King Edward VII - Fastgun

My adventure into the sidemount world.

 

Props and stuffing tubes which still need glued in before I can block in the stern with balsa.

Through the ribs shot.

 

You going to remove that center area for water channeling?

 

Yes, just haven't got that far yet.

 

Looks Great!

 

Looks outstanding

 

Thanks, but th credit goes to @rcengr. It's one of his laser cut kits, which I highly recomend.

 

With only two main turrets how will you arm her? One sidemount and two sterns?

 

My plan is a stern sidemount with two bow guns 15* off center.

 

That might look strange! Oh you mean to the same side forward. I was thinking one left and the other right.

 

Wow looks good!

 

And the work continues. Tonight I've been slowly working on gluing balsa into the stern. For this build I'm going about the stern area a little bit different than usual. Instead of putting the balsa in length-wise like I did for the forward part of the boat, I'm sticking it in vertical. Not only does this allow me to form the balsa around the stuffing tube, but it also provides a nice block to form a gravity induced water slide.
The hacksaw is trimming away the would-be stuffing tube support that would be used in a more conventional build.

 

Looking good. Is that Titebond2 slathered everywhere?

 

Nope, spar varnish. I coated the balsa just to give it a little bit more water protection even though it's going to be fiberglassed.

 

With the last few days of warm weather quickly fleeting, my chances of fiberglassing this boat before spring were falling with the temperature. Something had to happen.
The boatyard was shifted into overdrive. Tools and supplies were gathered and work commenced.

The victim.


Before fiberglassing, the center of the waterchanneling needed cut out. That space was then replaced with 1/8" plywood.
Jigsaw worked great to remove the center.



That done, the fiberglass is laid down.

And done. IMO, this is when the boat looks the prettiest.

 

Decks get some planking.

 

The decks are now fully scribed/planked.

The excess fiberglass is now trimmed from the hull. Next in the list of things to do is glue in the motor mounts. Then I can start to finalize where batteries, co2 bottle & reg, solenoids will go.

 

So played around a little bit with internal placement tonight. There is not a lot of extra room in this boat, that's for sure. The way everything is positioned in the pictures seems the best way to get everything in there.

The two solenoids for the bow guns will go behind the batteries. The solenoid for the stern sidemount will go somewhere in the stern.
Also worked on filing down the extra hard area on either side of the casement cupolas. There used to be about a 1/4" extra on either side of the casements.

 

Heh, lazy!