It was a fun RC boating weekend! Yesterday I went to Monroe, WA to watch the local RC hydroplane guys run their boats. Today I sailed the new Wampum VM RC Vintage Marblehead sailboat at the Seattle Model Boat Pond in South Lake Union next to the Center for Wooden Boats and the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI). The Wampum VM and the Sun Wind HF are both done and sailing very well. My next project will be a 1/8th scale hydroplane. I'm making the Miss Wahoo. To follow that build, please check out my other build blog at http://scalehydroplanes.blogspot.com/ . So this may be one of my final posts on this blog for a while. Occasionally I'll be posting some new information or events, but other than that, I'm signing off for now. Hope to see you at my hydro blog! Aloha!

Ta Da! Presenting the Wampum VM Vintage Marblehead RC Sailboat! Just had a perfect maiden sail for the newly resurrected from 1933 Wampum II, which I'm calling the Wampum VM due to the necessary changes I had to make to the original design to make it RC and to use modern materials. She sailed perfectly! I hardly had to make any adjustments. Has just a touch of weather helm. I could not have asked for a better first sail! This will be a very fun boat to sail in the future. Aloha!

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 ...

Got the hatches built! Over the past few days I've managed to make the hatches. I'm using strong, rare-earth magnets. Circle ones for the main hatch, and narrower rectangular ones for the aft hatch. Obviously I haven't done any cleaning up or finishing on them yet. Picking up my sails tomorrow. We're almost sailing! Aloha!

The clear Klass Kote two-part urethane was sanded and polished today. Looks pretty good! Bought myself a new tool... the Porter Cable 7424XP 6-Inch Variable-Speed Polisher ! It worked much better than my cordless drill that I had been using. Here are some more pictures: You can see a bit of the deck in this one. That's the next step... finishing the deck and hatches. Then it's time for the rigging. You can see the small brass rudder keeper that I made. Below is a section from my Vintage Marblehead Construction Manual on finishing: How to get that perfectly smooth, gloss finish : So how do those guys get that perfect, glossy finish? 1.        First, they sand the paint . Just about any gloss paint will create some orange peel. To get a glass-smooth finish you will need to sand it down a bit. Start with very gentle pressure using a sanding block with 800 grit and WET sand it. This should just flatten the orange peel at least enough ...

Most people who make their own wooden mast also choose to make their own booms. Normally you would make them out of spruce and simply mill them to correct dimensions. Some decide to also laminate their booms from two or three individual layers that they’ve milled down on the table saw. In my case, because I have access to a laser cutter and can play around a bit, I decided to make my own “artsy-techno-structural-funky-scifi-ishy” booms out of 1/32” plywood. I ended up with a really funky set of booms, but I like them. Contact me if you want the same booms, but if not, then use your own creativity and imagination to come up with your own design. There are several businesses that will happily laser cut the parts for you. For my latest main boom, we used National Balsa because the laser cutter that I have access to is down. They cut two sheets of plywood for me using my own designs, and they charged $65 (USD, 2018) including materials and shipping. It’s a bit spendy, but if you can s...

The paint is on! I began the finishing process (applying filler, paint, and varnish) by brushing on some two-part epoxy filler below the waterline. I'm using Interlux Primekote 404/414 . Great stuff, but extremely smelly! Pretty expensive too. But it sands down wonderfully. It fills all the deep scratches and pits and such. The filler goes on pretty thick, but you end up sanding most of it off. Keep in mind that I'm only putting it where paint will go. The topsides will stay natural. The pictures below are after sanding the filler off.  It may look rough, but it's actually just filled the scratches and other low spots. It feels very smooth now. Then I masked the boat. I'm making an accent stripe at the waterline. There will be one thin line of clear wood, and then another thin line of white above the waterline. Next I mixed up some two-part Klass Kote epoxy paint. The first coat was clear. It's really only to act as a "bleed" coat...