The VMW Marlin Cabin Cruiser by Robbob

Preface.

At the time of writing, I’ve had the construction of this boat on ‘the back burner’ since July 2022. By then I had spent about two months on and off constructing the boat to a stage where I could consider applying a glassfibre cloth and epoxy finish to the hull. However I couldn’t spend any more time on the Marlin project as I had a more important project to undertake, which was to paint, decorate, refurbish and prepare our house for sale so that we could downsize and move to a new area now that our kids had all fled the nest.

Fast forward to today (mid-April 2025) and it’s taken a while to get the new house and gardens into shape and settle in, with the emphasis on converting my internal garage into a great new workshop, I can finally pick up from where I left off.

Introduction to the kit.

This new model is the latest undertaking by Vintage Model Works, now famous for their very popular models of the RAF Crash Rescue Tender and Thames River Police Boat kits which are based on old Aerokits and Veron designs.

The Marlin is a re-working of an original Veron design by the late Phil Smith in 1953. His son Colin Smith, who was also responsible for the re-design of the Thames River Police Boat, has made some changes to his father’s design to take advantage of more modern materials and production methods such as CNC and laser cutting.
The photograph below is of a prototype built by Colin Smith to give you an idea of how the boat looks in finished form. And there is also a review of the Marlin that appeared in Model Maker magazine, November 1953.

The size remains at 36” and it employs the same construction method as the original. The spacious cabins of the boat makes it very easy to accommodate all the latest control hardware required, not that the original was lacking in that area even when the radio systems used valves and large batteries and the propulsion was usually IC or a large electric motor.
Even the pre-production sample the Vintage Model Works kit supplied to me is well presented with a full size drawing including a pictorial construction sequence and separate pages of building instructions.

All the required materials are supplied in quality ply, balsa, strip-wood and dowel including clear plastic sheets for the windscreens, and various white metal deck fittings. The builder is of course required to supply their own adhesives and paint of choice, as well as the propulsion, drive train and radio control gear. In the latter respect I will likely restrict control to throttle and rudder and not add any lighting or other features. That has already been done magnificently by Mike Turpin.

Construction.

As with the Thames river police boat, another Veron design, construction starts with the assembly of a box structure onto which formers and bulkheads are attached to make the basic hull shape.

I will be tackling this in the first part of my build blog which I hope you will enjoy following and I encourage you to ask questions, leave comments and hopefully some ‘likes’ as I make progress.
Robbob.

This is probably the easiest part of constructing the Marlin and having previously built the Thames River Police Boat I’m quite familiar with the ‘formers around a box’ method of construction which is characteristic of the Veron designs.

The base of the box is 9mm ply which is laser etched with planking lines ready for finishing, but I’m going to overlay this at a later stage with another panel that will be planked with 6.5mm wide limewood with .5mm black plasticard ‘caulking’.

The box sides are 9mm balsa and end panels 9mm ply. Before assembly both of the balsa side panels need to be ‘half-cut’ along the marked lines and then glued and bent to conform with the taper of the ply base.

The sides are then glued and temporarily pinned to the base and the two 9mm ply end pieces, formers F2 and F4, glued to the inside face of the side panels.
A quick check with a try square and then it was left to dry.

I’m using Titebond 2 throughout the build, it’s is an ‘aliphatic resin’ (whatever that is!) glue which I have always had great success with.

The next part will cover the addition of the keel and some of the formers.

The keel consists of a number of sections of 9mm ply that are glued together rather than a single piece. The supplied instructions suggest that you overlay the plan with something transparent as protection and to lay out and glue and pin all the keel parts to ensure correct alignment.
I found that this was not strictly necessary as the CNC cutting of the parts is so accurate that I could pin the parts to my cutting board along a straight edge and still achieve perfect alignment.

There will be a gap in the keel for the prop shaft tube and this is bridged by the two K6 components. At this stage the instructions say that you should glue the keel doublers K6 to form the complete keel but I decided to do that at a slightly later stage.

The keel is to be attached to the underside of the box and so I carefully measured and marked a centre line on the box. However, before I attached the keel and it’s supporting formers, I chose to drill some holes through the formers so that I could install some styrene tubes from front to rear as ‘conduits’ for motor, battery, servo wiring and cooling pipes so that they are all are concealed under the floor panels and behind bulkheads.

Fortunately, I already had some 10mm styrene tubes left over from a previous project and all I needed to do was temporarily pin the formers together to form a stack in the correct order to ensure they all stayed in alignment and then drill through them all in one go with a 10mm wood bit.

I decided to re-make formers F4A in 9mm ply, as drilling through the original balsa parts with such a large diameter bit would almost destroy them, and the ply pieces also acted as a guide for the drilling.

A dry test-fit with the conduits through the formers on the underside of the box revealed that before fitting the keel doublers K6 they would need some attention as they interfered with the path of conduits.
The remedy was to make a simple jig to enable me to ‘rout’ out a shallow groove in the pieces using a router bit in my drill stand and a guide piece clamped to the drill base and just pushing the pieces through the jig.

I will continue with fitting the formers in the next part.

The keel and formers can now be fitted to the box, starting with the forward piece of the keel which was glued and fixed centrally along the box and ensuring that it is central and square and equidistant from each side.

The rear piece of the keel (K5) was also fitted leaving an 8 mm gap for the 8 mm diameter prop shaft tube and the keel doublers (K6) which I had previously machined with a groove to accommodate the styrene conduits, were added to either side.
All of the lower formers were then added to either side of the keel on the underside of the box. At this point I decided that it would be an advantage to fabricate some additional formers to fit to the underside of the box at the F3C position as they would provide some additional support for the bottom skins when they are fitted.

Two pieces of 9mm ply, F1 & F1A, are glued together to make Former F1 and I added a brass pin to reinforce the joint. I don’t see any reason that this part can’t be made out of one piece of ply instead of two, but I expect that VMW have a reason to do so?
The assembled F1 former is then glued to the forward keel, I used forward cabin floor component clamped in place to act as a temporary spacer, and then the K3 was added to the front of the box to locate and support F1.

The two halves of F5 are glued and laminated together to form a 9mm balsa former which is added to the rear of the keel, with the addition of K5 to locate and support the laminated F5.

After fitting lots of effin’ formers 😉 (with more to fit!) the hull is slowly beginning to take shape.

