dcicero

An Eight Dollar Model

The footy model I've been puttering around with has been put on the shelf for a little while.  I've just lost enthusiasm for the project.  I'll probably get back to it at some point, though.

In September, I took the kids to a model and toy show at the DuPage County Fairgrounds (near Chicago).  This event happens twice a year and the kids always find things there:  action figures, models, other assorted plastic stuff...  There are almost never wooden ship models at this show.  It's all about plastic, and mostly cars and aircraft.

So I was walking down an aisle just browsing, trying to keep the kids in sight and saw this...

The guy in the booth, before I could say anything, said, "Give me eight bucks and it's yours."

I looked in the box.  Everything appeared to be there, including some tools and a book.  The wood alone was worth eight bucks.  I bought it.

When I got home, I found that, indeed, everything was there and the plans looked really good.  I decided to try to build the model instead of just scavenge model wood out of it.  Although I'd never considered building a model of the America, this kit has piqued my interest.

Dan

Hello!  And thanks for the excellent build log!

I'm starting on the Mamoli America.  I have the building board done and I've shimmed up the central former to match the plans.

You seemed to have solved a problem I'm trying to figure out.

Back in September, you posted a picture showing the keel marked out.

How did you determine that width?

Initially, I was wondering if the false keel and stern post were actually part of the central former or something I would have to add later.  Once I put the former up against the plans -- the whole ship plan, showing the coppering on the hull, not the outline of the central former -- it was clear that the keel and stern post were integrated into the central former.

That, of course, meant that I would have to take that into account when carving the former away at the bearding line and establishing the groove along the keel into which the planking will fit.

Thing is, I couldn't figure out how wide to make that keel.  How did you to it, if you don't mind my asking?

Dan

How about The World of Model Ships and Boats by Guy Williams. It's not technical and, although there are a lot of photos, it's not a coffee table book. It's really a history of models, why they were built and what we can learn from them.

Dan

Thanks, Kurt! I'm going to use your masking tape tip. That'll protect the paint as much as possible.

The article recommends stiffening the sides of the hull too and I have some stock that should work for that. Good tip on beveling the edges too. Hadn't thought of that...

Dan

I finished off the bulkheads last night.  Here they are!

And then I popped the hull off the formers.  You can see a little bit of the resin that made its way between the hull sections, but the waxed paper I'd put on the formers kept the hull from sticking to them.

The edges were pretty rough because there was some resin globbed up there.  It was easily sanded off with my little belt sander.  I made sure to wear a dust mask while doing this as there are glass fibers in that resin.  Don't want to be breathing that...

Here's the result.  (The transom is still high.  More on that below.)

As you can see in prior photos, the bow was right down close to the building board.  That gave me very little room for a saw blade to cut it off the formers.  I ended up clamping the building board in my machinist's vice and cutting the hull off with the thinnest blade I had:  a hacksaw.  It worked just fine.  The stern was easily taken off with the proper tool:  a coping saw.

From the article:  "Note the deck camber, just over 1/8" midships, which needs to be applied to these bulkheads and also to the existing transom and to bulkhead #1."  I'm going to have no problems with the transom or the bulkheads I just cut, but, because the hull was so tight against the building board forward, I had no choice but to cut the forward bulkheads almost flush with the gunwale.  I may have to make a curved piece of plywood with the proper camber and add it to the forward bulkhead to get the right camber there.  Need to do some measuring tonight.

I'm also going to need to sand down the sides of the boat a little bit to get rid of some excess resin globs.  I tried that a little last night and I doubt that's going to be a big deal.  It is going to screw up my super-nice paint job though!

Dan

It's been a while since I posted anything about my little footy.  I've actually been working on it, but fairing the hull took a lot longer than I anticipated.

I primed the hull with some spray primer I had laying around.  That was a bad move...

I used Bondo Glazing and Spot Putty to get rid of any imperfections in the hull, stuff that showed up when it was primed.  The problem was that the spot putty took off the primer!  (Okay.  It's not automotive body work, where you use putty then you prime, but I think the problem would have happened either way.  The primer and putty were not compatible.  This was easily fixed by using a proper automotive primer.

