I decided to rebuild the boat. I disassembled the hull, and used the pieces as a template to make a template out of cardstock. After adjusting the lines a little, I cut them out of some new styrene I had just purchased. I believe the hull was made of .060”, and glued together with model cement. Clamping pressure was a combination of masking tape and “stitch and glue”. Stitch and Glue is a term used in the construction of plywood boats with no internal framing, and consists of a series of small holes drilled near the edge of mating sheets. Copper wire/electrical ties are used then to pull the sheets together to hold the correct curves while the glue dried. No internal frames were used, the hull is quite small, and a monocoque style construction works well. Once the glue was dried, I reinforced the seams on the inside with epoxy thickened with WEST System 404 High Strength additive. The solvents in polyester resin can melt the styrene sheets, so when I need resin, I only use epoxy. After building multiple hulls as a kid, this is my preferred method of making a small hull, as the reinforced corners add a lot of stability and strength. If some minor plastic creep does occur, it has a tendency of concaving the sides and bottoms slightly, which doesn’t detract from the looks.
The outside was faired with more epoxy, this time thickened with WEST System 410 Light Weight additive added, as this sands very nicely. The subdeck uses two sheets of .060” styrene laminated together, with the lower sheet fitting snugly inside of the hull, and the top sheet sitting on top. The transom is made up of some mahogany strips I ripped on the table saw. The mahogany is scrounged from a reception counter that Mrs. CyberBOB’s Grandfather worked at, and is about 90 years old, so has a deep, rich colour, and a tight grain pattern, making it ideal for scale planks. No stain was added to this wood, it is finished with an oil based polyurethane used for hard wood floors.