Continuing with the construction of the hull, the remaining balsa 'F' formers were glued to the underside of the box at the marked positions and the corresponding formers added to the box sides.
All of these formers act as supports for the upper and lower chines that give the hull its final shape.
At the same time I installed the four styrene ‘conduits’ through the bottom formers.
At the stern the tubes end at the face of the rear bulkhead as this compartment will contain the rudder servo and the water-cooling pickup and exhaust tubing connections.
Two of the conduits will be used for cooling water flow and return in silicone tubing, a third for servo wiring and the fourth more for symmetry that anything else!

At the forward ends the conduits stop just underneath the motor and Electronic Speed Controller locations. The ESC will be mounted on one side of the dividing bulkhead F3 which is inside the cabin and the motor will be in a separate housing in the open part of the deck.
I also made some suitably sized holes through the keel and floor to allow for the cooling tubes and motor wiring to exit.

There are four additional balsa formers, F5A & F5B, that fit onto the rear former F5 that give the stern its curved shape, these are simply glued in place and will be sanded back to blend them all together when the chines are fitted. The ply skin of the stern will be added at a later of construction.

The next job will be to assemble and fit the upper and lower chines.

NB.
My apologies for the rather sporadic posting of these blog updates, my wife has had some recent surgery that will rather limit her mobility for a while, so domestic priorities mean that workshop and blog writing time is quite low down the list ☹️.

As with the keel, the upper and lower chines are each assembled from four different pieces. This can be done over the plan but in practice it is just as easy and accurate to do directly on the workbench as the laser cut parts are very accurately cut. The balsa pieces are simply glued together to form the two upper and two lower chines.

Once the glue had set they were fitted to the hull, some formers are slotted to accept them and they overlay some others, and they were all pinned and glued in place on both sides. The two K7 parts were then added to the front with some additional supporting pieces from some ply scraps just for added strength.

I also added some additional keel doublers, made from scrap ply trimmed and shaped to clear the wiring conduits. This was just to add some strengthening to the area that will have holes bored through for the rudder and the water pickup tube.

Some additional formers were added at the F3 position just to add some extra support to the bottom skins when they are added.

At the stern the parts F5a & F5b were added to form the curvature of the stern and bulkhead F5 was then sanded to complete the curvature using my sanding plate to ensure flatness.

With all of the bulkheads, formers and chines in place I used a small plane to shape the ply keel and then the sanding plate to flatten all of them in readiness for fitting the ply bottom and side skins.

This is probably one on my favourite parts of a boat building project.

Fitting the skins marks a transition between the skeletal form of the hull and the something that starts to resemble a boat.

My sanding plate made a good job of flattening the keel, formers and chines and so I pinned the 1.5mm ply skins roughly in place so see how well they fitted. I put a slight chamfer on the meeting edges on the keel to ensure that they butted together without any gaps.

I added some extra balsa formers either side of the keel just to add some extra support to the bottom skins and prevent resonance, and these also help to locate the styrene ‘conduits’ for the wiring and cooling circuits.

One trick I like to use is to pre-form the skins to conform to the curvatures of the hull using a heat gun, in this case a re-purposed paint stripping gun.
Used carefully and sparingly the heat from the gun is sufficient to relax the glue bond between the ply layers to allow them to be formed by hand to the hull curvatures.
I generally over bend the ply so that when the skins cool and the glue bond restored the skins relax back a bit and into the desired curve such that the skin can lay on the hull formers requiring very little pinning or clamping.

As the skins form a sealed compartment I gave the two bottom skins a couple of coats of sanding sealer for good measure making sure that I left the areas of glue contact were left un-treated, I also coated the corresponding internal areas of the hull with sanding sealer.
Once happy with the fit of the skins I put them aside and drilled the prop shaft tube hole through the keel using a long 8mm dia wood bit which made a very clean exit hole.
After re-pinning the skins in position I drilled and shaped the two skins to fit around the 8mm diameter prop shaft tube, which at this time I didn’t have as it was being made for me my Steve at Model Boat Bits, so I used a length of 8mm styrene rod as a substitute.

At this point I also had to drill the holes for the rudder and a water pickup for the ESC cooling circuit. The rudder, a standard 'large' brass one, will require a bit of conversion first as I need this to determine the correct rudder position relative to the water pickup tube and the propeller.

I’ll cover that in the next part.

Before I can fit the bottom ply skins, I need to work out the rudder position relative to the water pickup and in turn, the propeller, and then drill the keel for both.

However, the rudder needs to be modified so that it has a lower profile and this is done by turning the blade by 90 degrees.
I had done this previously when I built the VMW Thames Police Launch so I knew it would be a simple operation.

The blade of the rudder is held in the slotted shaft by two brass rivets and these are easily removed with a punch, then the blade can be rotated about one of the holes and a new hole drilled for the repositioned rivet which is then peened over to fix the blade position.

After cleaning up the parts, I applied some flux and soft soldered the parts together for good measure.
The empty rivet hole was also filled with a small offcut of brass rod, soldered in place and then flatted with a file and emery paper.
After a polish with some fine wire wool, it looked bright and shiny although I will probably re-polish it and apply some clear lacquer as part on the finishing process.

Now I could use the rudder to determine the correct position in the keel and also the water pickup tube location.
My new prop-shaft has not arrived at this time so I used a substitute to check position and clearances.
The holes were then drilled ensuring that they were vertical and the rudder and water pickup tube tried for fit.
I still need to bend and shape the pickup so for now the 6mm brass tube is pushed through the keel for fit.

On with the skins now!

In response to a recent forum thread on 'tools' I have concluded that one of the most essential tools to have when building model boats is the humble clamp.
You can never have too many of them in all sizes and types!

I employed a small selection from my collection of clamps in the fitting process of the bottom skins along with a number of brass panel pins and a few ‘push pins’ to hold the skins in place while the aliphatic glue sets.
The clamps come in a variety of sizes and types and are usually quite inexpensive. I used to buy a lot of them at the 'tool' trade stands at the big model shows (most shows are long gone now ☹️) but they also often crop up in ‘pound stores’ and the like.

Once the first skin has set I fitted the other side in the same fashion although I have easily enough clamps and pins to do both at the same time!

When all were set after a few hours I used my small hand plane and sanding plate to trim back the excess ply to the strakes in preparation for fitting the side skins.

That’s when I noticed a minor issue with the side skins, which I’ll cover later.

BTW. Does anybody know where I can buy a metal version of the plastic push pins that many of us seem to use?

The plastic ones work extremely well but the heads on them seem to break rather too easily in use, especially when gripped and pulled out using pliers 😠.

