runs away with my great ideas. So fourty notes less we start the fibre glassing. This is when we now discuss the many layers and techniques and weights of fabrics etc. Or we stick two layers of the course fluffy stuff on the foam hull followed by another two layers of the tissue paper fully stuff, before the stinky stuff goes jelly like or I start to float around the greenhouse without the aid of wings. PLEASE NOTE THESE TECHICAL TERMS MAY CONFUSE SOME PEOPLE WITH A LESS TECHNICHAL BRAIN, lol
You will notice that the fibreglass stinky stuff has moulded its self to the hull foam core perfectly and you can see that I spent hours of hard work afterwards sanding little humps and ridges into the perfectly smoth fibreglass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You can also see that the keel has a tube like design on the bottom of it. I have absolutly no reason why they have a tube like thingy on the base of the keel but if its goodenough for Dame Ellen McAurther its good enough for me.
What we now need to sort out is the top half which is going to house two bait/lead delivery tubes on the stern.
These were formed by sticking sand paper to one of the said delivery tubes and sanding away the unwanted foam and fibrglass untill it looked sort of right.
We will eventualy have the whole of the stern and the tubes fibreglassed in place. For now we have two slight problems at the moment. One is I cant afford any more fibreglass resin and secondly I have no idea how to make the release catchs for the tubes using servos and bits of bent wire?
Once the fibreglass stopped being stinky, we when removed basicly every thing inside the hull , foam wise except for the two ends, the bow is for anti sinking and the stern because Ii am yet to afford the servos to then play with untill I get the bait tubes to work and all the mounting brackets in place ect.
So this is the sern tube area for the prop I am looking at swinging a 50mm to start may be even bigger. We are looking more for power than speed . she is to get through the first three breakers then its easy going after that.
We can also stick a piece of wood to the inside end of the round keel tube before adding the steel bars for ballest weights and give the rudder something to hold onto and i do like the idea of a tube rudder. With this area we also had four layers of rough fully stuff and three layers of tissue papper fully stuff as reinforcement to this arearather than two.
This is the bow with the floatation foam core, lol. please note I have left a section of celotex foam on all sides about two inchs square, this is because i shall cut a section 35mm square in it all the way around the outside edge of the fibreglass hull and fill it with timber and fibre resin and talc and of course fluffy stuff to strenghen the sides. As the top will consist of a single sheet of flat perspex sheet ten mm thick and bolted/screwed into the timber batton all the way round so she is waterproof to go through waves as well as over them.
again the stern section with the cavernous room to fit all the nice elctonics and servos and motors, none of your fiddly stuff here if i cant get two hands in then i ant intrested in doing it. we might also be using an old windscreen wiper motor and to be safe opted for more room, To flaten the whole top for the lid to fit after we have cast the timber batton we intend to stick several pieces of sand paper to an old piece of thick glass and to sand paper the whole hull in one go.
Thats it for now the servos and electrric motors are going to get fitted very soon . just as soon as i can afford to go over to Brierley Hill and the local model shop to buy the spektrum 5 2gig set up for a ton he has sorted out for me.
But untill the hull is finished to the state where , when i take it in we can try placing where we want to stick servos and the like.
To the many fisherman out there like me who want to build your own bait boat, yes there are lots of hulls to buy and kits to make and the like. All of them are totaly fantastic and perfect for you. Where as i have a bait boat able to take at least two, one kilo loads, ( estimated to be able to do a single three kilo load as well) out past most peoples ideas of sanity and so far a cost of £45 for fibreglass inc postage and a cocntrol kit set of another £100. yes its cheaper to buy them on fleabay but, no where near as helpfull as my local model shop dealer, who will not only sell me the set, but painstakingly, slowly explain, in small simple words of less than two sillibles and will have to do it several times before i understand what he is talking about, that part is priceless and well worth the extra quids of going to the shop.
pete
ho forgot to say the when i first started we wanted this to be a petrol powerd version, It is also being built at the exact same time as this electric motored version, but we are making a better job of it rather than the more less refind version here,
enjoy pete