I used several primer coats, finding imperfections each time and correcting them with putty.  Then I started putting down some final color (white), again from a spray can.  It's Ace Hardware Interior and Exterior Enamel.  I'm really pleased with the result.  It's smooth and the the finish is tough enough for outdoor use.

And now on to the interior.  Clay Feldman recommends leaving the hull on the formers while the bulkheads are fabricated.  I did that, but I really want to cut the hull off and see what the interior looks like.

Anyway...

I scaled the diagram in the magazine up to full size.  (If I remember right, it was about 123% of the original size.)

Then I used spray adhesive to attach the plan to 1/16" plywood.

Clay recommends cutting the bulkhead out 1/8" oversized, so I drew an outline 1/8" from the bulkhead lines.

Then I cut the whole thing out with my jigsaw.

I got the second bulkhead cut out, glued to plywood and the guidelines drawn on last night, but it was getting late and I didn't cut it out from the plywood.  Maybe tonight.

Up at the Manitowoc Maritime Museum last weekend, I got to talk to some guys who've built and raced footies, including  Jim Knorr, who runs the Maritime Bay Model Sailing Club.  My two sons had a good time running them around in the pond, too.  Looking at his models, mine looks a little over-built!  His were real racers.

Dan

Thanks, everyone!

I entered the longboat in this year's Midwestern Model Ships & Boats Contest and Display at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, WI.  This was the 40th annual contest and was absolutely fantastic.  In addition to the regular model contest, we had a Masters Competition for Gold Award-winning models from prior years.  Talk about some amazing work!

It's so much fun to get together with other modelers, see their work and learn how they achieve the results they do.  I thoroughly enjoyed this year's event and would recommend it to anyone who can make his or her way to Manitowoc, even if you don't enter a model in the competition.  

And, yes, my longboat won a Gold Award!  

Dan

Last month, at the monthly meeting of the Nautical Research and Model Ship Society of Chicago -- of which I'm a member -- Geoff Matson asked me, "Are you Catholic?"

Seemed an odd question...

"Yes," I said, "but not a very good one.  Why do you ask?"

"Because your posts read like confessions!"

Guilty.  See?  I'm at least that good a Catholic.

So, with this post I'm going full-on Donald Trump.  Everything's great.  Yuuuuge!  I must tell you:  you're going to be very impressed.  

It was time to do the fiberglassing of the hull.  This was something relatively new for me.  I did some real fiberglassing of real boat hulls back in high school, but that's a long time ago.  (I'm a proud graduate of Green Bay Preble High School, Green Bay, WI, Class of '83.  Go Hornets!)  And back then the only option was polyester resin that required personal protective equipment -- including a respirator -- and a great deal of ventilation.

Instead of polyester, I used epoxy resin from West Systems which I bought at Stirn's Marine in Aurora, IL.  Kurt Van Dahm warned me that this was going to be expensive, but it wasn't too bad.  I got the resin and hardener for about $70.00.  That's enough material to do several hulls.

I'd purchased some fiberglass cloth -- very light -- at HobbyTown and I talked to a lot of people about how I should approach this.  Here's what I learned:  everyone has a different way of doing this.

Kurt told me not to thin the epoxy out too much because it would run.  My dad told me to just mix it up without thinning it at all.  The guy at Stirn's told me to mix it up with some sawdust to fill any cracks or imperfections and he didn't think I really needed the fiberglass at all, just the epoxy.  Kurt mentioned that too, that the epoxy itself would be doing most of the work.  Clay Feldman recommended the fiberglass, though, and -- obviously -- I already had it so there was no reason not to use it.  I found a really great video on YouTube that recommended thinning the epoxy 1:1 with denatured alcohol.  The West Systems directions didn't explicitly recommend thinning, but suggested acetone.

(

So...