I have found some metal headed ones on the interweb that are sold in artist supplies stores and some for glazing uses but they are very expensive in any useful quantity.

There are also metallic silver finished plastic ones out there which will, of course, be no better!

Can anyone suggest a supplier?

Both of the side skins are in two pieces of 1.5mm ply, a short bow piece and a longer second piece that extends from F2 to the stern.
As with the bottom skins I used my heat gun to bend and shape these skins so that they fit the contours of the hull but I did find a problem with the dimensions of the larger skins after test fitting them.

It was apparent that the skins had been made slightly too short by about 10mm to span from former F2 to the stern allowing for a small overlap for trimming. Not a major problem, and to overcome it I simply made up some ply doublers from some scrap ply and added them to each of the F2B formers that would allow me to set the skins back sufficiently to reach the stern correctly.

The kit of parts that I am assembling is a pre-production prototype and my build is primarily to discover any construction snags such as this. I understand that this has now been ‘designed out’ of the later production kits of the Marlin.

There was another small problem 😮 with the upper chines in that they were not wide enough at the stern to meet the edges of the formers but again a simple solution was to add some scrap balsa to bring them out to the correct position. Once sanded back they were just fine to meet the top edges of the side skins. Again, this will be rectified in the production versions.

Some sanding sealer was applied to the internal faces of the skins, avoiding the glue areas that meet the chines and formers, something that is not strictly necessary but to me it seems like a reasonable precaution to protect the internal faces of the skins from damage by any (unlikely) water ingress.

The skins were held in place by the usual assortment of clamps and pins but in addition I also use brown packing tape pulled tightly across the hull to really pull the skins down tightly along the joint with the bottom skins. The packing tape has extremely high tensile strength and is ideal for this purpose and leaves no residue when removed.

The smaller skins at the bow were then heat formed and sealed internally before glueing, pinning and clamping into place and once all of the glue had set the clamps, pins & tape was removed and I then had the very satisfying job of planning and sanding back all of the skins along the top edges and the meeting edges of the side and bottom skins. There's a small gap in the skins as seen in the last picture that will need a bit of filler after the bow blocks are fitted and shaped, this is because the skins were moved further back to get the overlap at the stern, again a small revision required for the production models.

I feel that I'm now finally making some some good progress with this build 🤗 but there's a long way to go yet 🤔 and hopefully those following this blog aren't totally bored yet 😴. Let me know?

The next part will cover the fitting and shaping of the balsa bow blocks 😎.

With the bottom and side skins fitted and trimmed the bow can be finished with the balsa blocks supplied in the kit.

The bow has to be made this way because ply skins would could never be made to fit, as ply cannot be bent in two planes to form the required compound curve, and balsa is an ideal material for this purpose as it is easily carved and sanded to the required curvatures.

This can be quite tricky to do well so it deserves to be done slowly and with great care as I didn’t want to resort to the use of any filler to correct any mistakes on my part.

The balsa blocks supplied with my prototype kit needed to be arranged and laminating to produce a single block that would fill the area required together.
It’s likely the production kits will have one-piece blocks to simplify this stage.

The largest piece was placed in the bow and marked with a pencil line so that a basic cut could be made with a coping saw, and then the smaller pieces and offcuts arranged to fill the required area, and then all were glued together in the bow.
When the aliphatic glue had set some more basic cuts were made with a fine saw and then further refined with a coarse file to the rough profiles required.

The final shaping was done very gradually and carefully with fines files and sanding blocks to produce the final shape, taking great care to extend the line of the lower chine along the block to meet with the front keel former.

I used a card template (not shown) to make sure that both blocks were symmetrical and checking with ‘mark-1 eyeball’ as well.

I also temporarily attached the false keel to check that it would conform and fit to the blocks as seen in the last picture.

With great relief I decided that it was as good as I could make it and it only remains to fit the ply skin to the stern to finish the hull.

The last remaining piece of ply to fit to the hull is the stern skin and like the others is 1.5mm ply that is easily bent to the required curvature.

Before it’s fitted though I decided to fit an additional piece of balsa to the area that the water-cooling outlet will pass through just to provide a firm support to the tube. This was just a piece of scrap balsa glued in place and then the whole stern area was sanded back using my sanding plate to ensure that the area was completely flat in the vertical plane and the required curve in the horizontal.

The ply skin was then glued and pinned in place with some additional clamps and packing tape to pull the skin firmly into place, and when dry the skin was trimmed and sanded to meet the side and bottom skins. Before fitting the skin I took the precaution of marking the position of the extra balsa block on skin for when I eventually fit the water cooling outlet.

The external keel can now be fitted. This consists of three parts in 6 mm ply that are glued together as a single piece and glued and pinned, using some long brass pins, along the internal keel as far as the exit of the prop shaft.

The brass pins were punched below the surface and some filler used in the holes and then it just needed some sanding to slightly round off the edges along its length.

As my order for the prop-shaft, coupling and motor has now arrived I can think about the motor position and fabricate a suitable mount which I'll cover in the next part.

Now that the prop-shaft, propeller, flexible coupling and motor mounting bracket have arrived it’s time to think about the motor position and fabricating a support block for the motor mount.

First, I ensured that the shaft and propeller protrusion from the keel was correct in relation to the rudder water pickup tube positions and temporarily fixed the tube in place. Note that the pickup tube has yet to be bent and formed!

I find that the easiest way to ensure perfect alignment of the motor and shaft is to use a rigid coupling to hold the motor and attached mount while measurement and angles can be taken for the mounting block.

With that angle established I was able to shape a piece of hardwood, in this case beech, to the correct size, shape and angle for the motor mount to fix to.
A test fit of the block and motor proved that all was well with the shaft alignment.

The beech mounting block was then drilled and fixed to the deck with some brass screws that go down through the deck floor into the keel and the motor mount was then fixed with four screws to the mounting block. With everything fixed in place and the rigid motor coupling replaced with the flexible coupling the motor turns the shaft very freely with no binding or movement.

When finally assembled the shaft will be greased in the usual manner but for now, I will remove all of these drive components so that I can finish the decks internally and the hull externally.

It's at this point in July 2022 that I had to put the Marlin build aside to concentrate on moving house and building a new workshop in the garage to be able to continue with the build.

Old workshop seen in the last picture.

See you again in 2025…….(so to speak!)

Well…here we are in Feb 2025, the new workshop is all finished with a bench, shelving and racking, a ‘personnel’ door in the side; so no more going in and out through the ‘up-n-over door’, new power & lighting circuits, network, ‘phone extension, music system, pool table, mini-bar and beer fridge.

