Got a start on the Wampum VM Vintage Marblehead RC Sailboat standing rigging this weekend. Can't do it all until after I varnish the deck, but got the mainsail installed and the boom installed, and a few other things. Here is a nice trick... prop your boat's keel up on the floor so that it is perfectly on its side. Then line up the entire rig. Measure where everything will be attached. Mark those spots with sticky notes. Mark the sticky notes exactly where to drill attachment points.  But first, don't be a complete idiot like I was and attempt to install the mainsail backasswards! Gawd... Got my sails from Carr Sails . He does a great job. Here are a few of the things I was able to install today. In this first picture you can see the gooseneck, the boom, and the boom vang. Roger from Model Yacht Fittings hand makes these things and they are works of art. He has complete kit just for Vintage Marblehead boats.  The mast crane is my own creation. You can ...

The sails arrived and they look amazing!  Thanks to Rod Carr, of Carr Sails . He does very nice work. And he is more than happy to work with you too. He truly wants you to like his sails, and he wants his sails to both look good and perform well. Use him for your next set of sails. He's threatening to retire from sail making in the next few years, so either get your sails soon or try to convince him to stay in the game. Here they are mounted to the mast and laid out for measuring with the spars.  They are attached using a "jack wire" system. Small brass cotter-puns are glued into holes every 6" down the aft side of the mast. Then you lay out the sail next to the mast and carefully cut small windows out of the luff of the sail at each cotter-pin. You leave a small amount of room both above and below the cotter pin for the sail to stretch as you apply downhaul. Then you run stainless steel wire through the mast crane and crimp it on. Now carefully route...

Last winter I designed a crazy looking, laser cut mainsail boom for my Sun Wind II RC sailboat. The idea was to add a bit of high-techy, artsy, far-outness to an updated 1949 design... and in the process make a boom that was both lightweight and strong. It's made of 8 layers of 1/32" plywood cut on the laser cutter and then epoxy laminated together. Here are the laminations after being cut out. Then I put some tape down on a piece of MDF so that the epoxy wouldn't stick. After that, I drilled three holes and put sticks in them to hold the pieces in alignment. Then I mixed up some epoxy and brushed it onto all the inside surfaces. Before putting them onto the MDF though, I gently wiped them down with a paper towel to remove most of the excess. When I did a similar technique for the swing arm, I noticed that I had a lot of excess and that it looked bad. Hopefully I've avoided most of that issue on the boom. The amount of epoxy that remained on the laminatio...