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[zooma]

I have part 2 of the 1964 Swordsman article, but am waiting on delivery of part 1 still. Beginning of next week should see it arrive, hopefully.


Will

I guess part one would have been in the January 1965 Model Maker magazine?

[madwelshman]

April and May 64 i think is the two part article.

[zooma]

April and May 64 i think is the two part article.

Was that for the smaller 20" Swordsman free plan that came with the April issue?

[madwelshman]

Was that for the smaller 20" Swordsman free plan that came with the April issue?

To be honest, I'm not sure yet.
I'll tell you when the April one arrives.


Will

[ChrisF]

The two part 1964 article was for the 1:12 version and you had to obtain the separate plans and the 1965 article with free plan was for the smaller 1:24 version and was simplified, has balsa hull skins and was designed for just electric rather than an ICE or electric.

Chris

[mrzippy]

The original 33" version articles should be below - I use 'Magazine Exchange' online for back issues, very good service etc.

[mrzippy]

The original 33" version articles should be below - I use 'Magazine Exchange' online for back issues, very good service etc.

[mrzippy]

The original 33" version articles should be below -

[mrzippy]

The original 33" version articles should be below -

[mrzippy]

The original 33" version articles should be below -

[zooma]

Thanks for adding the full build description for the P.Connolly Swordsman plans to this thread Mr Zippy.


Hopefully it will encourage a few more to build a Swordsman - the 1/12 scale makes a really nice size model that performs really well.


Bob.

[zooma]

A little while back I spent some time setting up and making a small jig to enable me to cut triangular section wood on a small bandsaw.

When I went out into the workshop (shed) tonight I saw the lengths of triangular section that I had cut and thought it was about time that I tried to fit them onto the underside of my Swordsman - and I also thought that it would make a nice change from making the rear hatch fit as well as I want it to - as this is taking a little longer than I had hoped!

I decided to fit three lengths on each side of the hull, and it went slightly better than I had feared that it might - but it was getting late - so I will take a look tomorrow to see how they look 

[tonyH]

Triangular stickpics.....

[zooma]

The Aerokits plans shows 5 strakes fitted on each side of the hull but I did read somewhere that during testing with their early Swordsman models, Modav found that 3 strakes worked best.

My home made strakes are a bit over-size anyway and will seldom be seen,  so I went with just 3 on each side and I will look forward to testing them against my other Swordsman when the boat is finished. 

The other Swordsman that I am building is from an old Aerokits kit that I bought on eBay last year, and it came with the original small section triangular wood to be used for the strakes, and this hull has had all 5 of the strakes fitted on both sides as shown on the plan, so if the size and spacing of the strakes makes any difference at all on a 1/12 scale model, I will be able to see it - but I am not expecting much (if any) difference to be honest!

There is also a lot of variation seen on different models regarding how long the strakes should be and where they start and finish.  I have made mine stop level with the transom and tried to follow the line of the keel forwards until they meet the side stringers - pretty much as per plan except for only fitting the 3 on each side and spacing them a little wider apart to equally cover the width of the hull.

I used PVA to fix them onto the hull, and the brass nails were only used to keep the wood against the hull until the glue dried and I have just popped out to the workshop (shed) this morning and removed them all.  The strakes have dried OK, but I do have a couple of small splits to repair - but not as many as I expected when I started nailing the strakes down!

Some very thin super-glue was run along both sides of the strake edges just to see if any of it will wick (self-creep) into any small gaps and to help seal the strakes onto the hull skins.

My next job is to add some small amounts of P38 into the nail holes and to repair the wood where it split - only minor work - but I always find filling small areas like this take a lot more time than it should!

I may test to see how I get on with covering the strakes with cloth and resin, but that could be tricky and so the next best thing would be just to brush resin onto the strakes and along the edges to seal it as best as I can prior to under-coating.

[Colin Bishop]

When I was building th SLEC kits I noticed that the photos online of Fairey craft sported a variety of different sprayrail patterns. Whether they were the originals or subsequent replacements I don't know. Dave Milbourn confirmed that on the models it is the chine rails which do virtually all the work of dispersing spray and that they MUST be sharp edged.

Possibly not so important with the other sprayrails but if you glass cloth them over then you will lose any sharp edges and possibly create voids underneath so I just applied resin directly to the rails after running thin glue along the joint, Superphatic in my case but Cyano will have the same effect of strengthening and waterproofing the joint.

Colin

[zooma]

I think painting resin on these strakes will be by far the easiest solution to harden them and protect them.

