Installed the shroud anchors and the scoop deck today. Here are my shroud anchors. This is the 3D versison. Four small pieces epoxied together. When dry, I drilled out the hole and installed a greased anchor bolt in thickened epoxy and let that dry to make my own threads.  Here they are being epoxied in place. In this picture you can see the "cradle" for the curved scoop deck. When those were cured enough, I epoxied down the scoop deck. I laser cut a hold-down piece of 3mm plywood and taped the edges so it wouldn't stick to the main bulkhead. That's the bit with the clamps on it. It's clamped to the main bulkhead and fits the curve just right. And here's how it looked after curing for 5 hours... I'll keep plugging away! Cheers!

You can buy a pre-made fiberglass fin box (finbox?) for your IOM sailboat for about $150, or you can make your own. The pre-made one might fit your fin if you trim it perfectly enough, but the home-made one will fit your fin perfectly if you are careful while you make it. To do this whole process though, you'll also want to have an IOM fin alignment and measuring jig . It makes all the alignment steps so much easier and accurate. You'll also need a fin, a bulb, heavy fiberglass (I use 6oz. from kayak building instead of the 1.4oz I normally use for RC sailboats. If you only have lightweight cloth then you'll have to do several layers), epoxy, etc... Trim the fin to the shape you need to fit your space.  Tape the fin completely with packaging tape. The brown type seems to be the thinnest. Make sure to also tape the end cuts that you've made. Anything not taped will stick to the epoxy and you'll ruin the fin.  Coat the taped fin with a LOT of petroleum jelly

I've been slowly tinkering away on the V8 IOM RC sailboat. Here are some other shots of the fin box, the transom drain plug, and internal frames. Lots still to do but I'm too lazy tonight to describe it all. Here is the start of the drain plug project. I used greased 10-24 metal bolt in thickened epoxy to make the threads, but then will use a very lightweight nylon bolt and washer for the actual plug.  Here's my IOM fin alignment jig being used to set the fin and bulb on the Vickers V8. Here are a couple shots of my fiberglass fin box that I made to perfectly fit the trimmed fin. Be sure to rub some petroleum jelly on the tape as a release agent. I used 6oz. cloth that I had laying around from a kayak build. Ended up doing two layers of that which is overbuilt. The red is thickened epoxy to fill the top bit. 2 degree bulb cant. Here's my mast well and fin box support ready to be epoxied in place. Here are all the internal bits. Th

Got the glass on today. Here's how it looks after the second coat of epoxy... Started like this though. Close up... After about three hours I trimmed the excess cloth. After about 4.5 hours total I brushed on a second coat of epoxy. Here's how it looks now... After 24 hours I can sand. IF I have too many low spots after sanding I may add another coat of epoxy but I hope not. Cheers!

Sanded and ready for glass in the next day or four. I didn't grind through in any spots but some of the places along the sheer are under 2mm. Might have to reinforce with an interior sheer rail in spots. Getting that chine edge just perfect was impossible. I'll live with this. Next step... fiberglassing the hull! Yay! Aloha!

Got the last few planks down tonight. Should be able to start sanding tomorrow. Going with a sort of vintage '70's style with darker cedar at the sheer lightening to white at the keel. Fingers crossed that I can even it all out without popping through... there are a few sticks that are pretty thin already. Gulp...   Aloha!

It's been bugging me for two years since I finished my Wampum II Vintage Marblehead RC sailboat... the rig was too high. The rig just didn't look right. Looked too "toy boatish" even though it is a toy boat. So today I finally stopped staring at it and cut 1.125" off the bottom of the mast. Then I redid all the stays and such. It looks better now. Will try to get it on the water in the next week or three to see how it sails. It's a little hard to see in these pictures, but the boat looks a lot better now. Phew! Cheers! 

Slow but steady. I'm adding about two planks per day on most days, when I'm up to it. :-P I'm using epoxy between the planks which is one reason why I'm going so slowly. Most don't use epoxy and instead use CA or Titebond. I just like the really long working time that I have with epoxy, the waterproofing that the hull gets, and, I feel, the added strength that epoxy gives the hull. I could be wrong though and if so could be going a lot faster if I just used Titebond III. Here's where I'm at today... For anyone new to this hobby, yes, it looks very rough right now. Yes, that's excess thickened epoxy on the outside. I use thickened epoxy on the end frames to make sure that the planks have sufficient contact. I also use it to fill some gaps as needed. It will all be sanded off when I sand the entire hull after planking.  If you ask ten wooden model boat builders what they do about the keel plank(s), you'll get twelve answers. I don't ha