First, I cut the fiberglass.  The YouTube video recommended using very sharp scissors for that, which was good advice.  You'd think it'd be easy to cut, but it really wasn't.  Sharp scissors are necessary.

Then I mixed up the epoxy.  For the first batch, I mixed 5:1 resin to hardner by volume.  I used old yoghurt containers and the little cups you get creamer in at restaurants.  Worked like a champ.  Then I thinned by about 0.5:1 with acetone.  The YouTube video recommended about double that amount of thinning, but he also said he wanted a consistency like water, which the 0.5:1 thinning delivered.  I applied it using a disposable brush from Harbor Freight Tools ($0.59/each).

Here are the results:

It was yuuge!  Very spectacular.  Believe me:  it was very impressive.  Very impressive.  Everyone I talk to, they say it's just extremely wonderful and great.

One thing I was concerned about going in was getting the fiberglass to bend around all the compound curves in the hull.  Not to worry.  The YouTube video showed how it would go around all those curves and, if it didn't, I could stop, let it dry, cut another piece of fiberglass and fair it in.  Nothing to worry about.  And there wasn't anything to worry about.  I did the whole job with one piece of fiberglass and there were no creases in the end.

I cut away the excess fiberglass with an X-Acto blade before taking this picture.

For the next batch, I measured it out by weight, again at 5:1 resin to hardener.  I used a postal scale because I didn't want to make up as much as I did for the first batch.

And then I applied it.  This is what it looked like right after applying the resin.  After drying, it was evened out completely.

Very impressive.  Very impressive.  Everywhere I go, the people, I must say -- and I'll be completely honest with you -- they're very happy and, honestly, I am too.  Not to brag, but I must say, there are a lot of boat hulls out there that, frankly, do not look this good, so, yes, we're all very happy with this result.  Very impressed.  I hear from people all the time, the best people, mind you, Donald ... uh, I mean Dan, that's the finest boat hull we've seen.  I mean, seriously, they say that to me all the time.  I don't ask them.  They just say it.  And these are top people, remember.  Top people.

And so there you go, Geoff.  A whole post without one confession of error or failure of any kind!  (I'll go over that stuff at the next meeting...)

Next steps?  I'm going to give the whole hull a light sanding and another coat.  That ought to do it.  Then I can detach it from the building board and start working on the interior.

Dan

Hi, Elijah,

Looking good, sir. You may want to look for the book by Gene Johnson on building ship models - he has a short section on shaping solid hulls.

I think Wayne's referring to Ship Model Building by Gene Johnson.

You can get it for $0.01 plus the price of shipping on Amazon or request it -- as I just did -- from your local public library.

Dan

As I said before, I removed the port side.  I used my heat gun as carefully as possible to avoid loosening up anything I wanted to retain.

It didn't take much to get the old glue off, just some sanding and scraping.

I used the old side as a template for the new one.  I cut the new one out using my jigsaw, adding a little bit around the edges.  The photo didn't turn out all that well, so I added the red lines to show where the old part ended and the new part began.

I've been thrice bitten now, so I was meticulous about measuring.  I highlighted where gunwale should be on the formers again.  Then I used a tick strip to measure from that point down to the top of the lower section of the hull.

I placed the new port side on the model and marked where all the formers were.  This is important because 1) the curve of the hull means they're not parallel to each other on the part or perpendicular to anything and 2) I needed a reference line for the measurements I made with the tick strip.

I marked all those dimensions on the part.

Then I just sanded the part down to the marks I'd made, adjusting as I went to make sure the curve faired with the part next to it.

I could tell I was on the right track when I lined up the bow.

Then I applied glue and duct tape.

(In the article, Clay Feldman makes heavy use of duct tape.  I'd never considered that before, but I'm a convert now.  It's strong, flexible, allows you to clamp difficult shapes and, when you remove it, it doesn't leave residue and comes off easily.)

And here's the result:

When I took the clamps and tape off, the bow was lined up perfectly.  I purposely left some excess on there so I could fair it in, but when you turn the model a little...

It's dead on balls accurate!  That's what I was shooting for.

