After failing with the parts provided in the semi-kit, I started the process of making my own parts for laser cutting out of 3mm ply.

I spent a lot of time scanning the plans, tracing the shapes in Illustrator, and checking that dimensions which were supposed to fit together matched.
Given the plans were hand drawn and I was also tracing by hand, because Illustrator's image tracing just isn't good enough, I only made half of each bulkhead shape and then copied, rotated and joined the two halves to ensure I had something symmetrical.

I found during this stage that sizes on the plans were inconsistent across different views, so the poor fitting in the first attempt wasn't the fault of the semi-kit, it was just replicating faults in the plan.

I also decided to include the curve of the roof on the internal bulkheads, with a lip to help locate the sides correctly - something I'd already struggled with on my first attempt, and to add engraved markings to show where the different pieces were supposed to fit together.
Both of these things were very easy to do with the laser cutter, and helped a lot when dry fitting and gluing things up.

The laser cutter did a great job of cutting all of these pieces out, and they (mostly) fitted together perfectly - it can't save you from your own mistakes though, and I did have to do a couple of pieces again because I'd forgotten the 'measure twice and cut once' rule.

The pieces I really struggled with were the angled sections joining the sides to the front. There is no true shape on the plan for these and no true angles either. My maths wasn't up to this problem, so I decided to wait until I'd glued up all the others pieces first before tackling these.

In the end it took several trial and error attempts of measuring the model lengths and angles, drawing a shape in Illustrator and printing it out on card before I found something that was roughly correct. The fact that I'd marked where the front plate should join the base plate using the laser cutter really helped while doing this.

The ply versions, once I'd found card ones that worked, took a fair bit of sanding to get them to fit because of the compound angles involved, but they all eventually did and I'm quite happy with the result.

At this stage I've also added all the fittings that will be painted grey with the superstructure - doorframes and firehose boxes that I made, a laser cut bridge ladder, handrail and lifebelt mounts from Cornwall Model Boats and boat hook/crash ladder mounts that I laser cut, but are very delicate so unlikely to survive my handling for long.

The next step is to seal it all and paint it grey.

The superstructure base and sides and internal bulkheads came laser cut as part of the semi kit from Sarik Hobbies. Unfortunately, the front was missing, even though it was printed clearly on the plan, so I would have to make that at some point. The angled pieces connecting the sides to the front were also not included, but I can understand that as there was no obvious true shape for those on the plan.

The sides provided were much too tall, so I cut them down to fit the bulkheads and glued everything up, including some extra bulkheads for the open bridge, which I cut out of 1.5mm ply as you can see from the pictures.
Unfortunately some of the bulkheads didn't match the size of the baseplate, so there were some gaps that I wasn't entirely happy with.

Things stalled there for quite a while as I put off cutting out the front panel and windows. When my own laser cutter arrived a few weeks ago, I cut out the front panel with it using the shape from the plan.
At this point I found that it was a completely different size from that I'd made up so far and was not going to fit.

After studying the plan carefully, it looked to me like the laser cut sides from Sarik Hobbies were the wrong shape. The top edges have a step in them, but I think that should not have been there as the roof is curved and just looks like an extension of the sides in elevation. I could have rescued this if I'd realised earlier - by shaving the top edges instead of/ as well as the bottom, but it was beyond saving now, so back to square one.

I finally got the engine room roof completed yesterday!

It took two attempts for me to get the curve of the roof right.
As you can see from my unpainted first attempt, I didn't think enough about the frame before making it and so needed to shape all four pieces, which was awkward to do and difficult to centre on the ply roof sheet.

Needless to say it didn't go well, so I started again, making sure the frame ends for the curve were full length and allowing the side pieces to be left square. It doesn't look so nice from the underside as you can see from photo No2, but it isn't visible from the outside, so doesn't matter.

For the roof fittings, I bought a clinker dingy from Battlecrafts and a hatch cover and life raft container from Mac's Mouldings - The plan doesn't show the life raft container, but I've seen several photos of 2757 with the life raft mounted next to the dingy, so decided to add it.

I spent ages trying to work out the colour of the roof from old photographs that were mainly black and white. I think originally, the roof was the natural teak colour, but it does seem to have been painted at some point, so I went with the same blue grey I used for the sides.

The handrails defeated me for quite a while - I had several attempts to make some, but they all either broke or came out looking extremely 'rustic' and I wasn't happy with them. I also searched high and low on the internet, but couldn't find anywhere that sold them at less than 1:1 scale.

I eventually decided to buy a new toy to solve the problem, so I'm now the proud owner of a laser cutter/engraver. I have it mounted on a board that I can carry outside for use - the laser generates some smoke while cutting, so not something I wanted to do in the house.

I took the dimensions of some real handrails that I'd seen on the internet and made a scaled down version in Adobe Illustrator. I imported the vector file from Illustrator into Lightburn, which talks to the laser cutter, added a 1.5mm sheet of mahogany and out came some pretty decent handrails.

