A boat for Happydad's Enya

Loved the vid Lieven! I so wish we didn't live so far from each other. I have a windfall of Birch plywood in thicknesses that you might want for laying-up a boat-hull. I've heard that there's a fella who lives near to me.. who is building model/outboard-boat drives for Cox engines. I will report further.. as discovery is made.

Thanks for your comments. The first frame is glued to the keel after cutting out the notches for the apron and breasthook parts. The apron on both sides is curved upwards and laminated from 2 pieces of 3mm thick balsa.

The second frame is ready to be glued and has to be fixed parallel to the forward frame. I will make spacers to put between both frames while drying.

It's going to be hard to top this one Lieven! Fell in love with it the first time I saw it.

I have to say you did some nice cutting there. Good choice of model too! Very sharp looking, wouldn’t mind a full size version of that.

roddie wrote:Loved the vid Lieven! I so wish we didn't live so far from each other. I have a windfall of Birch plywood in thicknesses that you might want for laying-up a boat-hull. I've heard that there's a fella who lives near to me.. who is building model/outboard-boat drives for Cox engines. I will report further.. as discovery is made.

Yes, I will need thin plywood to skin the hull. Smeed says 1/16, so I'll use 1 mm. I still have a small sheet but it won't be long enough. I will have to find a place to acquire that at a reasonable price. In model shops, this cost an arm and a leg. Before, fruit cases were a good source but now they're mostly made of carton. Curious to know about the Cox outboard drive, with gears or a cable maybe?

Cribbs74 wrote:I have to say you did some nice cutting there. Good choice of model too! Very sharp looking, wouldn’t mind a full size version of that.

I use a scroll saw to cut all that stuff. The frames are 5mm balsa or 3mm ply. The balsa is a very hard quality and not as light, it feels more like oak. It take some practice to work with the scroll saw but when you get the hang of it, it's very fast. A full size version? why not. People built Cluedo houses in the past!!

rsv1cox wrote:It's going to be hard to top this one Lieven!  Fell in love with it the first time I saw it.

That's from a few years back. The problem is that the Dragonfly doesn't have enough power. The engine should be an 09 minimum I think. and then with a 3 blade LH prop?! One time, I started to put wheels on it with trailing arms and springs, then in another year, I made knifes for ice to replace the skis. By the time I got a feasable idea, frost was gone.

Thanks for bringing us along , this should bee a interesting build . Looking Good !

Thanks Eric.

The Remora looks like the Chris Craft Custom Sedan




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg6otpcm2Ys

OVERLORD wrote:

roddie wrote:Loved the vid Lieven! I so wish we didn't live so far from each other. I have a windfall of Birch plywood in thicknesses that you might want for laying-up a boat-hull. I've heard that there's a fella who lives near to me.. who is building model/outboard-boat drives for Cox engines. I will report further.. as discovery is made.

Yes, I will need thin plywood to skin the hull. Smeed says 1/16, so I'll use 1 mm. I still have a small sheet but it won't be long enough. I will have to find a place to acquire that at a reasonable price. In model shops, this cost an arm and a leg. Before, fruit cases were a good source but now they're mostly made of carton. Curious to know about the Cox outboard drive, with gears or a cable maybe?

Yes.. plywood in that thickness is going to be expensive.. unless you can source some through a non-model/hobby entity. The wood (3-ply Birch) that I have in surplus, is .093" (2.3mm) at its thinnest. I still have some 1/16" and 1/32" plywood that I bought from Sig years ago.. but I use it mostly for 1/4A-1/2A profile C/L airplane nose-doublers.

I spoke with the fellow who is building the Cox glow-engine powered outboards a few nights ago.. but didn't want to overwhelm him with questions about them. He's a model-boat guy.. and is into vintage hydroplanes. He lives only a few miles away from me.. so I want to ease-my way into his domain. I actually found him thru CEF member Bill Steklenski". I mentioned my having a surplus of 2-3mm birch plywood to share.. to which he mentioned having a stock of Mahogany plywood that he purchased directly from Dumas.. if I needed any. Regarding the outboard-units.. I didn't press him for info. on them. I hope to find out about them soon.