In the end, this little problem set me back a few days, but I think it was worth it.  When you sight down the side of the model, the top of the wale is right along the marks, so'm pretty confident the hull is going to be straight and true.

Dan

I thought about building up or cutting down to make the gunwale right, but, after staring at it for a while, I decided it would probably be noticeable.  Last night, I pulled off the starboard side.  Pretty much trashed the part in the process, so I'll need to make another one, but that's no big deal.  I can use the old one as a template.  I also marked the dimensions on the frame again, to give myself a greater chance of getting everything lined up.

Interesting point about discouragement.  I really did want to move along and frustration is setting in, but this isn't rocket science, I'm not on a deadline and if I'm ever going to learn to scratchbuild ... well, this comes with the territory.

The more ship modeling I do and the more I see what other people can do, the more I realize I need to learn.  With each trial and error, I get closer to the result I want and I'm anxious to learn to do the fiberglassing of the hull and see if I can make an operational model.  I think it's worth the effort.

Besides, I've only ever put one other model in the shelf, a model of Stephenson's Rocket from Occre.  I made decent progress, but the kit was inaccurate in so many ways and I would have had to have done so much scratch building to get it the way I wanted it that I just moved on.  Maybe, someday, I'll get back to it.  This model I want to stick with for a while.

Dan

Two steps forward!

I finished forming the bow block.  Like I said in prior posts, this will allow me to make the compound curve at the bow and give the hull sections something to bite into when glued in place.

The hull starts looking like a hull now...

I was very careful to make two, identical, sides of the hull.  No way they were going to align on the model if they weren't the same off the model.

One tricky thing was getting those hull sides glued at the bow.  The bow block made a big difference, but this 1/32" plywood is very stiff and it doesn't want to hold the hull shape.  I had to re-glue it twice to get it to stick, even using Titebond III, which is a very strong adhesive.  When I pulled the clamps off and it held, I figured I'd made a big step forward.

But wait!

Two steps forward ... one step back.

Check out the misalignment:

That's a misalignment of about 3/32", way too big to ignore ... and the bigger question:  how did it happen?

Looking bow on, the bow block looks right.  The two hull sections below it were identical.  So where the gap come from?

I think it's just a misalignment.  Check this out.  I laid a batten on the port side of the hull and it followed the curve of the hull just fine.

And then on the starboard side:

There's the gap.

I think it's a little more than the bow block that's off.  If I measure to the bottom of the bow block on both sides, there's a little gap there too:

So here's what I'm going to do, much as it pains me.  (I was really looking forward to fiberglassing this hull and moving on to different things.)

1. Heat up the joints and remove the starboard side.  I might loosen up the port side in the process, but I don't see how I can avoid that.
2. Clean up the glue and re-align the side so that the bow lines up properly.
3. Glue it back in place.
4. Fill in the gap with 1/32" stock and make all the angles work out.

This is a form for the fiberglass, so it really doesn't need to look perfect, but it has to be dimensionally perfect.  That's what I'm shooting for.  

Anyone got any other suggestions?

Dan

I saw the 1/64" plywood at Menard's and thought about using it, David, but then decided to stick to Clay Feldman's advice.  In retrospect, I think it would have been easier to use the 1/64" stuff because it would have bent more readily around the bow.  Live and learn.  The bow blocks are made from basswood, so they should be pretty easy to work.

Dan

Doing something for the third time is sure a lot faster than doing it for the first time.  I've removed and replaced the hull sections three times now, but I think I have it right this time.

I used a cardstock template to define the hull bottom.  This was fairly straightforward, but I got a clear lesson in what John Into and Nancy Price refer to as a "developable surface."  (Their book, by the way, Fundamentals of Model Boat Building is worth a look.)  Here's the template and the result.

And here's the result.

I started building up the block at the bow.  Once I have the area all filled in, I'll take a rasp to it and bring it down to final dimensions.  One error I did make:  I'm going to be sanding end grain.  I should have installed these bow pieces for and aft so I could sand with the grain.  It's not going to make much difference because 1) no one is going to see it under the fiberglass and 2) I can use wood filler to eliminate any roughness, but I suspect the sanding will be more difficult because I didn't take the grain into consideration.