Only joking about the last three🤣

The next stage of construction should be putting the deck skins on but, as always, I’m thinking a few steps ahead have decided to do some planking on the inner decks because, as nice as the laser etched decks are, I want to have some nicer planking on them and that would be extremely difficult at any later stage.

The first area to tackle is the forward lower deck and for this I needed to first make a removable hatch to be able to access wiring etc.

I cut a square hole through the 6mm ply floor large enough for this and then set about applying the planking which is Lime, otherwise known as Basswood, for the planks, Mahogany for the borders and details and black Plasticard to simulate caulking.
I had previously planked small deck areas on my RAF Crash Rescue Tender, and all of the decking on my Thames River Police Boat, so I was reasonably confident of getting a good result.

At this stage the forward floor is easily removable and when planked and finished it will be fixed in place. All of the Lime planking is 1.6 mm thick and the planks 6.5mm width and all is fixed with a medium superglue.

A Mahogany border around the hatch was applied first and then strips of .5mm plasticard fixed around it. These strips were all cut in a 2mm width from an A4 sheet of black Plasticard.
Working out from the centre line for symmetry the Lime strips and ‘caulking’ was glued down until the whole area was covered.

The Plasticard ‘caulking’ was then pared back with a very sharp chisel before the whole panel was sanded smooth with a detail sander and then finished with some very fine grit abrasive paper. The excess planking was then trimmed from around the panel.

As I want a good depth of clear finish on all planked areas I used a two part epoxy ‘finishing resin’ from Z-Poxy, three coats with a rub down after each coat and a final polish with some cutting compound was sufficient to give the desired finish.

This piece was then covered with masking tape to protect it and was then glued in place in the forward lower deck.

Before I can continue with the fitting the deck skins and planking, I do have to fit the rudder servo.
The plans suggest that this is concealed within a false box or perhaps a seating bench within the rear lower deck area, and while this would be very easy to achieve, I thought I’d like to make things a little more difficult for myself by fitting the servo in the cavity at the stern so that it is totally concealed.

I almost never do thing the easy way 😂.

This will obviously involve incorporating a hatch in the deck to be able to access the servo too. This cavity will be quite cramped as it will enclose the servo, servo linkage and rudder arm as well as the ESC water cooling pickup and exhaust plumbing.

I had previously installed plastic ducting within the hull construction for all of the associated wiring and plumbing so all that remained was to fit a suitable servo mount and servo.

I would like to be able to remove the servo if required, so I used a commercially available aluminium servo mounting and adapted it to be mounted on two ‘stand-off’ pillars secured through the bulkhead with two long bolts. The mount was used in an inverted position to be able to access the mounting bolt heads. This arrangement will allow me to extract the servo, still in its mount, through the access hatch rather than attempt to remove the servo alone.

Before fitting the servo mount I had to fit the rudder assembly and determine the correct height of the mount so that the servo linkage would be at the correct height for smooth operation.
This was more than a bit fiddly but I managed to find the right place and then drilled the two mounting bolt holes through the bulkhead.
The real test of the servo operation was to connect up a servo tester and battery to check that it all worked freely, had sufficient arc for the required rudder movement and without the possibility of fouling with any of the ‘plumbing’ that I’ll be fitting later.
I will have to make the access hatch through the rear deck of sufficient size to be able to get the servo in and out and enough room to fit the rudder and linkage.

At this stage it seems likely that I will remove the central plywood ‘brace’ to make the access hatch practical as this ply piece seems to have no critical structural purpose.

In a previous blog update I described how the forward lower deck floor was planked, finished & fitted but I omitted to mention that before glueing and fixing the floor in place that I had to make some holes through the foremost bulkhead to be able to bring the cabling through from the ESC to the battery & main power switch, both of which will be within the forward cabin.

Whilst these cables could be simply routed in full view within the cabin, and as always, I made it slightly more difficult for myself than that.

I bored some 20mm diameter holes through the bulkhead at a level below the forward deck floor using a right-angle adaptor and a step drill in a power drill.
The angle adaptor allowed me to make the holes through the bulkhead close to the cabin deck floor. I will build a battery box and power switch bracket onto the cabin side of the bulkhead.

On my Thames River Police launch I disguised the power switch as a steering wheel, as in the pictures I’ve added, and I’ll most likely do the same with the Marlin.

BTW.
You may notice my preference for DeWalt power tools and accessories. I believe that the brand is owned by Black & Decker now?

I’ve lost count of the number of ‘lesser’ brands of tools I’ve got through over the years and its usually the gearbox of a drill or the batteries that give out first!

Fitting the deck skins should really be the next thing to tackle but as I intend to fully plank the deck, I decided that I should get the slightly messy process of fibre glassing the hull out of the way first as I don’t want anything to spoil the decking surface before I get around to finishing that.

This is a process that I’ve done on all of my boats so I’m fairly well practiced at it by now and I usually apply the fibreglass cloth and resin in five stages, one for each ‘face’ of the hull. The reason for this is that I keep the surface as level as possible which largely eliminates runs in the epoxy coating.

The resin that I favour now is the Z-Poxy finishing resin, which unlike the product I first started using, hardens within three hours and cures overnight sufficiently to be able to rub down in readiness of further coats.

The fibreglass cloth is a light to medium cloth of 50 gramme per square metre that, once wetted with the resin, is easily worked onto the ply hull surface without wrinkling.
The Z-Poxy is easy to work with as it is a mix of 50:50 by weight of resin and hardener and I found that a total weight of about 20 grammes of this is just right for a single ‘face’ of a hull of the size of the Marlin.

The fibreglass cloth is first cut to size and I make it ‘hinge’ onto the hull surface with a couple of small clamps on the keel.
The resin is first applied to the hull surface with a half inch disposable brush and the cloth is laid onto that and the cloth gently brushed down into the resin until it is fully wetted. It’s important not to overbrush the cloth onto the surface as that can cause dragging of the cloth as the resin starts to harden.

With the clamps removed I can then apply some resin to the keel and then fold the cloth onto that area too.

The ‘working’ time of the resin is just 30 minutes so I have to work quite quickly to cover the required area, after that time the resin mix starts to stiffen as the catalyst does its work in the mix.

I’ll leave this overnight to fully cure before trimming off the excess cloth with a craft knife and then prepare the other bottom skin for the same process.

The fibreglassing of the hull continued in much the same way as the first piece on the bottom skin, in each case the cloth was brushed into a coat of resin and left to set before trimming and moving onto the next ‘face’ of the hull ending with the stern skin.

