I've been working on a number of different things on my Corbie 5 IOM this past week. This post is on how I aligned and fixed the fin and bulb to each other. First I used my IOM Alignment and Measuring jig. It worked well! See earlier posts for more info. I spent a lot of time lining everything up as best I could. The Corbie 5 manual says to have the front of the fin at 493mm from the stern, the fin raked so that the base is 6mm aft of the top, and for the center of balance of the bulb to be 10mm aft of the leading edge of the base of the fin. I then worked on the bulb. It weighed well over 2500g when it arrived, and I had to remove a lot of weight. First I had to hog out the channel so that the fin would fit. I used my drill press to hog out much of it, and then my Dremel tool to remove the rest. I also drilled out the mounting holes. This bulb came with a large brass insert that had a 1/2" base and a 5/16" sleeve. I had to use two different bits to get th...

I need to start to consider how I'll mount the fin and bulb, and get it all straight, so I made a 3D modeled alignment jig: Ian Dundas in Scottland sent me pictures of his setup. I just bought a laser level too! He does amazing work and has been a great help in this project so far. There is also another jig featured on page 14 of the winter 2008 Canadian Radio Yacht Association (CRYA) newsletter that features one. It's by Lawire Neish. Read it here . I took both those designs and made my own version that features sliding cradles for the hull, a fixed waterline sight, proper depth to cradles for the bulb, etc... Most of the parts can be laser cut, and the two end pieces and the base can easily be cut on a tablesaw. It has fixed waterline sights that are 420mm above the top edges of the bulb sliders in the base. The fore and aft cradles can be slid up and down to adjust the waterline of the hull. You'll see that the overall interior length is 1003mm t...

Big day today... I cut the Corbie 5 IOM hull off of the alignment jig! Phew... First I sanded the third coat of epoxy that I added yesterday. Then I used my waterline marking jig to mark the waterline. The waterline should be perfectly horizontal if you've used the frames properly. The manual indicates that it start 15mm aft of the back of the bumper, and run to 3mm forward of the stern. My tool holds a pen at an angle, and when it gets to flat areas like the stern it doesn't do as well as on more vertical surfaces. So I started at 15mm from the bow frame and ran it aft. It ended up about 14mm fwd of the stern, but that is due to my jig. I'll adjust slightly before I paint it on. In this first picture you can see how it doesn't work as well. Yes, the cap is on... I'm not actually marking it yet.  Here you can see where it works much better and more accurately. Then it was time to remove the hull! TA DA! This is after I cleaned up the insides. I did...

Planking continues. I'm awful at it. But I'm getting better. Still terrible, but better than when I started. And yes, I'm still using the stationary sander instead of the planer that the pros suggest. I just can't get it adjusted well enough to work for me. My plank making has improved though. I'm now ganging several planks together and sanding them as one. It's working well. My most recent attempt was six planks ganged together with clips. Here's my progress so far. Don't look too closely or you'll laugh. But when sanded out and glassed it'll look better. Only the pros will notice, and to them the rookie planking will be obvious, but to most people it will look fine. The building jig and clips I made for each frame are working really well! Much better than my actual planking.  You can be very creative with the rubber bands to put pressure wherever you wish. It really works well. Will probably need to consider doing t...

Started the Corbie 5 IOM build today! For real, as opposed to in 3D on my computer. This week I made the strongback out of 3/4" MDF. It's about 8" wide (exact width doesn't matter too much as long as it is as wide as the boat) with sides about 3" tall that have been screwed to the top. To that I aligned and glued the base alignment jig pieces. I used weights and pins to hold the pieces flat while they dried. Just used Titebond II for this process. The alignment jig is designed to hold the frames in exact position relative to each other. The spacing between the stations is exact, as is the horizontal and vertical alignment. You can also see that the slots for the frames are all different lengths. This is so ensure that each frame will only fit in a very specific slot. Frames that must be faced a specific direction so that port and starboard are correct, have two different sized slots and can only fit the correct way. Pretty cool, huh?! This is the inte...

I'm working my way toward building the Mirage Radio Yachts Corbie 5 IOM RC sailboat designed by Jeff Byerley in Tasmania. I'm designing the Corbie 5 laser cut frames and planking forms, and have updated the frames that I initially made. I wanted to build in the few permanent frames that are needed. There is a main bulkhead that divides the foredeck from the aft portion of the hull, there's the shroud chain blocks, a few foredeck support frames, foredeck kingplanks, fore and aft frames, etc... I'm not done as I still need to include the rudder frame and the mainsheet post frames. But I've made lots of progress and will now need to wait to complete the final version until after I receive the fin and rudder that I've ordered from Radio Sailing Shop in Australia . This is how the model looks so far... This first picture is of the permanent frames with the hull shell showing over it: This is the same but floating in place over the building jig: ...