I liked the look of the Sea Rover, and as my friend was wanting to try building a boat, I thought the Sea Rover would be a straighforward build for him. He had looked at kits that I sent links to, but they were expensive and pretty small for the money.
Sea Rover is a decent size of model to build, and should be quite inexpensive the way I am planning on doing it.
A request for a copy of the plan was quickly answered (thanks very much Harry) and I started tracing it from my laptop, liking the look of it more and more.
I decided I wanted to build one as well, it made sense really!.
My budget is limited, so I picked the cheapest material I could find that would still be strong...... Liteply, very nice quality, a bit harder than all my old liteply scraps. Also very light coloured, appearing closer to birch ply than my liteply bits from years ago. . Anyway, I thought 3 sheets (1ft x 4ft) would be enough, mmmm, not really, I have had to make 3 of the bulkheads from my scraps box. Not an issue, they are inside and shouldnt be too noticeable. I might have been able to get them from whats left after cutting out sides and bottom skins, but I wont know till after I have built the hull up to that point!
My 'bitser' bulkheads will do the job, but I should have really got another sheet. My friend had already bought his 3 sheets before I realised my estimate was out. He will be getting bitser bulkheads too.
3 sheets of liteply was £23 delivered, so 4 sheets would be around £30 including delivery. From Hobbies.
This is turning out to be a challenge to get all the bits drawn on the wood as tight to each other as I can. Then cutting them out, my spiralux saw has about 12 inch reach, not ideal on 4 ft panels. So a bit of jigsawing with a fine metal blade, followed by sanding has got the panels cut into a pile of nice parts. Biggest single part is the deck, which I cut out first, opposite to how I would do it if I had ample materials. Next was the keel, 2 layers for each front section and rear section.
The cabin sides were next biggest bits, and they werent going to fit on my remaining ply, as I am keeping a full sheet which should do 3 of the hull skins and a bit wide enough to do the remaining one. I will have some leftover bits after the skinning but no idea how much.
Back to the cabin sides, I decided to leave off the projections that make up the sides of the cabin well, I can get this later, and they fitted on my remaining ply without these bits.
I want a decent propshaft on this boat, M4 rather than the weedy 1.7mm ones I have been using for recent builds, I will probably fork out for a nice rudder unit too.
Having cut out my pile of parts, I set about refining them to their final shape.
As I had no suitable lengths of wood for the chines and inwales, I decided to use 2 strips of liteply for each one, not really the usual way of doing it but the end result will be the same. I cut these with a jigsaw clamped upside down in my workmate bench. After cutting the 8 strips required, I gave the edges a light sand to take off the hairy bits. These will be refined a bit more when the time comes for fitting them.
Bulkhead 3 is shown as a plain flat panel, I want to simulate a door and maybe a window in it. I will be having a look at other models for ideas before I start cutting any holes.
Still a lot of trimming to do as I go along.
I am not sure how the liteply will cope with the bow section when it comes to skinning, it should be fine but I can always switch to another material if they wont bend enough.
I really need the propshaft before I can get the keel finished, the rudder can have a pilot hole/channel left in it and be drilled out later, but I would prefer the propshaft to be fitted as I join the front and rear keel sections.
I found the propshaft I need online, not bought it yet. It is M4 with a 6mm diameter outer, 0.5mm more than the outer of the cheapo thin shafted ones I have been using recently, so I decided this was within filing distance for fitting the shaft later or a custom kebab stick with sandpaper glued on.
I made up the keel joiner pieces, remembering to chamfer the lower edge to accept bottom skins and the angle changes between B3 and B4 so this had to be faired in nicely. These were then glued in place with my 5.5mm shaft in there to space it correctly. I started work on B3, the cabin door, drivers position and a window are on their way, a lot of tidying with files required before I can proceed.
My spiralux fretsaw died yesterday, while my friend was cutting out his Sea Rover parts, it overheated and blew a fuse. He had drawn round all my parts and cut them all out in one go, whereas I had been drawing one bit on and cutting it out, tidying it up with a sanding block, then drawing another one on etc.
My fault, just never thought about it.
The pics show my friends one, just recently started, and my one which is a bit further on, it has windows and bulkheads cut out. The 'held together' pictures show that at a seemingly 'small' 29 and a half inches, this is quite a substantial model. I am thinking about a detailed cabin interior but that can come later, maybe tinted windows to start with? Anyone got any old tinted visor tear offs? I thought I had some... Or was it my brother that had them? Lol. Might just end up with closed curtains.
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Topic: Andy M's Sea Rover Budget Build (two models) (Read 9522 times)