After all the excess cloth had been trimmed, I could start the process of flatting the first coat of resin and cloth using my trusty DeWalt Multi Tool with its sanding attachment.

I used a 240grit abrasive and this is sufficient to level out the surface in readiness for the second coat of resin, being very careful not to sand through the cloth to expose the ply skin.
I use the dust extraction attachment in conjunction with the sander to take away the resulting epoxy and fibre ‘dust’ so no face mask is really necessary at this stage.

I will go on to apply the second resin coat later.

Before applying another coat of Z-Poxy Finishing Resin I will fit some spray rails onto the lower chines as recommended and detailed in an update to the Marlin construction sheet.
The designer observed that, with the prototype boats built there was an excess of spray from the bow coming over the hull and onto the decks, and that this could be countered by the addition of some short spray rails extending from the bow keel to about 45 cm aft.
I chose to make these from some 4 mm square Obeche that I had in stock but this would need to be steam-formed to follow the line of the chine without snapping or splitting. Fortunately, I have a wallpaper stripper, of which the steam generator is ideal for such a process.

First, I wetted the Obeche strip by standing it in hot water for about ten minutes and then applied steam to the strip for another five minutes until the strip felt quite pliable.
This was then formed around some panel pins on the benchtop to hold the curve as the wood cooled down, this process was sufficient to produce the required curvature that mostly held its shape when fully cooled.

Before fixing the strips to the chines I ‘keyed’ the resin surface of the hull along the chines to aid adhesion of the epoxy resin glue, the strips were then chamfered at an angle to meet the bow keel and drilled with a 1.5mm bit in a pin drill along their length.
The strips were fixed in place with the epoxy and some short brass pins and the ends of these ‘spray rails’ trimmed at a pleasing angle at the ends.

When all was set, I lightly sanded the edges of the rails to round them slightly and the additional coats of resin on the hull will further protect and finish the rails.

Now that the spray rails are fitted, I can give the entire hull another coat of resin to build up a good surface for the paint process.

As with the application of the glassfibre cloth I do this separately for each ‘face’ of the hull to ensure that there are no runs. Fortunately, the Z-Poxy resin has a fast setting and curing time so it’s possible to do the five faces of the hull in an extended day but I choose to do this over the course of a couple of days.

At this stage I’m using cheap disposable brushes that have a tendency to shed a few bristles, which need to be picked out of the resin, and don’t leave the smoothest finish.
This is of little concern because the resin will be rubbed down with wet & dry abrasive between coats and the final coat will be applied with a much better quality brush to achieve the best surface finish.

For now that’s all I need to do to the hull and I can now move onto adding the deck panels and planking.

The deck skins in the VMW Marlin kit are laser etched with planking lines for those that are happy to use the panels as they are but, as with the lower deck floors, I’ll be applying my own planking strips with black caulking lines with some additional mahogany detailing.

The deck panels consist of seven separate pieces and are simply glued in place using some aliphatic resin. Being laser cut they all fit together very accurately.

The forward lower deck floor was covered in masking tape to protect the epoxy finish and glued in place as it will not be possible to fit this piece after the decks are fitted.

After applying some TiteBond 2 glue to the forward deck panels I pinned and clamped them in place.
I also used some packing tape to pull the skins down firmly; the packing tape is very strong under tension and is ideal for this.

The side deck pieces were fitted in the same way but I decided to re-make the piece supplied for the very rear of the deck to accommodate the hatch aperture that will give access to the rudder and servo, and also the cooling ‘plumbing’.

At this stage I removed the centre support piece from the area as it doesn't really add anything to the integrity or strength to the hull and its removal gives far better access through the hatch for accessing the rudder servo etc.

With all of the deck panels firmly glued in place and trimmed all round with a small hand plane I can now consider the rear lower deck floor.

As with the deck panels this is also laser etched with planking lines and at this stage of construction it would be impossible to apply my own planking and caulking lines in the deep recess.
My solution was to cut a piece of 2mm ply to form a new floor panel that I could plank as a separate panel that will be glued down over the laser etched floor. I marked out an aperture on the panel to fit around the motor mounting block.

To date this will be the largest area that I have attempted to plank and I also fear that the process will cause the panel to distort as the glues and resin finishes cure.

I began the process by marking a centre line and fixing down the 1.6mm x 6.5mm limewood strips and the .5mm black plasticard ‘caulking’ lines with superglue and working outwards symmetrically to, hopefully, minimise stresses in the panel.
I found that, although repetitive, the process was quite easy and enjoyable to do as there was no fiddly cutting and trimming of planks to perform.

Once the panel was fully covered I left it for a day or so for the glue to fully cure before trimming off the overlaps around the edges and paring the plasticard caulking down to an even surface with a sharp chisel.
I then cut out the aperture for the motor mounting block and did a test fit. A final rub down with 400 grit abrasive paper resulted in a fine finish ready for the first of several coats of epoxy finishing resin.

Thankfully at this stage there is no significant distortion of the panel so my fears were largely unfounded.

The planking of the lower rear deck seemed to go quite well but the main deck will be a bit more of a challenge for me too as I want to add some borders and detail in contrasting mahogany.
I will also be adding a mahogany detail to the hull that follows the gunwale of the deck that will form a nice edge for the paint finish on the hull.

I began by using some thin cardboard to make some templates for the edging of the foredeck, a 10mm width of mahogany looks to be a nice proportion to the 6.5mm limewood planks.
You might expect that both the port and starboard card templates for the foredeck would be identical back-to-back but surprisingly that is not the case with a variation of a few mm in places. For this reason, separate templates were made and laid onto some 1.5mm mahogany sheet, the outlines marked and very carefully cut from the sheet with a very sharp blade.
With the mahogany, being so thin and the grain being quite coarse, there is the possibility that it can break across the grain, so great care is required to hold the sheet down firmly while being cut.

Similarly, I made card templates for the longer pieces that go back to the stern. The inner edges of all these mahogany pieces were smoothed with some abrasive paper. The outer edges slightly overlap the deck and will be trimmed and contoured before the gunwale strips are applied around the hull at a later stage.

An additional detail is a central mahogany strip on the foredeck that will be echoed on the very rear deck and access hatch. All of these pieces were fixed down with CA and I took great care to get a very tight join between the pieces for the best appearance.

After fitting all of the mahogany border strips to the deck I cut lots of strips of .5mm black plasticard and added them to the inside faces of the mahogany all around the deck and also the central mahogany detail strip.