Keeping the spray rails "sharp edged" is something I have always done - right from my first Swordsman that I built in the 1960's, but the strakes can also be quite important to keep "sharp edged" too as they help to control the "side slip" (not the spray) and come into play when turning the craft at speed.

This is especially so with a "deep vee constant mono-hedren" hull format like that used on the Swordsman that encourages the craft to "dig-in" and lean over when "cornering" fast.

There may or may not be any straight line "directional stability" advantages to running with sharp edged strakes, but some claim this to be another advantage of adding them.

When I was interested in racing, I also took note of the theory of applying an "orange peel" type texture to the "in-water" under-surfaces as being the "slipperiest" and most efficient surface of least resistance - better (more efficient) to have a textured surface than a polished smooth surface - apparently!

If I could apply a cloth covering with no trapped air pockets well enough, the natural weave could be used to give a textured surface as long as it was wiped off (carded) when wet to remove any surplus resin and not "glazed-over" with too heavy a coat of resin - but to be honest, I have no plans to race anything anymore and a smooth surface is a lot easier to achieve than a textured one - so I won't be spending any time on texturing this Swordsman hull.

I used a very thin super-glue to "wick" into the joint between the strakes and the ply skin using capillary attraction to pull the thin liquid into any tiny gaps that the aliphatic PVA may have bridged.  I may also brush some of this very thin cyno-acrylic into the obechie strakes to harden them before applying the resin.

Whilst I am at it, I may as well treat the chine rails in the same way too.

The resin top coating will seal the strakes and the chine rails nicely and when dry it will leave a nice hard surface to protect the sharp edges from rounding-off too quickly when in regular weekly use.  I am not too sure if it would be best to use glass fibre resin to get the hardest surface coating - but it is a bit smelly to apply in a small workshop (shed) and it is too cold to work outside at the moment so I think I will use epoxy resin this time!

[zooma]

After filling the small holes left after I removed the brass nails that I used to hold the strakes in place until the PVA had dried, I used P38 to fill them along with the odd couple of small splits that I caused when nailing the obechie strakes to the hull.

After sanding the filler back, the finished result looked OK, but I know that when under-coated, any small problems are much easier to see - so I painted the area with white wood primer.

This may have been a better idea if I had done it after coating the strakes with resin - but I forgot (!),  and it's too late now - so I will have to stay with a conventional finish without any epoxy coating!

After recovering from my "mistake", it got me thinking.............

Back when I first started building r/c model boats in the 1960's we never used epoxy finishing coats or cloth coverings (other than nylon and dope for control-liners wings) so we painted the models (often with Humbrol or Japlac enamels without any under-coat!) and sanded and gradually built-up the paint coats to a nice finish - and that was it.

I used my r/c boats a lot and even raced my first "conventionally finished" (see above)  Swordsman in the sea.......and it survived to a grand old age, and when it was finally passed-on to its new owner many years later - it was still intact.

The old Rapier that I recently restored was also "conventionally finished" by its first owner (painted straight onto wood) and as I sanded back down through various layer of paint to the original wood, I could see that it had never had any "specialist" coatings either, and although not finished particularly well, it has survived some really bad treatment before I restored it some 50 plus years later!

Having recalled these things, I reminded myself that r/c model boats have been built and finished "conventionally" for well over fifty years and have mostly survived without any of these technical finishes to help them.

Now I am happy again to stop worrying and continue to paint and finish my Swordsman with "conventional" finishes  - and only use epoxy's etc when it will help me reinforce areas such as motor mounts etc  - and I always used glass fibre to reinforce these areas in the past in any case - so there is nothing really new there either !

I am sure that many will produce "exhibition quality" models using all of the currently available technical finishing aids, but I am happy to get my boats "wet" and enjoy running them a little sooner and accept that my boats will not have a show winning finish - but it won't stop me enjoying them!

[madwelshman]

I can understand why some people go to great lengths to achieve superb detail and a 1st class finish, but I would much prefer a 20 yard boat, one that gets used and looks good one the water, but like my school reports, could have done better.


Then again, I am very much a novice in model boat building, especially from a plan not a kit and without Dads help, so I'll be happy if it even floats and doesn't fill with water quicker than the battery lasts 


Will

[SteamboatPhil]

 

[zooma]

Hi Will,

Once you get started you will soon see for yourself that there is nothing to fear about building r/c powerboats from a good plan (or a classic kit) as it is quite a simple construction....it has to be simple or I wouldn't be able to do it!

I have made card templates from the plans for most of the boats that I have made  - including this Swordsman - and drawing around them onto the plywood makes it easy to make new parts - as often as you like.