Dan

Welcome to the club, Elijah!  It was nice meeting you on Saturday and I look forward to watching your progress on Phantom.  It looks like you've made a great start.

I was thinking back to my first wooden ship model.  It was USS Constitution from a kit by Scientific Models.  (It's going for $23.00 on Ebay.)

I think I was about your age.  Like you, I didn't have much space, certainly none that I could call my own.  The good news is you don't need much.  I worked on a card table in the basement.  You just need enough room to keep yourself organized and to allow glue and paint to dry.

And, like you, I didn't have much in the way of tools.  Again, the good news is you really don't need many:  sandpaper, x-acto knives, lots of clamps -- as you heard on Saturday, you can never have too many clamps! -- dividers, a straight edge, pencils ... really basic stuff that you probably have laying around the house.  For things you don't have, just ask.  The club is a great resource for help and the occasional tool.

A nice thing about building a Model Shipways kit is that they will replace materials, even if you mess them up yourself, at no charge.  That takes the risk out of trying things and learning building techniques.

Again, welcome to the club!  And good luck with your new model.

Dan

That's a very pretty little boat, Mark!  

The bottom of the boat came off last night and I installed a couple of battens made out of 1/32" basswood.

The gap is still there -- because of the curvature of the hull -- but it's uniform port and starboard,not wavy like the original gap was.  I can fill that and have a nice, straight line in the end.  The other benefit of this approach is that I'll have a reference line to work from fore and aft.  I can make a cardstock template from that line -- like you would from the garboard strake on a planked model -- and then cut the hull sections to align with it.  Then it's just a drafting project:  draw a line along each former, mark out the distance from the reference line to the chine, connect the dots and then cut it out.

And I thought this was going to be a quick little project...

Dan

Thanks for all the encouragement, everyone!

I got to work again yesterday.  I can't say the results were what I was looking for, but I think I have a plan.

When I built my English Longboat, I quickly that deviation from Chuck's instructions was going to result in nothing but more work.  I started out deviating from Clay's instructions by making my own templates that, in the end, were not symmetrical.  I figured with my second attempt, I would not deviate from the instructions as written.  I made a bunch of new copies of the hull templates, glued them to 1/32" plywood...

And then cut them out.  They're Dead-On-Balls Accurate.  

Just as I was the first time, I was very concerned about how wavy these templates looked.  I want t a nice, straight chine on this boat, but there's not a gentle curve or straight line on any of these things.  They look like they were drawn free hand.  But, I just told myself to follow the guidance in the article.  Clay's built a bunch of these things.  I've never built one.  His looks terrific.  If I do what he did, I should be okay.  So off I went.  I put waxed paper over the frames I did not want glued to the hull.  

I attached the Dead-On-Balls Accurate plywood sections to the hull with Titebond III, held in place with duct tape.

Note the gaps.  There's just no way around this with the templates as they are.  And it's not that the templates are oversized and can be cut down to fit.  At Frame 5, just as they're laied out, they're right up to chine marking.  Everywhere else, they're a little over, but there's that big gap at the centerline.  If I straighten that out, everything else will be short.  This is, essentially, what got me last time.  I tried to straighten out the centerline and cut everything else and I wound up with a mess.

And then there's the bow.  Clay surface sanded his plywood down to about 0.029" to make it more flexible.  I don't have an easy way to do that.  I did it by hand the first time around, which was alright I guess, but it wasn't perfect.  This time, I didn't skinny anything down and I came up with this:

This actually looks worse than it is, but it's definitely a challenge getting the plywood to bend around the bow former.

So...

This morning in the shower -- I do some of my best thinking there -- I came up with an idea.  Instead of trying to bend the plywood around the bow, why don't I do what you do with a static model:  fill the bow area with basswood?  Then I can cut the hull section back to Frame 1, which will mean it doesn't have to bend around anything.