I also used the cutter to create the stand for the life raft container. In part to show that I hadn't spent a load of money just to cut out two tiny handrails, as eyebrows had been raised at that prospect...

After a 6 month layoff I finally got back in the mood to do something on the boat.

I trimmed the edges of the deck and added the rubbing strips and stern re-enforcement using basswood that I'll paint black shortly.

I also added framing to 2 of the 3 openings to keep the removable covers from moving around too much.

Finally I added the spurn water strips using some leftover deck planking ripped down the centre and cut to size. It took some inventive use of the vices that I bought to build the keel on to get the curved section towards the bow glued up.

This all felt like a lot of work for not very much visual difference, but it was good to get back building again after so long away from it.

I did this way back in July, but work and life got in the way and I stopped the build before posting an update.

I decided to plank the hull with 1.5mm x 6mm mahogany strips. Cornwall Model Boats didn't stock teak strips, which the deck would have been made of on the real thing, so the deck will end up a bit redder that it should be, but I thought it would still be better than using a lighter wood and a stain.

I used full length strips, rather than scale length planks so that I wouldn't have to add any extra supports, and used scoring to give some indication of planks joining every 16', which seemed like a reasonably good standard length of timber.
I offset the scoring for every other plank, but in the end that didn't look all that great. If there's a next time, I'll use 3 offsets with I think would look better. I don't think it's the end of the world, I just won't shade any of the score marks to make them stand out.

I laid the first planks along the outside edges of the raised engine room walls, which I hoped (and as it turned out did) give me a straight and symmetrically aligned deck. The centre plank only needed light sanding to get it to fit in at the end, so that also worked out nicely.

The finished deck isn't completely smooth, and as you can probably see from the pictures I haven't sanded, or trimmed all the ends at this point, but I'm pleased with it overall so far.

Another long post I'm afraid...

I got a pair of 1.4" scale propellers from Prop-Shop a few weeks ago - one right hand and one left hand, so I could have them turning in opposite directions.
Around the same time I got a couple of 8" 4mm shaft/6mm tube propeller shafts from Cornwall Model Boats. At the time I was guesstimating the length I needed, but I turned out to be OK in the end. I also bought a couple of propshaft fitting sets because it didn't look like the shafts came with enough bolts (which turned out to be correct) and some shaft oiler kits, which I didn't end up using.
Just so Amazon didn't feel left out, I got some solid couplings and universal couplings from there once I knew the shaft size on the motors I was going to use.

Given the shallow angle that the shafts are going through the hull I knew I'd have to drill several holes and join them up, but the holes were alarmingly large (for a first timer anyway) by the time I got anywhere near being able to align the shaft with the motor. The holes ended up wider and longer than they really needed to be while I was messing about trying to get the shafts to align with the rudders and motors and still have propeller clearance. Maybe I'll be better at that next time round, but somehow I doubt it.

I used lots of two part epoxy glue to fix the prop shafts in place, starting with the inside of the hull. This didn't have to be too neat, but it did try to drip straight through past the pro-shafts at first, which could have been messy if I wasn't expecting it to happen.
Once the epoxy was dry on the inside, I repeated the process on the outside. As you can see from the photos, one side looks relatively ok, but the other looks like it was done by a 3 year old. I think this was because I was mixing too much of the epoxy at one time and it was starting to go off by the time I got to the messy side. Not my finest hour, but I'll know better next time and nobody will see it much so it's not the end of the world.

Once the shafts were glued in place I removed the inner shafts from the tubes and greased them before replacing them in the tubes. I used gun grease for this because I think it's a bit lighter than the bike grease I also have, but also because it was in the house and didn't involve walking out to the shed.

To attach the propellers to the shaft I added some locktite to the threads and also used the nut that came with the shaft as a lock nut. Before doing this I checked several times that the right hand shaft would push water backwards when rotated clockwise when viewed from the rear, and anti clockwise for the left hand shaft.
At the other end of the shaft I again added som locktite, then tightened up the nut that came with the propeller shaft until there was a tiny bit of play and the shaft still turned freely. I then used one of the nuts from the shaft fixing kits as a lock nut.

One thing I hadn't considered, but was pretty obvious, was that once the propeller shafts were fixed in place it would be very difficult to get the motor mount back out. I did manage it in the end, but the forward bracket to hold the propeller shafts had to be glued in place on refitting because the screws were impossible to refit. If I do this again I'll make sure the mount is ready to be glued in place before, or at the same time as the shafts.

In the end I couldn't get the shafts and the motors to line up exactly, so I used the universal couplings rather than the solid ones. The universal couplings were a little longer, which turned out to be useful. The universal couplings used a grub screw to fix the shafts, so I had to file the propeller shafts a bit to get a flatter section for the grub screw to tighten onto.

