Party (fishing) boats

[rwtdiver]

WOW Ken!

Your wiring engineering is really outstanding! I have never seen wiring done like that before. The design and layout are amazing to say the least. Great photos, and thank you for sharing and showing a new way of doing complex wiring...

Rob
"Firemen can stand the heat."

[Ken_NJ]

Doing some electrical work. Specifically running copper foil tape for the lighting on the Big Marie S. What is copper foil tape you might ask? It is conductive, solderable, sticky sided copper foil. Primary use might be putting it on stained glass edges so that the pieces of glass can be soldered together to make a colorful mosaic piece of art. It comes in many widths. The smallest I can find is 7/32 but I use 1/8. I also cut the 1/8 tape in half giving me 1/6" strips. It can also be used for electrical circuits. I am basically running running six circuits on the underside of the upper deck. Circuits will be cabin lighting, deck lighting, flood lights, navigation lights, spot light, anchor light and radar. How do you use it? Peel and stick. I'm essentially making a large circuit board. Once the strips are run I can change the direction or cross over circuits. To cross over a circuit I put a thin piece of styrene over the lower strip and that keeps the runs from shorting to each other. I found that if you place one piece over another, even though the glue is there, it makes connectivity between the pieces. So that is why you need something to isolate them if they are different circuits. So to get all the wiring I need done, I eliminate the possible mess I would have if I had to use wire. Although this is time consuming laying out the circuits, you will not see any wires and you will not see how all of the LED's are connected. Even though there was connectivity when two pieces cross each other, for those joints that I need connectivity, I add a bit of solder to the joint so there is no question about connectivity. AND, VERY IMPORTANT, as you do this, use your voltmeter to check connectivity when connecting pieces and also check you don't have connectivity between cross over pieces.

Copper foil tape on Amazon

https://tinyurl.com/ys5ndjsr

The underside of the cabin deck. Took a few days to get this done, and lots of thinking. The components and some of the copper tape will be masked and the rest will be spray painted white. I started by running the ground wire. Then the other circuits.



Here you can see styrene over cross over points. And some soldered connections. Also, I started to not use current limiting resistors. In place of the resistor I use CL2N3 current limiting transistors. The input voltage is 5v-90v and the current output is a constant 20ma which is what most LED's require. As the battery voltage drops from say a 12v battery, the LED's will get the constant 20ma current they need to stay the same brightness. With a resistor, as the voltage drops, the brightness will drop. The little black things you see are the CL2N3's which each LED gets one. I bought mine from Digikey.



You can see how the copper tape transitions over obstacles. You can also run the tape before you glue a bulkhead or a dividing wall. That way you get power where you need it invisibly. You can also paint over the copper tape.



When you solder, the glue liquifies, But when it cools it still sticks. After soldering I just push down on it to make sure it stays where it should.



Here you can see pieces that where cut in half to make runs to where the LED's will be.



This is where power will come up through the hull to these connections. More work is needed here.



These are the cabin LED's powered on.

[Ken_NJ]

One final picture. Now on to another part of this project.

[Ken_NJ]

And here it is sitting inverted on the upper deck of the Big Marie S. The rowboat has a magnet under each seat. Those magnets connect to magnets mounted in the mounting blocks the rowboat sits on. Scale rope was CA'd to magnets which connect to magnets that where put on the end of the mounting blocks. So the tie down ropes can be easily be removed to remove the rowboat and show it off.

[Ken_NJ]

It was spray painted with few coats of Rustoleun 2x white primer. Sanded, then spray with a few coats of Rustoluem white satin. A brass eye pin was cut short and placed in the stem. Some imperfections are noticeable in the pictures. Dare I say that?? But if you look at a real rowboat that is sitting upside down, constantly exposed to the weather, there will be imperfections in it as well. The boat crew just needs to do a little maintenance on it, maintenance that all boats need. Not building something like this before, and building something so small, it came out perfect for the Big Marie S.

[Ken_NJ]

Here you can see the styrene frames and other details added. Ready for paint.



Symmetry looks good. Some minor imperfections.

[Ken_NJ]

Thank you David, much appreciated!

Before breaking away from the board, some touch up was done with Nitro Stan. Pliers were then used to snap the frames away from the board.



Here the frames were slid out from the keel. I did spot glue some of the frames to those frames to hold them down. Not much thou. They slid out pretty easily. The glued planks held each other in place to keep the shape.



Size comparison to my hand.



Beginning to remove the wood down to the inside part of the keel.



Inside all cleaned out with notches in place for the bent frames which will be styrene.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Beautiful work. And top-notch photography to boot. Good stuff!