The big gap on the centerline still concerns me, but I think I can fill that with scrap plywood and sand it to final shape.

And I can smooth out the outboard edges of the hull sections to make them fill the chine more closely.  I don't want the hull all wavy.

Since I'm going to cover the hull with fiberglass, it doesn't need to be pretty, but it does need to be symmetrical and straight.

The only other thing I was thinking was to use 1/64" plywood instead of the 1/32" stuff. The thinner material will certainly bend more readily than the thick stuff.  Got to think about that a little more ... and make another run to Menard's for more material if I decide to go that route.

Dan

Save, yes, but re-use?  I doubt it.  They're so far off that making new ones is going to be the only solution.  I can save the wood for something else, maybe, but that's about it.  Cost of learning...

Dan

It's been a while since I posted anything here on Model Ship World.  (Real life's been in the way!)  I've made some progress on my footy, but a lot of the progress has been in reverse.

The building of the jig/building board went very well and I was pleased with the results.

I cut the templates out for the hull and laid them on the jig, but wasn't very happy with how they looked.  They're roughly drawn, as you can see in the pictures, so I decided to do them from scratch, marking out the dimensions on a piece of paper and then transferring that to the plywood and cutting them out.

I got the first two sections installed that way and here's the result.

Looks good, right?

But it's not.  It's not straight.

I measured the hull at Frame 5 with a pair of dividers.

And then did the same thing on the other side of the boat.

Although the picture is a little fuzzy, you can see that the measurement is way off.

I pondered this for a while.  Getting those planks on was a pain.  I didn't have enough plywood to do it again, so I'd have to run over to Menard's and get some more.  I tried to figure out a way to make it work out, but, finally, I paid attention to the advice I got from Ken Quast:  it's always faster to make something again than fix something that didn't work out the first time.  I decided to take a few steps back.

A little internet searching revealed that the Titebond III that I'd used to attach the hull sections could be loosened with heat, so I pulled my trusty heat gun out of the toolbox and went to work.

I was expecting a battle.  Titebond III is a very strong adhesive and I was worried that I would need to apply so much heat that I'd do damage to my jig.  Not to worry.  The planks came off easily and very little heat was necessary, certainly a lot less than my heat gun was capable of delivering.

So, although I'm not back to Square 1, I'm probably back to Square 3 or 4.

I dropped the removed planks on the template to see how far they were off.  (After cutting them, I needed to sand them to final form and the template itself was removed from the plywood, so there was no way to gauge any of this on the model.)

They're certainly not the same as the template and they're not the same as each other.  And that's why the whole thing didn't work out.  The pictures don't really do justice to the difference between these sections.  They're not close at all.

So...

This time, I think I'm going to sandwich the two pieces of plywood together, attach the template to the top and go from there.  That'll at least give me two, identical sections.  They may not fit properly on the jig -- which will mean I have to adjust some -- but I should get closer than I got the last time.

Live and learn.  I'm back in a forward gear now.

Dan

Time for an update.

Like others have said, you can never have enough tools.  I needed a table saw to take on the next steps in the footy project.  I found one in a local pawn shop, bought it ($50.00) and brought it home.  It was a nice saw, but it was missing the miter gauge and the blade guard.  By the time I priced those things out, I found that I could buy a whole new saw, which is what I did.  (And I returned the pawn shop saw!)

I hadn't done any work on a table saw since about Junior High School Woodshop, so I was a little hesitant.  There's potential for injury in these things if they're not used properly, so I spent some quality time with YouTube and watched a few safety videos.  Armed with that, I fired it up.

Dr. Feldman says, "any sturdy piece of wood or plywood (I used a 2-1/2" x 13" piece of 3/4" plywood) will do for a building base."  I had a piece of 3/4" plywood, so I cut off a piece.  I made mine about 6" wide, though.

Then I followed the next instruction.  "Power saw 1/4" deep, 1/16" wide slots at the plan's station intervals crosswise as well as one right down the lengthwise midline of the piece."