At this stage I decided to add the last piece of ply deck at the stern, this was cut from fresh 1.5mm ply and the hatch opening formed.
This was glued down, and when set I made a card template of the stern deck, and produced the mahogany edging for this and stuck that down too. The black plasticard ‘caulking’ was added to this as well.

I then started adding the limewood planks and caulking to the front deck working outwards from the centre mahogany strip, the very outer strips continue down the deck sides, some of which a quite narrow, and these required very careful shaping to fit without any gaps which would spoil the look.

These outer strips only extend half way down the deck as I decided to introduce another mahogany strip as a transition point for the planking so that the remaining strips would be parallel to the well deck sides. I felt that this would look far better than to continue the side planking in ever narrowing strips up to the rear deck.

Happy New Year to everybody, I hope you all had a fun but relaxing time over the festive period! 😀

Now...onwards with the VMW Marlin kit that's taken far too long to get its current state 😮.

I continued with the planking on the side decks from the transition point and then started on the rear deck, the process is really quite quick and easy once you get into a rhythm and the lime planking is very easy to work with. I ordered more than enough of this from the supplier (SLEC) to easily cover the required areas with enough in reserve for any future decking needs too. The mahogany sheets for the contrasting detail came from the same source.

For the rear deck I decided to apply the planking over the hatch aperture rather than fit fiddly little pieces on either side of it with a view to opening up the hatch afterwards.

The angle transition of the side decks looks, in my view, pretty good and was certainly a better way to continue the planking along the sides.
I took a very sharp chisel to the entire deck area to pare back the black plasticard ‘caulking’ lines.

I’ll give the decks a final trim around the lower deck areas where they overlap the edges and then give the whole deck a thorough sanding later on, but the next job will be to form some mahogany strips to use around the deck on the sides of the hull, these will make a nice gunwale feature and also become a good clean edge for the hull paint finish too.

Very soon I'll need to decide on a suitable colour scheme, perhaps a pale blue or green with white or cream on the hull?

A visit to Halfords (Automotive parts and paints supplier in the UK) may be in order to see what acrylic colours are available!

Now that the whole deck is planked I can fit a mahogany gunwale around the hull which will be a good edge for the hull paint finish as well as a nice finishing detail.

I can’t use a plain and straight strip of mahogany for this, as to accommodate the curvature of the bow the strip would have to be contorted in two planes which is not possible to do.

The solution was to use some thin card taped around the bow to form a template of suitable width and length that could be transferred to some mahogany sheet.
This was very carefully cut from a sheet of 1.6mm mahogany allowing for a small overlap on the upper edge for later trimming and a finished width of 9mm which looked to be in proportion.
A test fit proved that the strip conformed extremely well to the compound curvature and I then wetted, steamed and bent both pieces so that they fitted closely to the curve.

These bow pieces only need to go far enough around the hull to a point where a regular strip of mahogany can be used to extend the gunwale to the stern. The bow pieces were fixed in place with some five-minute epoxy resin and held in place with clamps and some tape until set.
I then continued the gunwale with some strip mahogany to the stern with a similar overlap for later trimming.

The stern piece required the making of a similar card template and a piece was cut from the mahogany sheet and fixed with some epoxy.

Once glued and set I trimmed back the overlap of this gunwale strip all around the hull with my trusty ‘Record’ hand plane.

At the bow I added a small piece of mahogany to cover the top of the keel piece where it meets the deck.
I then gave the entire deck a thorough sanding using progressively finer grades of abrasive paper until I obtained a satisfactory surface for finishing.

When I planked the rear deck area, I deliberately covered over the hole that I had made previously for the servo and rudder access hatch just to make application of the planking quicker and easier.
This now needs to be cut out to reveal the hole so that I can form a proper hatch which was easily done using a Dremel routing bit and finishing with sharp craft knife and files.

I applied several strips of clear packing tape over the rear deck to protect the newly planked surface and cut an oversize piece of 1.5mm ply for the hatch cover.

As I want this cover to have the same curvature as the deck itself, I heated and bent the piece to the same curve as the rear deck and I applied the planking and plasticard ‘caulking’ to this panel whilst it was curved.

I formed the coaming around the deck aperture from some obeche strips, making several shallow cuts using a razor saw to help them bend, to ensure that they also followed the deck curvature. I then formed a corresponding frame on the underside of the planked panel so that it mated with the deck coaming without too tight a fit to allow for surface finishing.

The planking was then trimmed off around the panel and some ‘caulking’ and mahogany border strips fitted around it to complete the hatch cover. The caulking was trimmed back and the hatch given a thorough sanding in readiness for finishing.

Later I will be fitting some small neodymium magnets in the coaming and the hatch cover to secure the hatch firmly in place.

When I planked the forward part of the deck around the passenger well I brought the planking right up to the edges of the hole, and on reflection this could have really done with a mahogany border to better define it.

In part the border will be concealed by the main cabin front screen and the small screen in front of the passenger well but I decided that it would be worth trying to cut away the planking and fit a border to improve the detailing of the forward deck.

Fortunately, I kept the ply sheet that the deck panels were laser cut from and was able to use that to make a template of the border to the width that I wanted that included a margin for some black plasticard caulking.
I used this to mark a cutting line around the hole and the proceeded to, with extreme care! cut through the planking with a very new and very sharp blade in my craft knife.
The corner radiuses were particularly tricky and I only had one very minor knife slippage which I’m hoping I can sand off. I actually slightly undercut the planking to ensure that the caulking strips would fit without any gapping.

This worked very well and I could then cut and apply the plasticard strips to the planking edges. The corners of the boarder were made from individual pieces of mahogany sheet trimmed to fit each corner tightly and then I applied some mahogany strips to join it all up.
The internal corners were then sanded back to an even width using a sanding drum in my Deremel tool.

I finished by sanding back the area to blend in the caulking and border strips around the passenger well. The process went better than expected and I think it will look really good once finished in clear high gloss epoxy resin.

All the planking is now complete and ready for the several coats of epoxy finishing resin to achieve the final finish that I want.

I had previously planked and finished the forward well deck floor, which is currently covered in green masking tape to protect it, and I noted that the first coat of resin really could have been thinned to let the limewood and mahogany strips take up the finish more readily.