The best tool you can have is a small hobby size bandsaw - with one of these,  cutting parts accurately is really easy.  When I made my boats from plans back in the 60's (Suzie Q and Remora),  I only had a Hobbies fretsaw frame - it took longer to cut the parts out  -  but I wasn't in a hurry.

I still have that same Hobbies fret saw frame and its as good now as it was when I first bought it!  Sometimes I still use it as I find that cutting parts out with it is a very satisfying process.

A "20 yard boat sounds good to me" .......but you will probably find that it will still look good when it is a lot closer too 

Bob.

[zooma]

When I checked the strakes tonight they looked OK and they won't need much cleaning-up before I give them an under-coat, so I drilled and fitted the rudder and water-scoop so the underside of the hull is now completed.

Sadly, the only rudders and water-scoops that I can find are the type that come with black moulded plastic parts.  I would love to be able to buy them in brass as the moulding quality of these is quite naff! 

The water-scoop and outlet are moulded OK and if you like the shape they do work. I slightly re-shaped the inlet and fitted it......but I would replace it in a flash if I could find a traditional brass one.

The rudder has the main post mounted in a black moulded plastic post.  I have used these before, but they are getting worse!  Mine came in a Perkins packet, and I think the moulds that are used to make theirs from must be getting well worn as the moulded thread is really badly moulded. 

My fingers were sore after running the brass nut up and down the threaded post several times to try to make it loose enough to be able to turn once it was fitted inside the hull (and harder to reach)!  I was hoping that they used an M8 thread so I could run a die down the shaft to cut the thread properly - but sadly it is not a Metric M8 thread  - and I don't know what it is.

I cleaned-up the moulding line with a scapel and gently re-formed the thread - but only enough to allow the nut to turn - it is still very tight!

I am sure that if anyone started to remake the old originals in brass there would be a lot of us queuing-up to buy them and throwing these plastic ones in the bin!

[zooma]

The Swordsman now has the its underside work finished and it has now been under-coated.  The 3 homemade strakes on each side look good and hopefully they will work well too.

A second Swordsman that I am finishing had been part assembled from an old Aerokits kit when I acquired it, and it has had 5 smaller sized strakes fitted on each size that were made from the smaller size triangular strips that were included in the original kit.  Sadly this small section triangular stripping is now longer available so the only way for us to get some in the future will be for us to make it ourselves.

The two hulls make an interesting contrast with each other, and it will be good to find out what (if any) difference there is to be seen between a hull with 5 smaller strakes on each side of the hull and the other with only 3 (larger) strakes on each side.

Both hulls will have the same rudder and water pick-up fitted.  If I get some spare time later (and I can find some suitable bar) I will replace the plastic posts with some made from brass.  Although I dislike the plastic types, I have to admit that "in use" they have performed well enough in my Rapier so replacing them is not going to take any priority over any other builds at the moment.

I had some spare stripping left over that I had cut to use for strakes and I used them to give a sharper edge to the Aerokits (kit-built) Swordsman as the previous owner had got as far as the skins and fitted the side spray rails, but he then sanded them flush with the underside of the hull, so there was no angled "square shoulder" left on the sides of the hull.

By adding a pair of these oversize strakes along each side it has given a nice angled edge along each side to supplement the function of the strakes......and look good too!  I really like the way this has turned-out, they are not has impressive looking as Harry has achieved with his Sea Raven, but they are over sized and I like the exaggerated look they give.

[tonyH]

Rail Pics...

[zooma]

The last picture shows the Aerokits Swordsman that I am finishing from an original part-built kit, with my own Swordsman in the background that has some white under-coat on it ready for final "snagging" and ready for top coating at a later stage.

The kit model shows the nice small triangular strakes that came in the kit and all five have been fitted on each side, whereas my model only has three of my slightly bigger home made strakes fitted so the two can be compared.

Also visible is the extra home made strakes that I fitted on top of the lower spray rails of the kit built model as they had been sanded flat to the bottom skins by the previous owner/builder, and I wanted to try to re-establish a better profile - even though it is now a heavier that "true scale" would be.

The brass tacks held the triangular section wood in place while the PVA adhesive was drying, but they have since been removed and the tack-holes filled.

When both hulls have their undersides under-coated I can turn them over, put them back on their stands and return to building the super structures again. Painting in this cold weather out in my workshop (shed) is not much fun and I am looking forward to cutting some fresh wood again!

[mbm999]

Are these brass water scoops any good?
They were out of stock for quite a while but seem to be back in now (though i haven't actually checked they really have them - maybe worth a phone call first).
They seem to have gone up in price a little too 

https://howesmodels.co.uk/product/brass-water-scoop-set/

Cheers,
Mark