The kerf on my saw blade is 1/8" inch, so no matter what I did, those slots were going to be too wide.

That's not a problem, though, because I have the 1/32" plywood for the hull itself.  I can shim the formers with that and make it right.

I trued up the board first.  (I made the first cut from the piece of plywood with a hand saw.  The full-sized piece was too big for my 10" table saw.)

Then I cut the slot down the center.

Not the joggle at the end!  This was my first cut with a table saw since about 1979 or 1980, so I'm a little rusty.  Everything after this went smoothly.

With the center line established, I glued the sheer plan to the board and marked the station lines.  Then I cut them just as I had the center line.  (I also cut off the end of the board with the joggle in it!  Nobody saw nothin'.)

Here's the building board with the formers set in place.  Like I said above, I need to shim those up and make sure they're perpendicular to the board and parallel to each other.  I also need to make the bow former and put that in place.

Progressing along!

Dan

Just a quick update...

I got all the templates cut out, mounted to the 1/16" plywood and cut out.

I needed the motivation this project has provided to finally mount my scroll saw on the stand.  As the article directly, I used the scroll saw to roughly cut out the templates and my belt sander to sand it to the final shape.

Now I need a table saw.  I saw one on Craigslist that looks like it will do the job.  More tools!  Never can have enough, really.

Dan

I started on the formers.  Per the article, I copied the body plan eight times.  I "fold[ed] each plan on the centerline and cut out [two] full-size body sections, using the baseline (at the top of each section of the plan) as the bottom of each former."

The "baseline," Dr. Feldman refers to is, I'm assuming, the centerline marked on the half breadth plan above the body plan.  That's what I used, anyway, and I think it's going to produce formers that look like those in Photos 4 and 5 in the article.

His recommendation is to "rubber cement or spray adhere the body plan sections to 1/16" plywood..."  I used Weldwood cement, which I'd always thought of as rubber cement.  I must be wrong because there is no way those paper templates are coming off those formers now!  I had a little error, early on and tried to remove a template from the plywood.  No go. I sanded it off and you can still see the remnants in the photo.  Spray adhesive might work better.  Since these are just formers and will not be part of the finished boat, they need to be precise, but not pretty.

One thing that would have helped me, as a first-time scratch builder, is a list of materials needed for the boat.  I picked up some materials at Hobbytown yesterday.  I'll keep a running total in case others are curious as to what's needed to build this boat.

• Three sheets of 1/16" birch plywood (6" x 12") @ $6.49/each
• Two sheets of 1/32" birch plywood (6" x 12") @ $4.49/each
• Ultra Light (0.56 oz) glass cloth (36" x 38") @ $14.39/each

That's $42.84 so far.  I wasn't sure about the glass cloth, but that's the closest thing they had to 0.75 oz./yard material referenced in the article.

Dan

(Sorry the photo's sideways.  I couldn't figure out a way to rotate it 90°...)

When I got the most recent Ships in Scale magazine in the mail, I knew right away that I wanted to give the model on the cover a try.

I've never built a scratch-built model before.  I've never built -- or even played with! -- a radio-controlled boat before, let alone a radio-controlled sailboat.  This little model just grabbed me and I decided to build one.  It's small enough that I won't have trouble storing it.  It looks simple enough for a novice scratchbuilder to complete and it looks inexpensive enough that, if I screw it all up, I'm not out a fortune.

I haven't made much progress yet.  I did manage to get the plans copied.

I went to Kinko's to get the plans in the magazine scaled up to the proper size.  They refused.  They can't do something like that with copyrighted material.  So I took the magazine to work and did it myself.  After a little bit of experimentation, I found duplicating the image at 197% created a drawing with a 12" baseline, as called for in the article.  I printed nine copies on 11" x 17" paper.  That will give me enough copies to make the formers plus one other copy for reference.

Next steps are the make a building board, make the formers and get a solid foundation to start building on.

Dan

White glue throughout for me. I needed to redo many steps along the way and being able to simply dampen the glue and remove the offending part was very helpful.

Dan