With this in mind, and after a bit of research on the matter, I decided that I would dilute the initial coat of resin on the remaining planking with some isopropyl alcohol that I had ordered over the internet.
It’s important to use the very purest alcohol with the lowest water content to be most effective and I had also read that the resin and catalyst ratio should still be 50:50 by weight but with the maximum addition of 25% isopropyl alcohol. Any more than this could retard the curing and hardening of the resin.

The alcohol I use is 99.9% pure and the resultant epoxy mix soaks into the porous wood much better rather than laying on the surface and still cures and hardens in the same amount of time.

The first piece I coated to test the new resin finishing process was the separate planked panel that is the large well deck floor, and after curing and hardening I rubbed this down with some abrasive and then applied two further undiluted coats of resin rubbed down between coats.

I used cheap disposable brushes to apply the initial coats of resin, the occasional stray brush hair is easily removed but for the final coat I used a much better quality brush. The final coat was then rubbed down with progressively finer grades of wet & dry abrasive paper and then polished with a liquid abrasive (T-Cut) to reveal a very high gloss finish.

Confident that I could achieve the depth of finish I wanted on all of the planking I masked all around the hull gunwale strips and then applied the first thinned coats and subsequent un-thinned coats to the main deck and the hatch cover.

I want the walls of the well deck to have a nice pastel blue colour but spraying the area directly will prove to be difficult and the resulting finish may not be very good.

The solution, I decided, was to make some separate panels from some 1.5mm obeche sheets which will act as liners that I could easily paint and finish and then glue in place.
The panels were easy to make to be a good close fit and included a panel for the rear wall of the well deck, with some clearance holes for the servo mount screws and also the bulkhead F3, which I have re-made in ply for strength, which I had yet to fix in place.

Once I was satisfied with the fit I applied some Z-Poxy resin in several coats to obtain a smooth finish and then all four parts were put into my recently acquired spray tent and given some light coats of white primer.
After a light rub down with fine abrasive and cleaned with some panel wipe I applied two coats of some Halfords acrylic gloss in a light pastel blue colour.

My painting process not only includes preparing the surface for the best finish but also warming the paint first which I do on a ‘shelf’ above a tubular heater and then a thorough mixing by shaking the can as recommended.

I will glue these panels and the F3 bulkhead in place after I have glued down the well deck floor.

I finished the walls and floor area of what will be the cabin interior with several coats of Eze-Kote, which is a water-based finishing that dries very quickly and is very suited to sealing the woodgrain, but unlike sanding sealer, has no strong smell.
It makes for a very suitable surface for paint too after lightly rubbing down.
I'm undecided whether to paint the cabin interior as it will not really be seen as it will enclose the battery, power switch and R/C components etc.

Meanwhile, the well deck floor panel now has a lovely high gloss epoxy finish and is ready to be glued down over the structural floor.

I used some aliphatic glue for this, spread evenly by brush on both surfaces and then clamped down using some MDF offcuts held down by some woodscrews through the motor mounting hole and the prop-shaft hole. This ensured that it would be bonded very well and be very flat.

Once dried I could then fix the small painted panel to the wall at the end of the deck and then the two painted side panels. All were glued with aliphatic and clamped in place using some scrap MDF pieces to spread the load of the clamps and some soft cardboard to protect the painted surfaces.
It would be a shame to spoil them at this stage!

I can now consider doing the final alignment of the motor and prop-shaft using a rigid coupling and then fixing the shaft tube through the hull with epoxy resin.

At this stage I need to do the final alignment of the brushless motor, coupling and prop-shaft.
The motor mount is just a regular glass reinforced plastic mount from ModelBoatBits for a M500/600 motor. The motor is an Overlander T3548/05 as recommended by VMW and the shaft is a 7” Maxidrive also from ModelBoatBits.

I made the motor mount wedge from a Beech block that is set, as near as possible, to the angle of the prop-shaft outer tube the and this is simply screwed down to the floor of the well deck with some brass screws. The plastic motor mount is screwed down onto this block.

I had previously ground a flat onto the motor shaft so that the set screw of the coupling would seat onto the shaft without fear of the coupling working loose.
The alignment of the motor shaft and prop-shaft inner is set by using a temporary rigid coupling, of the same length as the flexible coupling, to get the alignment straight and true.
The shaft tube was then glued in place using some 30 minute Z-Poxy. Some masking tape around the tube hole ensured that the epoxy didn’t spill over onto my nicely finished floor!

When set the rigid coupling was removed and replaced with the flexible coupling with the thrust washers in place and the propeller fitted at the outboard end. I won’t fill the tube with grease until all of the painting of the hull is finished.

As with some other of my models I fitted an old computer cooling fan to the end of the motor so that when the motor is enclosed in a ventilated box there will be a forced airflow to help cool the motor, whether it needs it or not. The 40mm fan blade is retained by an accessory mounting piece that is supplied with the motor from which I have cut and ground away the mounting shaft. The four screws, also supplied, fix this fan retainer to the motor end through the four machined holes in the rotor face of the end of the outrunner motor.

I’ll need to fit the water pickup and exhaust for the ESC cooling, along with the rudder tube, to the hull as the last stage before I can start spray painting the hull.

The speed controller I’m using for the Marlin has some water-cooling connections and, as with my other boats, I’ll be utilising them with the addition of a water pickup just behind the propeller and a water exhaust on the stern.

Although I’ve used commercially available fittings in the past, I much prefer to make my own, or to be more truthful, have some of the components made for me that are beyond my workshop resources, with which I can complete the fittings.

To my advantage, I have a brother with a lathe who, when supplied with an engineering drawing, will turn any brass parts that I need.
The brass flanges that he turned will seat against the hull to give a neat finish to the fittings.

I annealed some 6mm O.D brass tube and used a bending spring to form a 90-degree bend and then trimmed this to form the ‘mouth’ of the pickup. After a trial fit to determine the correct external length, I soft soldered the flange to the brass tube. Similarly, I soft soldered the flange onto a piece of brass tube for the exhaust.

After a clean-up with some wire wool, I epoxied the pickup in place in the already drilled hole through the keel so that the pickup would be directly in the wash from the propeller.

Previously when building the hull at the stern, and before fitting the stern ply skin, I fitted an extra block of balsa to give internal support to the brass tube. I used a hand drill to pierce the stern through this block at a suitable height above the likely waterline and then epoxied this fitting in place.

Internally there is sufficient tube to make the silicone water cooling pipe connections, which I always secure with a spring clip retainer. The silicone tubing will run to and from these connection in the pre-installed ‘conduits’ , as seen in the first picture, that run from the stern compartment to the cabin compartment where the ESC will be located.

