Mounting plate fixed to keel & motor mount screwed to motor mount (4) screws.
Note epoxy used to help seal blind nuts to the mount plate.

Now its time to think about the skins.

In looking at the necessary skin radius for the bottom skin at the bow, I have decided to opt for a balsa block nose as per the original. The balsa blocks (1 per side) will occupy the space under the lower breast hook. As it needs to be sanded to match the outer surface of the skins I'll fit them after the skins.

My plan is to make and fit a keel doubler for where the side skin runs into the bow.

Make cardboard templates for the skins.

Attach bottom skins first, then side skins, clean back the chines to the breast plate and then fit the nose blocks.

Picture attached of the bow showing the new side skin doubler and the chine that will be cleaned back after the bottom skin is fitted.

Picture or cardboard bottom skin template

It's catch up time, I have been away on holiday and need to give an update.
After cutting out my cardboard bottom skin templates, I allowed a little extra on the transom and chine edges and then cut out from 1/16" ply. This is pretty easy by using a fresh blade and scoring several times against a steel straight edge, then bending the wood backward and forward to crack the wood along the line. You must sand the edge ASAP as it will have very sharp splinters.
The bottom skin would cover the bottom of the motor mount plate so I applied a couple of quick coats of polyurethane varnish while I could still get to it. Not an ideal choice but it was to hand.
The bottom skins were then glued one at a time to the hull.

Bottom skins sanded back ready to accept side skins

Next step is to make a template for the side skins which is easily done with some more cardboard. I transferred the pattern to some 1/16" ply as per the bottom skins. it now became apparent that I had hit a bit of a snag. The shape of my bow is a little too rounded requiring a near 90 deg bend to be applied to the side skins where they join the bow.
After a bit of experimentation and aborted efforts I decided to switch to 1/32" ply for the side skins. This was a fairly straight forward operation but I still have a little more clean up work to do.
While the side skins appear a lot stronger than I would have thought, I may still add supplementary stiffners / stringers between the chine and gunwale stringers, one in the middle of each bulkhead section.

Additional view of the hull as it stands today.

I have never done a carved nose block before so I was a little cautious about doing my own on a scratch build. Fortunately every thing seems to have turned out fine. I put this down to making sure that my bulkhead / Keel / breasthook was all square.

I did as much trimming off the boat as I dared without wanting to risk trimming too much. I then epoxied the blocks in place and finished with a minI plane and large sanding block.

Obviously I'll still need to do some filling and final sanding but its a good starting point.

At this time I also sanded the keel flat to the bottom skins at the back of the boat in the vicinity of the rudder.

Since the last posting I have cut some holes in the bulkheads to allow for the radio installation. The outer holes are sized to allow Deans Ultra connectors to pass through. I purposely made the holes as high as possible to maintain the watertight integrity (just in case!).

Still a little un-easy regarding the use of 1/32" side skins, I added a vertical stiffener between the chine & gunwale in the motor section which has the longest span.

On the underside of the hull on each side of the keel in places I has some 1/32" wide gaps between the edge of the skin & the middle member of the keel sandwich. Rather than fill with conventional materials, I edged the "crack" with blue painters tape & then knifed in a very small quantity of 15 min epoxy over the tape to fill the crack. After a few mins, but before the epoxy had cured, I removed the edge tape leaving behind a perfectly filled crack.

Tonight I have started work on sealing the internal seams. in my opinion the model is too small to glass, so Iam going for the minimal option. I have mixed up a small quantity of Z-Poxy Finishing Resin and poured a small bead onto the internal seam & then tipped the model back and forth so that the resin forms a bead along the full length of the glued joints.
Obviously this will take several go's to treat all of the joints.

I continued with the Z-Poxy finishing resin and now have "fillets" along the bottom skin seams and the side skin to chine seams. That should help keep the water out!

I then filed some flats onto the prop shaft to accept the set screws of the UJ & collar. Then with the drive nipped up I rigged up the receiver and speed control and ran the motor at slow speed to confirm the alignment of the prop shaft assembly. Everything still looked and sounded good so I put some thin CA around the top of the prop tube where it emerges through the keel. Hopefully the thin CA will penetrate the joint and lock the tube in alignment. Once dry I will go back and liberally dress the joint with epoxy.

This weekend, I attended the Weak Signals R/C show in Toledo Oh and amongst the bargains I picked up were Rivabo 40mm dia 3 blade prop from Rich & Don of Loyalhanna Dockyard & some 3600mA sub C NimHs from Batteries of America.
Unfortunately I was only able to get 9 batteries with tabs and 1 without. I have never soldered up a battery pack like this before and it will be a learning experience. On the plus side it will give me plenty of options regarding how I make up the pack/s to get the best weight distribution.

Its been a slow week & I have burnt a lot of time trying out different battery location / configurations.

In order to keep moving, I took on an easy task and made a small rudder servo platform. This goes in the rear section and locates on either side of the keel. I appreciate that the nature of this compartment means that it can get some water in but the base of the servo is pretty high up and if I apply a little "Canopy cement" around the servo lead into the case that should give me even more security.
For the picture the servo platform is just dropped in place, I'll maybe glue it tomorrow.

After a lot of thought I decided that there would be more advantages to built two separate 6V packs and then make up some leads that would allow me to get the two packs in series for 12V. For building the packs I downloaded some notes from Keith Shaw, written for Model Airplane News - Aug 1993.
After reading up, it was pretty clear that my 25W soldering Iron was not going to be up to the job so I purchased a new 80W Iron for $26 and some Deans battery bars. I have just finished the battery packs and one is measuring just over 6V, the other just under 6V. Lets hope they take a charge OK !

For the picture I have just dropped the battery packs on the rear cabin floor. This is not where they will be installed. My current plan is to install them against the back cabin wall of B3. A plus for making the battery out of two 6V packs is that I have more scope for installing in the boat. At the moment it looks like I will be able to experiment and drop them in the rear section, one each side of the rudder servo.