Aero-Naut Jenny

Look forward to the twin builds Work space and tool shop fun times ahead Aron.

Time to get started...

oh enjoy the 4K HD Photos

First thing first, lets start building up the frame work. 
I've have to make up the keel ahead of time, since they come in 6 parts, so this is the first step.
The bulk of the frame work is 3mm birch ply, however this kit contains a split keel for the prop shaft to run through, so to reinforce the sections its required to fit a further 2 sections of 2mm ply to the sides.

So lets start with the Bow Keel Section..

















Next up is part of the Stern section, there is a 3rd part to this fitted with the transom at a later stage which bumps the model up to its intended size.


The Stern reinforcement sections have pre lazer grooved slots either side and when fitted together in the correct way create a slot for the rudder tube, the space is currently hollow which will take the transom section, again at a later stage.
 
















And just to give you guys a bit of excitement got some nice toys to go in this...


14"JP stainless steel slimline prop shaft (you all know I love these shafts, but it took me nearly 6 weeks to locate one in stock anywhere!!!)






And the Monster to Power this beauty....
I have decided to get similar motor to the one fitted in my fathers runabout (check in the classic build log to see that) This ones vastly more efficient and will only require a 40amp esc, its an American Motor (not a cheap one made in china) a 1500KV Outrunner which i'm expecting i'll to run on 4S lipos for around 12.8V which should give me...


Wait for it...


 1500Kv x 12.8v =19,200rpm running an X40 prop..


However that being said... Sea trials will tell me when i get there how much power i need, i may only run this at 8.4v

since its a low amp motor i may be able to use my high discharge rated NHMI's, only time will tell.


which will give me...


 1500Kv x 8.4v = 12,600rpm on an X40

Coming along nicely Aron. 

Todays Job was to fit the stringers to the hull taking great care to keep the bulkheads square so not to twist the hull,..
I've had to taper the tips of the stringers and taper the bulkehd slots where the stringers fit in place.





After that it was to fit the transom supporting spare parts and the transom.





And finally fit part of the hull which makes the step and spray rails. this is not a neat job sadly, the parts are very fiddly being lazer cut then would only fit in a 'perfect world' but as with all hulls no matter how hard you try they will never be 'perfect' so i will have to reply on some filler at some later date on these parts to get the hull to look correct.



Next job is to start to snd down everything to the bulkheads and true up the hull read to start taking the skin.

my admiration goes out to you there RR........very nice wood work........think I have lost my touch with it over the years..........looks really good. neil.

TOP NOTCH rr...........funnily enough I picked up an aeronaut sea commander today in a charity shop with 750 motor huco coupling and rudder servo...........25 sobs........just put it on ebay but if it doesn't sell think i'll keep it for the vintage boat rallies held at Fleetwood..........always fancied one as a kid.......can't go wrong for 25 quid.............nicely built too.......just in need od new paint work .

A work of ART Aron. 

Now once you guys see this photo, you'll all understand why i build wooden boats!...

I can't fibre glass to save my life and to be honest I don't enjoy it anyway, so my interest in learning the ability to me a master fiber glasser is wasted upon me..

However that said there are times where i need to use fiber glass on a model and this happens to be one of them, this Boat is VERY light and structurally weak even with the hull panels on I could still flex the boats hull with little effort, so to add some decent structure and strength I've glassed the inside of the boat with 2 layers of tissue matting.,
This also allowed me to glass in the motor mount into its fixed position which was going to be a challenge with a wood glue joint given the angle the mount needed to be and very little surface area to stick it to this is the motor mount the kit supplies but its shape has been dramatically modified to fit the brush less motor and the shaft/coupling position.

for those wondering why there has been no progress on the model, its not through lack of effort its a matter of humidity and heat what remains for this project is the deck and the windscreen, then its only finalizing and varnishing. however the 2 pac varnish i use required a set temperature and humidity and has to be completely stable, with the summer months coming in the heat has dramatically risen  in the workshop meaning limited working time with the varnish ( it literally goes off in seconds and u end up dragging the tacky surfaces as u apply the rest of the layer), also with the on off rain and weather we are having the humidity can effect the wood in expanding and contracting unevenly which in turn will ruin the varnish as it will just crack and split, i have a feeling it wont get finished until august/sept when we get the cooler period.

thats the only disadvantage of using a 2 pac varnish, you need perfect conditions to get it flowing right 

RR

Well while i was stuck up my dads this afternoon, waiting for him to cast another lead keel and rudder for the 2nd weenip project, i took the advantage and push ahead a little more with this build. 
Mainly the deck, the deck itself comes in 7 parts, the main part is a lamination of white ply and mahogany strip. then you have to add 2mm white ply stringers around the deck edge followed by some 10mm mahogany outer edges.