I like the Remora a LOT! I've wanted to build a glow-engine powered/inboard-drive runabout for what seems like forever.. but haven't sourced plans for one. I like the Chris Craft "Continental" and "Corina".. but don't know of any scale-model plans for them.




Gorgeous water-crafts.. Another high-quality American pleasure-boat manufacturer was "Century". One of my earliest exposures; camping with my grandparents on lake Manchaug in Sutton, MA circa 1969.. the Menard family had a gorgeous 19' Century runabout with an inboard-drive 390 cu. in. V8. That lake was scarcely long-enough to open-up the throttle on that boat. It was a 60+mph. boat when it planed-out at full throttle.

This is how I immobilized the second frame: I cut 2 dowels of equal length that were held between the frames by rubber bands. On the bottom, the frame is notched, so there, it can't move. On top of the frames I put some pins to hold the rubber band and keep everything tight. I then measured the distance on both sides near the keel and on top near the edges. I adjusted where needed by adding paper until it was right. The pins in the centre are there to check the centre line.









The 3rd frame is a ply one. I need to make the cut outs for the stringers and a hole for the exhaust pipe.

That is so good, Vic Smeed stuff is brill.
I bet happydad is really happy and smiling like a Cheshire cat !

Nice one. How did you recover the boat, cast a line over it a real it in ?

A water cooled exhaust cools, quietens and seems to make engine run a bit better, but make sure the engine cannot ingest any water.

You started engine via thin rope or belt and electric starter ?

A model skier who rides out of the water when boat moves off ?

Coxfledgling wrote:That is so good, Vic Smeed stuff is brill.
I bet happydad is really happy and smiling like a Cheshire cat !

Nice one.  How did you recover the boat, cast a line over it a real it in ?

A water cooled exhaust cools, quietens and seems to make engine run a bit better, but make sure the engine cannot ingest any water.

You started engine via thin rope or belt and electric starter ?

A model skier who rides out of the water when boat moves off ?

I find Smeed's plans well drawn and the parts fit well together. I never recovered it because  I just started building. I started the other engines I have with a shoe lace. I hope to do the same with this one.

To give the stem some strength, I fixed the breasthook parts on both sides. First I dry fitted both parts and adjusted the frame cut-outs.









Near the second frame, the breasthook connects to the inwale. The inwale is positioned at an angle. The breasthook cut-out needs to be adjusted to fit.










However, there is an error on the drawing. In way of frame 1, the inwale and chime are still drawn but both inwale and chime stop at about 10 mm in front of frame 2.

I am glad you know what ur doing , a lot of this is foreign to me

The 3rd frame is glued in place. Before I fix the next frame, I have to drill a hole for the exhaust. I put the engine where it is supposed to be mounted lateron to determine the lateral position of the exhaust pipe.

All frames and transom stern glued. Next thing to do is to saw the stringers of 7x7mm square, glue the stringers to the frames and at the same time fit and glue the aprons.

Looking Good ! I like the way you use the drill press clamp? it seems to do a good job of holding things stable too while working on it.

After checking the appearance and dimensions, I found out that there was a problem with frame 4, the one that is cut out. The frame was too high and I removed 3 mm in heigth. I also cut the 4 stringers. They're a bit stiff and difficult to bend so I cut slots every 10 mm to make bending easier.

In the past 2 days, I glued the inwales. It takes a lot of measuring to keep the frames in the right position and to keep the symmetry. I started at the breasthook ends and glued the inwales at each next frame on both sides. I will have to adjust frame 4 some more. Next thing to fix are the chines and aprons.

Today, I glued the aprons. The aprons are the internal beams in way of the stem. They need to be curved and that's why each apron is build up from 2x 3mm pieces that are laminated to keep the shape required.

I'm digging this build. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to the completed model!

I started to glue the chines. The rear part of the chines is almost straight but the forward part between frame 2 and 3 is curved upwards. I fixed the forward end of the chine to frame 2 and in line with the apron on both sides. When fully dry -and that will be tomorrow at noon- the chine can be pulled around to be glued to the next frames. For now, I ended up with some sort of Spoutnik.

Getting there...