With all the drive train fitted I put the ESCs and batteries back in (I glued some velcro straps to the hull to keep the batteries in place), programmed the ESCs and limited the motor outputs to 60% in the transmitter. I then gave the boat another float test in the bath to make sure there were no leaks and that I'd got the propellers on the right way round - thankfully I had!

On the RC side, I've gone for a channel per throttle, which will allow me to control each motor independently. The only issue with that is that the transmitter I have only has one stick that is non-centering. Flysky RC sell replacement throttle modules and I've ordered one, but it is still enroute from China, so that's a job for another day.

I've never done any RC models before, so I've been putting off buying motors and all the RC components to make everything go while I try to read up on it all.

After fitting the rudder the other week I realised that to test it I'd need to buy all the things I'd been putting off - The rudder servo needs to be connected to the receiver, which gets power from an ESC, which gets power from the main LIPO battery, which in turn needs to be charged.
Hence no blog post last weekend because I was still waiting for some things to arrive.

My final major component shopping list from Amazon was as follows:
Hawk's Work FS-i6X 10 Ch Transmitter, with FS-iA6B Receiver
Two Ezrun Max10 G2 80A ESCs with 3652SD 3300kv G3 brushless motors.
Injora Low Profile Digital Servo
Two Hilldow 2S Lipo 5100mAh Batteries with an XT60 Connector
ISDT PD60 60W 6A Lipo Balance Charger
Hobbywing 30501003 Programming Box for the ESCs

Given what I've read, the motors may be too powerful. Time will tell, but the transmitter has the capability to dial back the output of channels if necessary, so my only real worry is excess weight being a problem.

I also got a metal double servo arm and rudder arms to replace the plastic ones and some threaded rods and ball head link joints to join them together.
As you can see from the photo, I decided to link the servo to the inner rudder arms.
I've tested this setup and I can get what looks like a decent amount of rudder deflection without pulling anything out of shape, or binding.

One thing I've been quite concerned about was mounting the motors in the hull. I found some nice looking mounts on Amazon and a site called 'Noah's RC Ark' that have three cast aluminium pieces clamped between two side plates - two to clamp the motor and one to clamp the propeller shaft at a fixed angle. Unfortunately they were a bit pricey, especially on Amazon. In the end, since the mounts were Chinese imports anyway, I decided to cut out the middle man and look on Ali Express where I found the same thing for a third of the price.

The motor mounts took some modification to fit the motors that I had bought, and to fit into the hull.
I had to add some metal standoff bolts because the motor was too short to bolt it directly to the middle aluminium plate.
I only used the outer two of the four side plates and added threaded rods to bolt the aluminium parts together to turn two single motor mounts into one twin motor mount with the required 75mm/3" spacing.
I also had to cut the front part off of the side plates in order to get the assembly to fit between the bulkheads.

After the modifications, there were enough side plate parts left over to make mounts for the rudder servo, the ESCs and the receiver, so they turned out to be a really good buy.

All the mounts (excluding motor and battery) have been fixed in place, and the components clamped to them to make sure I'll be able to get at everything once the deck goes on.

I managed to put everything in where it will eventually go tonight and gave give it a float test in the bath.
It sits very slightly bow down with two batteries on board, but No leaks visible!

I got a pair of 40mm x 26mm brass rudders from Cornwall Model Boats a couple of weeks ago, but after spending so long planking the hull I didn't want to rush into drilling holes in it.

The threaded tubes for the rudders were 8mm diameter, which was a bit close to the width of the hull bracing planks for my liking. To make sure I didn't destroy the planks when drilling I added some extra bracing along the sides, along with another plank to give enough depth for the threads to tighten.

I also added a couple of spring strut end joints connected by a length of M8 Rod mounted to the keel. The idea is that this will keep the rudders aligned and reduce the stress on the hull when they are pushed and pulled by the servo - probably total overkill, but I'm happy with it.

No actual progress on the boat itself this week, but I made a stand for the hull to enable me to take it off the build jig for the first time.

It turns out that Hobby Craft sell a plywood box which is just the right size to sit between bulkheads 2 and 4 on the plan. All I had to do was remove the lid and trace and cut out the bulkhead shapes from the ends of the box.

I used deep mahogany wood stain to make it look a bit nicer and some red self adhesive felt (also from Hobby Craft) to protect the hull from scratches.

Some small bits and bobs of progress this week.

I added stern numbers and porthole frames, then some gloss varnish over the entire hull.

Next, I completed the first bit of superstructure - the hatch cover between the main cabin and the raised engine room deckhead. The hatch will be removable on the model to maximise access to the hull space.

The hatch is made from 1.5mm ply with 1/8" x 1/16" edging and 1/2" square balsa underneath to keep the ply flat. The scuttle and inspection hatches are from Mac's mouldings.
I used Humbrol acrylic no 127 as the main grey colour with a Windsor & Newton burnt umber wash to pick out the details and add some dirt.