This was a job for MR superglue and a really flat surface, gluing the parts in place was pretty simple just a matter of keeping the edges flat and flush and running superglue down the join. the hard part was to fill the very slight gaps that are left from the lazer cut parts. As the varnish i use really hates gaps and dislikes voids which hinder the perfect finish, you have to be able to fill those gaps, only problem is that when your trying to fill gaps with different colored material its not an easy job to get a perfect match!

however there is a solution to that problem and its very simple.. smear with your finger some wood glue into the seams, in small sections at a time, then using a circular motion and some 220 grit sand paper rub over the area,this should be done in moments of the the glue being applied hence doing small sections at a time.
Any sanded off partials will fill the voids and give you a perfect seamless edge...

Give a great look Aron. 

astounding work Aron..........truly am very envious of your woodworking skills.......pure beauty.

Well after almost 6 months of no work I'm back to this seeing how other projects are finished.

Upon my return I've found an issue with the deck, as you know the deck is a lamination of butt joints between materials, I followed the instructions to the letter during construction however time is a nightmare when leaving unsealed work, the hull structurally cannot move since it was fiberglasses however the deck wasn't, and it wasn't given a sacrificial base board to glue the entire thing to like I normally do with builds, and unlike any other aeronaut kit this was the first I've had which needed 6 parts to make it up.

There is the outer mahogany trim then and internal ply strip only 1mm in width all butted up to the main deck and now I've found that the deck is delaminating across these glue joints, only explanation is that wood moves and the glue surface is far from substantial enough to support this, I'm also lead to believe if I had varnished the deck and it had done this it would have split the entire deck leaving nothing but iriparable damage. Good thing I spotted this now...

Leading to a fit I've started cutting up some .5mm ply to bridge the parts between the bulkheads and affixing them with a ton of glue and a dab of superglue to keep them from shifting since I can't get clamps into some areas.

I'll have to now use a tried and tested method of mahogany dust and wood glue paste to seal the gaps and resand smooth.

Small headache for a few days but fortunate in some respect it happens now rather than later.

All the cracks have now been reinforced underneath the deck, filled and the deck sanded smooth yet again, this evening I've taken the time to seal the deck to I hope stop the deck shifting again using the epoxy varnish and thinners mix, tomorrow I'll give the deck a light rub down and a 2nd coat.

As you can see from the photos you would never have known this problem occurred!.

Hmm last post April last year... Jeeze I need to kick some of these boat up a notch...

While I work in my secret project I’ve got some tome to try to get further with this boat.

Good news is the repair to the deck stretch has held and no more cracks or plank pulls have appeared.

So it’s time to get this pain in my ass finished... it’s been a pain ever since I attempted to fair the hull after I rushed putting the deck down a week before I moved to wales. So all these recent issues with deck and now the hull is a result of that singular rush job...

Now In fairing the hull I had to true up the bow as the deck was off Center by 2mm and believe me it was noticeable, so I faired the hull mostly on The starboard side and well there just wasn’t enough material and I ended up sanding through the skin, into the deck chine... so I patched it with some glass fiber weave, reasonable fix but I knew it was going to take more so I put the boat down until today!

So I went back and faired the bow properly and well put it this way when I finished the remaining skin section was so thin I got my fingers stuck!!!!

This of course sanding though wouldn’t have been a huge deal due to the boat being glassed inside however as sods law would have it that section of the bow didn’t get a good enough bond infact it was still soft fiber along the edge!

So only one thing for it... bridging compound out and litrally jam the entire bow full of the mix!

Tomorrow I’ll hammer the bow hard, an refill again if needs be, I want to recuse how much p38 I use as a filler as it’s got no real strength but the bridging compound is stronger then concrete once set, p38 will just be used to help in the fairing.

Good thing this boat is being painted and not varnished other wise I would be crying right now

Maybe I’ll start having some luck from now on???? Maybe

Bow fixed and pretty much true to the deck pattern now, I have a slight ridge in the port side to clean up when I go to fair the hull but the bow itself is strong and as close to perfect I can get it with out butchering more of the hull.

Fortunately once I make up the bow guard the imperfection that dose remain will be hidden.

I’ve also taken the time to make a 1mm slot around the rear hatch, due to the original fittings being this gawd awful aluminium, it marks up so easily and the extra point that it simply will not stick to the deck once it’s epoxied, I modified the hatch’s to have mahogany trims instead, however the rear hatch didn’t show the trim to well on the horizontals in fact they were out in so well and tight that you couldn’t distinguish the deck to the trims, this of corse wouldn’t be an issue if I kept the hatch working and used the kits trims, so in order to make the hatch stand out as a rear function I’ve slotted out a groove around it so it looks like that of the engine hatch.

I will clean up the edges of this groove and fill with black paint, this should do the trick of imitating a working hatch in what would otherwise be a solid and sealed deck.