The rudder tube can also be epoxied in place now and then the hull is largely ready for the first part of the painting process.

The cabin of the Marlin will enclose all of the controls for the boat, including the main drive battery, power switch, speed controller, receiver and probably a lighting control switch.
For this the cabin needs to be removable, although the building instructions suggest that this can be fixed in place if no radio control is fitted, but in this day and age that is most unlikely, remembering that this boat was designed in 1953 when radio control was far more complex to implement and considerably more expensive in relative cost.

Construction begins with the making of a framework onto which the cabin is built up on. Cabin former F6 is a piece of 9mm balsa which should be sanded to the curvature of the deck but I found it more practical to curve the entire thickness by making razor saw cuts across the piece and enlarging them with thicker saw blades.
A piece of 1.5mm ply was cut to the same shape and this and the balsa piece with saw cuts saw cuts were covered in aliphatic glue to form a ‘sandwich’ which I clamped to the deck, protected with a layer of masking tape, so that it would dry perfectly conformed to the deck curvature.

Three lengths of 3mm ply were cut to a width of 12.5mm for the framework as well as some ply corner bracing pieces. I also made a curved former from 6mm ply for the forward end of the frame.
This former and the now curved F6 were glued and clamped together and when set I could then add the other pieces to form the frame.

The frame was actually constructed within the cabin aperture with the pieces clamped to the sides but I interposed thin pieces of cardboard all around this to act as a spacer so that even with a paint finish on the framework it would still be a very slightly loose fit within the aperture. Without this clearance the cabin could be difficult to remove to access the internals.
The ply corner braces were then added to make the frame perfectly square and rigid.

When all of this had dried and set I added three obeche (basswood) pieces around the rim of the frame that form a flange that seats on the deck and supports the cabin structure. The planked deck and the walls of the cabin recess were protected from contact with the glue with some clear packing tape.

In the next update I’ll add the cabin sides.

Construction of the cabin continues with adding the 1.5mm ply cabin sides, all are accurately CNC cut, including the window apertures.

I found it useful to carefully trim and chamfer the bottom edges of the side panels so that they conform tightly to the decking surface which will help with the overall fit of the cabin.

They all require the addition of some obeche strips to reinforce and strengthen them, particularly at the corners and at the roof line. The ones at the rear of the cabin are set slightly inwards by a couple of mm so that when the rear panel is fitted, they will allow for an inside overlap of the fixed cabin extension ‘wings’
These pieces were glued, pinned and clamped flat on the bench and then trimmed to fit closely onto the cabin base framework that was previously made.

The two front screen pieces were also trimmed and chamfered to fit the deck profile; the meeting centre edges were also chamfered for a precise fit. The laminated former C6 was also sanded to the correct angle for the front screen pieces.

All four panels were then trimmed to fit the base framework and pinned together as a ‘dry fit’ to check that they all fitted each other well.

For the final glueing and assembly of the cabin I applied some protective masking tape to the decking surface and all the pieces were pinned and clamped together and the front windscreen panels held tightly together with some clear packing tape.

When all the glue had set I removed the pins and clamps and also the protective masking tape from the deck and found that the cabin sat very well on the deck with no gapping around the meeting surfaces.

The next job will be to fit the roof centre support and the balsa roof pieces.

With the cabin framework and sides in place it's now time to fit the roof panels, but I first need to fit the centre roof support C7.
This piece of 1/4" balsa needed some trimming to fit correctly and was then glued and pinned into place between the front screen and cabin rear panel.

I used my sanding plate to contour the cabin sides and the centre support so that the roof panels would seat fully on the cabin framework.

The supplied balsa sheet for the roof is 1/8” thick but I decided to use 3/16” instead so that I could sand a larger radius curve on the roof edges and a smoother centre line of the roof. The meeting edges of the roof panels were also chamfered to butt closely together along their edges.

The balsa pieces, three separate pieces per side, were simply glued, pinned and clamped in place about the centreline of the roof, one side at a time, and when dried I sanded the joints in the panels to remove any ridges and then sanded the outer edges and also the centre line until I achieved the desired curvatures for a nice smooth contour.
The additional thickness of the balsa that I substituted allowed for this without thinning the panels too much.

I will be covering the cabin with some glassfibre cloth and resin to reinforce it and as a good surface for the white gloss paint finish.

The cabin is now ready for the fibreglass cloth and epoxy resin coats to strengthen it and give a good surface for the high gloss white paint finish.

I used the same weight of glass cloth as on the hull for the cabin and the Z-Poxy finishing resin too. The cloth was cut and applied over the whole cabin surface including over the window apertures as these will be trimmed out later.

The first coat of resin was thinned by about 20% to ensure that it soaked well into the balsa roof panels through the 50gsm cloth.
Two additional coats were required to get the depth of coating I needed and, as always, I rubbed each coat down with wet & dry abrasive to refine the surface.

The next bits to fabricate are the rear extensions to the cabin.

The cabin has two pieces that extend on both sides from the rear of the cabin along the sides of the well deck to the rear deck. They are designed to fit inside the overlap of the cabin sides to allow for the lifting off of the cabin for access, and they are to be permanently fixed to the sides of the well deck.

These 1.5mm ply side pieces required a small amount of trimming on the lower edges to make sure that they followed the contour of the planked deck but there will be a small mahogany finishing piece added along this line to cover any gaps later.

I first need to fit a strip of wood along the lower edges to form a lip that will seat on the deck surface and then an additional piece extends down from that onto the sides of the well deck.
I chose mahogany for these pieces in keeping with the detailing on the deck and elsewhere.

I then made up another piece, again in mahogany, to go across the end of the well deck to bridge the sides, and this needed to be contoured to fit flush onto the curve of the rear deck.
A small fillet was also added to the side ply pieces to reinforce the end that meets with the cabin, and I also made a strip of mahogany that will act as a decorative piece at the bottom of the cabin rear on bulkhead F3.

After a rub down with some abrasive all of the ply and mahogany pieces were given two coats of Z-Poxy finishing resin, the first coat thinned a little, and when cured I rubbed them all down with some abrasive ready for painting.

The cabin sides will be finished in white gloss and will have some strips of mahogany added as a decorative detail.

These pieces will be finally glued in place when they are all fully finished and then only after the hull has had a full paint finish too.

Progress with the Marlin has been, so far, very slow for various reasons and I don’t want to rush the remaining painting process for fear of ruining all of the effort in getting the boat to the stage that it is at now, and I thank you for your patience if you have been following my build blog so far 🤞😀.