[Ken_NJ]

I won't bore you with all the pics I have. Each strake (plank) is approximately filed down according to the spreadsheet. After each plank is applied, new measurements are taken and the spreadsheet is updated giving a new measurement for each plank at each frame and that is used for the next plank, the repeat, repeat etc.



Progress



Etc



Eventually all of the planks are applied and both sides need to look somewhat identical.



Not bad for a 7 1/2 in scratch built model with a build technique that I never tackled before.

[Ken_NJ]

Long overdue update. I have made much progress so far but have not had the enthusiasm to make any social media updates, or updates to my web site. The upper deck of the Big Marie S has a rowboat that can be seen in 2-3 pics I have. The rowboat is inverted and most likely tied down. There are no pics to give me details so I have to fudge recreating it. I searched online for pictures of rowboats and came up with a few that I liked. Also looked for construction pics of rowboats. The rowboat will follow lapstrake construction.

This is what I'm shooting for. At least something close to this.







And so it begins.



The frames are tacked down at the edges with CA so those points can be snapped away from the build board. The frames slide into what will be the keel and will not be glued to the keel. Once the boat is removed from the board, the frames can be slid out from the keel. Except for the transom which is glued to the keel.



Paper strips were made and measurements were made for the distance from sheer to the keel for each frame. Those measurements were put in a spreadsheet then calculations were made for the thickness of each strake at each frame.



Here are the measurements at each frame.

[Bob Gato]

Awesome Ken-so real that I can almost smell the sunbaked clam bellies and stale beer from here!

[rwtdiver]

Hi Ken,

My goodness! Your skills as a boat builder are really remarkable. Such attention to detail is something to ponder and admire. The true scale of patience here for sure!

Rob
"Firemen can stand the heat."

[Ken_NJ]

And finally for today.

I started with satin spar urethane spray as a finish on the seats then ran out. I tried semi-gloss and I liked that so went with it. The bow wrap around seats were glued together, touched up then all seats were sprayed. Three coats, sanding, then another three coats of urethane.





Why do some pictures poste smaller than others??

Seat were glued in place on those 'brackets' that were so dangerously sticking out.



Here you can see the starboard door in place with the handle added onto the door. Seats are in place. And, you can see the four support brackets between the windows. I can only surmise that those brackets are there as further support to where the pilot house sits on the cabin deck.



Door closed.



Door open.



A view with the cabin deck on top of the cabin.



That will be all for a while. Next work is the cabin deck area getting everything fitted and painted.

[Ken_NJ]

The cabin was masked then painted satin white from the rattle can. It was then wet sanded with 400 grit sand paper and then I decanted clear satin and gave it a top coat with the Paasche air brush that David uses.






Prepping the windows. On my other party boat I hand painted the inside window frame and the edge of the acrylic windows. This gave the effect of a gasket around the window. On this boat I did it differently. I used brown magic marker only on the edge of each window. I did not color the frame. Is it good enough for me? To be determined later.

Here I was cleaning up the edges of the windows and using the marker on them.



The windows were glued in place with canopy glue which worked out well. Each window was custom fitted to its own opening as each opening was different in shape. The windows are a close friction fit, although not all sides come in contact with the frames, but good enough to be glued in place.



Close up. Here you can also see the starboard door in place. The top rail is held in place with machine screw bolts so that if it needs to be serviced the rail can be removed. Have to be very gently on the nuts as it would be very easy to pull the machine screw out of the solder.

[Ken_NJ]

Three comments from people I that I admire. Thank you guys.

Some more 'woodwork' to show. The doors for the cabin started out as 1/16" GRP.



The rails at the bottom here are the top rails with 080 machine screws soldered to them. The bottom rails are already fastened to the cabin sides. They were K&S square stock with one side removed to make it u-channel to act as a receptacle for the doors. Each door had a smaller size modified square channel which slides in the top and bottom rails. Strips of basswood were cut to size, stained and semi-gloss applied.



The smaller size brass stock is a friction fit on the top and bottom of the doors. Will not be glued. I glued styrene sheet to the outside of one door then changed direction what I was going to do, so I glued styrene to the other two doors so they were all the same. The inside of the doors were spray painted with white satin.



Gluing the basswood strips to the outside styrene covered side.



Frames glued, making up the door panel.



I added a beveled edge to the door panels to give added effect.



I made the basswood strips slightly oversized, maybe 1/32-1/16, in the window opening so the basswood would act as a stop for the acrylic windows.



Here is the inside of the doors. You can see the lip created by the basswood. A black marker was used to color the acrylic edges and the inside of the lip to simulate a rubber gasket.



Here the windows are glued in place with canopy glue which dries clear. I also fashioned the handles.



The final finished product will be seen in the next few posts.