Hi Mike,

You cant have too many clamps!

...and you can pop around anytime and borrow a couple... 🤣

Bob

Wow, Bob!
But tell me, what kind of clamp arsenal do you have? Crazy, I'm sure there are some you could lend me! 🤣🤣🤣
Keep it up, it's going to be great!
Michel-C.

My thoughts as well Will! 😂

Looking good there Bob, really taking shape now.
re rougher waters, hopefully being a fairly decent sized model, it will cope with a chop pretty well. Plus with your fairly regular references to "making white water'', means that the bow will remain at a high enough attitude to not worry about it burying itself 😂

Will

You will enjoy building the Sprite Chris - it makes a change to have a nice simple model to put together, and I have never had any boat with a "punt" bows feature before.

I have no idea how it will cope with the choppy waters on our local club lake that is close to the sea front, but I am looking forward (with some in in-trepidation) to finding out......and hoping for the best!

Bob.

Soon be ready for painting!

Blimey, what's the engine mounting for, a V8! 🤣

I'm going to be putting some paint on Fisherman soon, so that might be a good time to start on Sprite Plus OB! 🤔

Sprite Plus Prototype.

With the rear deck insert trimmed to size, the hull was turned over and drilled to take the water inlet scoop.

Both the rudder and the water scoop pick-up and the brass rudder tube were epoxy glued into position to seal them against any water ingress.

The next job will be to cut some fibreglass cloth to cover the engine mounting plate and bond it with resin.

The super-glue that was used to bond the epoxy side plates (for the water-cooled alloy mount) onto the engine plate made a very strong joint that was further reinforced by smearing 24 hour Araldite to make a fillet around the base that was also pushed into the series of drilled holes that were drilled along their base lines.

Fibreglass resin will further reinforce the motor mounting as the cloth will also be fitted against the lower sides of these mounting plates to cover the epoxy fillets and to flow smoothly around them to make a strong integrated motor mounting assembly.

Some P38 will be bought to smooth the area where the prop shaft enters the hull on the inside - and around the prop support fillet on the outside to make these areas look a little neater.

Once the hull build is completed, attention can be given to fitting it out with a LiPo supporting tray, and mounting the ESC and rudder servo.

A cabin lift-off cabin roof assembly needs to be constructed at some stage - and this may be started when some of the glass fibre is curing.

Bob.

Sprite Plus Prototype.

I started to sand the end profiles of the deck edge chine rails and spray rails where they ended (and over-lapped slightly) onto the balsa wood laminated "nose cone".

This was not quite as easy as I expected it to be, because I was a little wary about sanding a hardwood strip end when it was a glued on to a comparatively soft balsa wood nose.

A couple of layers of masking tape were placed on the balsa wood so I could protect it from being touched by the Perma Grit sanding block. When the cutting edge touched the masking tape it made a distinctive sound to alert me that I was getting a bit too close for comfort.

I think with a little bit of filler to complete the fairing-in of these chine strip ends it will look OK.

While I was out in the workshop(shed), I cut and fitted the final small section of deck skinning to cover the last open area of the hull, so all the decking is now fitted.

When the glue drys I can cut-off the selvage edge that I have left over transom so the hull will be ready to be prepped for final finishing.

The length of the hull on this prototype has worked-out at being 30 5/8" overall.

Bob.

That's good to hear. As I said the bow is usually well clear of the water, unless going through a chop so job done.

Sprite Plus Prototype.

Morning Chris.

I popped out to the workshop(shed) last night and looked at fitting some spray rails to the hull.....and revised my first thoughts.

As long as they stop just before the balsa wood "nose cone" they would not have any severe curves to shape or worry about - so I bunged a pair on!

When the glue has dried, the ends will need shaping etc, but fixing them with PVA was no problem at all. The brass tacks had their heads cut off and the shafts were then driven down into the spray rails to give a mechanical fixing to supplement the glue bond.

Bob.