At some point I would very much like to model a vintage America's Cup yacht. The one I've been most interested in lately in the 1964 winner Constellation. But this past week I was sent a 1/16 scale drawing of the 1934 Rainbow. It's a beautiful drawing! Full sized so it's very large. I have been working on making it into a 3D model, but as is true with most hand-drawing lines, none of the lines from one view match up with the lines from the other views. For example, I spent a lot of time tracing the "sections" view so I could make stations. But when I tried to match them up with the plan/deck view or the waterplanes view, none of the lines met. Some came close, but all had to be adjusted. Then, once they are matched to the deck and keel lines, it's obvious that the hull is not fair. I honestly doubt that the hull would be fair if you simply used the station lines as originally drawn either. Back when they made these boats, they put it on the actual bu...

I've been doing some more messing around with IOM hull design and have tweaked my initial curves to have a fuller bow and to displace 4000 grams. Here's how it looks now. I'm nowhere near actually making this boat yet, but I'm happy with my progress so far! Cheers!

I'm flirting with the idea of designing my own IOM. There are infinite possibilities, but the one I'm stuck on right now is a wave-piercing bow and hard chine from amidships aft. Here are some early mockups sketches... Just messing around with boats! Cheers!

It's all ready. I've now completed everything I needed to in order to attempt my first try at laser cutting. Hopefully sometime this week I can give it a go. Here is the latest update on the Sun Wind II RC sailboat: I've also been busy modeling other parts. Here is a custom main sail boom that I'll try. Not sure if it's strong enough, but it's made from two lamination's of 1/16" plywood in the core, and two lamination's of 1/32" on each side (four total 1/32" lamination's). I'll epoxy them together and see if it's strong enough. I expect that it will be, but if not then I'll go back to Sketchup and try again. Here is a servo arm I modeled that came with the Hitec HS815BB servo. Finally, here is a custom sail control arm that I'll mount to the servo arm above. It's made from six lamination's of 1/32" plywood for a total thickness of 3/16". This view is from underneath so that you can s...

I'm currently working on the building board. Just made the base boards, and now need to work on the frames. Remember that you will build the hull upside down on a strongback. The building boards will align the frames exactly where they need to go. More updates when I get further along. Aloha!

First update : I've started to refer to this boat as the Sun Wind II. There are now enough changes to the original fin and rudder that it's really no longer an authentic reproduction. And, due to the line drawing being pretty crude, I've had to make several changes when certain lines don't meet up. For example; there were several instances when one of the buttocks didn't match up to where they should have in some of the frames. This is understandable because hand-drawing boat lines is very difficult and you must be extremely accurate. If you're off by the smallest amount, then some of the lines will not match up. They didn't have our extremely accurate computer 3D modelling ability back then! So... yes, I've corrected many of the problems, and my lines are much more "accurate" than the original, meaning that they all meet up properly. However, that doesn't mean that my version is better than the original. I had to make my own best guess...

Have been working on the Sun Wind Radio Control sailboat 3D model today. Got the keel parts and the rudder worked out. The rudder looks large, but the concept is that you laminate those parts together and then sand the hell out of it until you get down to the shape you want. It won't be as thick or as deep fore and aft as it looks now. Although a larger rudder would be good, so you shouldn't sand it entirely away. Today's progress... The circle is a 2" diameter cutout that you can use to gauge the garboard hollow. The Vintage Marblehead rules state that: "Garboards: Garboards shall be hollow, with not less than a one inch radius in the area of the keel fin. This may be checked by use of a disk 2 inches in diameter, fitted to the garboard at a midship section." So... that is what that disk is for. In the old days they used to carve a very massive (relative to the size of the hull) keel out of solid wood. Then, when the boat was planked, it was ...

One of my current projects is to 3D model Gus Lassel's 1949 "Sun Wind" Vintage Marblehead (VM) sailboat. Apparently it was originally called the "Sun Daze", as in fun sailing on Sundays, according to Adrian Olson whose father had a connection to the original designer. (By the way, check out Adrian's other model yachts too. He does beautiful work!) Boats back then were free-sailing or vane-sailing. I think this was a free-sailing boat but am not sure. My version will be modified for RC. All I have to go by is an old set of lines, but hopefully I can get a decent model out of it. Eventually I would like to make laser-cut frames from my 3D model and actually recreate the boat in RC. Adrian Olson offers a modern fiberglass kit for the Sun Wind. The pictures look beautiful! My intention is to create frames so that a builder can make their own wood & fiberglass version. I really doubt that many people will want to go through the effort it can take to mak...