Let me know what you think or if I need to add something to the grove other than paint, I was thinking black thread but I’m not sure at this point.

I’ve infilled the hatch seam with black paint and wood glue mix and I’ll let that set overnight and see how it looks, right now it’s looking way to black but I’ll give it chance to dry first, if it still looks awful in the morning I’ll make up a mahogany round over edge similar to that I did on the row boats hatch and slide it into the groove, it will be a raised hatch combing but that’s the best I can come up with for an alternative option.

I didn’t like the black slot around the hatch once it dried, it looked totally un natural and well cr@p.

I experimented with adding a raised lip around the hatch, didn’t like that either... stopped the deck being total flat...

So after a bit of thought I took brutal action...

Cut the entire hatch right out of the boat, fitted a false base , added mahogany trims exactly like I did the engine hatch, sanded the hatch down to give me a paper thin slot around the perimeter and glued the entire thing back in place, sanded the trims down flush to the deck and drilled the hatch handle holes.

To be honest... job looks that good you can’t tell it’s fake in comparison to the engine hatch now!

I still have to slide some wet and dry down the slot to even up a few edges and give a slight radius to the other edge which will stop the epoxy later clogging the slot.

But overall good result just wish I had done that In the first place!

Engine hatch



Fake hatch.

Ive done a little more work to this boat over the last week, switching between projects as I normally do, but I haven’t done a lot but the jobs done are critical to the finish.

Last we spoke I had apprempted to make the rear hatch appear similar to the forward hatch for some continuity as the rear hatch a frame work blended a little too well into the deck leaving it looking very odd.

A successful outcome achieved so since then I have given the deck two coats of epoxy to seal and protect it, which actully took nearly 4 days to cure, this was due to the amount of thinners I used in the epoxy mix to penetrate the surface, as you know going back in the blog I had an issue with the deck expanding, leading to some of the decks separation parts delaminating from the deck, this issue although caused by some haste in fitting as I was moving and the deck a large sheet would no doubt have been damaged if left loose, I neglected to seal the under side, now although I fixed most of the damage from this stretching it wasn’t until last week I have the deck a solid rub down that one section of my previous repair came back to haunt me, epoxy this thin will not puddle or fill gaps so I’ve returned to my method of wood dust and glue to make a paste, which in this section I’ve puddled and will allow to dry hopefully filling this final gap, which I won’t onow if fully worked for a couple of days and another sanding, however I am optimistic and do think I may have fixed this issue.




Shortly before doing that deck repair I have also finished the props keel, the original boat shows the shaft overhang of this skeg by easily 1.5”, I was never happy with that given that this boat contains a 14” shaft and it’s only support is some 3mm ply as the skeg, and the internal spaced supports, so I opted to reinforce this god awful joint and solid up the skeg by adding a P frame to the end of the shaft, made from brass it’s bolted and epoxied Into the hull but this left a gap between the original skeg and the frame which is entirely to unsightly, so I’ve created using some .5mm ply some inserts to cover the skeg and join the p frame, it is of course at this point still rough and will need some sanding and some filler to make it look as a singular peice but it has hidden the inaccuracy of the boat with the modification but also has the strength to take what ever I throw at it with no fear of shaft bend or glue detaching leaving a very long almost 9” of floating shaft.

This improvement to the skeg also allowed me to tween its angle very slightly which I must point out isn’t needed generally, the boat accepts a 40mm prop easily from the get go, however I am running a very beasty brushless and like to have prop options so this slight angle tweek gives me a range of props from a plain 40 ( currently fitted ) an x40, plain 45 and an x45 if I desire.

The hull of this boat is truly stable and capable of solid speeds and most who know my builds also know I don’t give a monkey about “scale speed” so having a not only good looking boat but one that can put many of those fast electric fly boys to shame is always great fun.

I’m currently at that point now where truing and fairing  the hull is the next step, to which I’ll take my time as my other project needs the shop to be kept relatively clean and p38 & grp dust dose scatter like crazy on a job this big so I’ll get to it as and when, there are a few other jobs I can still do before then if I want, which would be to look at the windshield of the boat, again another modification to the original, so I may take the time to start fiddling there instead for the time being.

 Looking mighty fine Aron. 

Hi RR,

Excellent work.
She has come out extremely well considering the problems you had.
Well done.

I know this is an old Build Log but i enjoyed tremendously.

I've not seen this build that's a beautiful bit of woodwork.

Aron is a master craftsman when it comes to wooden models. Unfortunately domestic matters have kept him from building for too long. there should be others of his models on here.

Barrie

Hi Barriew,

I will eventually catch up with all of the builds.

Martin.

Aye, such is life since COVID hit, family first tho before boating. Well get their one day but at least this boat is correctly sealed so it’s not going anywhere lol