Thought it was about time I posted something. Having recently got into fast electric stuff, I thought I need a rescue boat. These Springers look just the job and not too big, I'll do one. Now bearing in mind I've never worked with wood, this would be a challenge. This is as good as planning gets with me :
So here we go....I have a small sheet of 6mm MDF in the garage, that will do...
Next, was how to make the hull bottom, I decided on more 6mm MDF in 1 inch strips. This just made more work in the sanding department. If I did another, I'd use thin ply for this...
Thoughts turned to the superstructure, silly idea number 1...
Sack that, it was too silly. Gave the hull a coat of fibreglass resin for waterproofing...that was my next mistake. I mixed it with too much hardener on a warm day and it went off very quickly leaving a textured finish to the hull which I couldn't be bothered to sand off but, hey, it looks like painted over rust so it stays :). I made some battery trays from aluminium 'L' section allowing the batteries to be moved fore and aft for balancing come bath testing time. Spent some dosh on a 540 mabuchi motor, propshaft, prop, rudder and servo and got them mounted...
A quick coat of paint, I found some matt brick red and matt black at Homebase, it was masonry paint, but weather proof and cheap. A deck was made too from, you guessed it, 6mm MDF with holes to access batteries at the front and steering servo at the back. I wanted a textured finish for the deck so a sheet of 80 grit sandpaper was glued to it and given a couple of coats of matt white...
That hull paint job was awful, so out with the sandpaper and some higher sides added...
More paint applied and I'm now reasonably happy :)
Next was the wiring, holy cow she's alive!!
I needed something to cover the holes up with so a couple of boxes were made. Now as I mentioned earlier, I'm crap with wood so I cheated a bit and made the front box with aluminium corners, the back one was just made from 3mm MDF, I made it so the sides overlapped a bit so I could sand them so you can't see the joins. Quite pleased with the result here...
Time for a wheelhouse so out with the 3mm MDF again. Having made the 2 previous boxes, I'd got the technique now so this worked out ok. A coat of sanding sealer then applied ready for paint...
I bought a couple of bollards from a bloke on ebay and painted them satin black, then decided I wanted a couple of portholes in the front box thing. i found some brass eyelets in my box of goodies and glued them on, colouring the centres in with black marker pen, seemed to work ok...
Nearly done, but then had a thought, what would it look like with the wheelhouse at the stern, puffer styleee...
Dunno which to go for, what do you guys think?
Anyway that's where I am at the moment, still stuff to do, but going for a lake test at the weekend, she may need more ballast but I've got some lead pipe ready. I need one more bollard, a large central one and a bit more decoration. I may plank the wheelhouse roof and the back box just to practice for the next build ( a Swordsman).
I hope I haven't bored you all rigid with this, but it's my first build and I'm really enjoying it! Skills are improving as is the collection of tools. Note to self buy a fretsaw for the next one.
Thanks for reading, see you on the water soon :)
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Topic: Spring(er) has sprung :) (Read 3093 times)