This is a shot of the shafts after I'd mounted them temporarily with modeling clay. It turns out they were too long and I ended up cutting them down quite a bit. It's the only shot I have from early in the build process. I wish I'd taken a few before I stripped off the old balsa.
This is how I attached the sheeting to the boat when I started, It didn't work really well, and there were points along the sides/bottom that it didn't adhere well.
This is how I started doing it later in the process, the rubber bands did a better job of holding the width of the sheeting down, with some basla to pinpoint the pressure.
All Finished! This was my biggest mistake, and my most important advice to any other rookie. DON'T TRY AND MATCH THE BALSA TO THE HULL!!! OVERLAP AND SAND SMOOTH!! This stupid mistake wasted several evenings as I had to dope over and over again to get the leaks sealed. I really should have just ripped the balsa off and started over, but I kept thinking that it would be easy to fix, and this time should be the last time I'd need to re-dope.
I didn't take any pictures of the silkspan process, sorry. WWCC guys gave me great advice on how to lay it out, but my biggest piece of advice: don't do it when you're tired. you make mistakes and mistakes = wrinkles.
In the tub. You can see I've mounted up the motors, servo and batteries, the big one is a 12v, 12AH battery that I picked up for 30 bucks, but it's a hair too big for the hull, so If anyone has a power-hungry BB that they want to put it in (it's 4.5X4X6, roughly) let me know.
There were several rounds of leak tests and patching, and testing, and patching.. ad nauseum. (literally, my workspace isn't very well ventilated) But that picture is the first time I didn't have any leaks. That's not exactly true: I ran the motors, and they pushed enough water around that a lot splashed into the hull, but nothing came in through the sides.
Here's a shot of the mounted motors, With gearboxes, and cut back stuffing tubes. The white stuff is some modeling clay, just to keep water from coming up the tubes.
Hi James, great progress so far! Did you pick that ship up when you visited the WWCC? It looks familiar...
I took her out to the pond Saturday, ran around for an hour, (I didn't realize how much fun just tooling around pushing ice and tweaking trim would be) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVn8f1BfZdo
I painted the Cleveland last night, I'm not a fan of how dark the blue was on top, I think I'll re-do it in grey.
