Its been a while since i last posted
,so i thought i had better bring you up to date
i have built the superstructure and have used 1/8 balsa for the sides and 1/8 ply for the horizontal deck sections with the intention of cutting out the windows and portholes later,everything was ok until i tried cutting out the holes
they came out horrible and stringy with strands of balsa all over
,i attempted to tidy them up but gave up on the idea
and i am now removing the sides one by one, i have routed out new ones out of 1/8 ply along with the cutouts,i have primed and sprayed them on the outer face and have fitted windows out of 2mm lexan that i have routed leaving a flange all round, these have been glued onto the rear surface with RC modellers glue the one they use for clear canopies on aircraft and they are looking ok.
The twin funnels are made, i had initially dreaded making these but they where quite easy the only hard bit was drilling out the centres for the smoke machine to discharge into this is made out of clear lexan slightly bigger than the ones from MMB,s it utilises a fogger from Maplins and a 12volt fan the 24 volt power for the fogger comes from a module i bought on Ebay from China it only cost £4 including delivery this sits along side a couple of boards from Component shop one is a fuse board and the other allows me to use two batteries of the same size and type without fear of back charging, i am using 12 volt 7ah gell cells and i have also used a 25 amp speed controller a viper marine this however i have found to be noisy it makes the motor screech at low revs,The smoke machine exhausts into a short length of 22mm pipe then into a copper 22 to 15 tee splitting into two vertical 15mm pipes running up the funnels it looks quite impressive in the workshop,today i have just drilled the holes in the hull for the portholes (these are a sore point as i ordered them and they took over a month to arrive after ignored emails and empty promises on the phone had to eventually threaten them with informing my card holder
before they took action when they came 2 packs where the wrong size
only one was correct needless to say they wont be getting anymore buisness from me)
So i placed an order with Cornwall model boats and they came a couple of days later
should have dealt with them in the first place
PS will post some pics shortly.So to sum up i have learned a few lessons using balsa with hindsight i would opt for making the superstructure out of plasticard in future, the next build will def be styrene or lexan,I have had the boat in a test tank to check the displacement and set my battery positions it looks like i wont need a lot of ballast i used an old 7 ah gell cell this will be replaced by my smoke machine tank inc water i am near my displacement now so i will have to be carefull how much extra weight it puts on or i will have to get busy with the drill cutting lightning holes etc.