Thursday, October 14, 2010

The building of two identical (?) Footys





My son, who is in Hong Kong and also sails, decided to build a Footy as well, and so we came to the conclusion that from the several sets of plans available for free download, we would build a “Razor 3” and swop notes as we went along and perhaps learn from each others’ experience………….

The plans were eventually downloaded after some fun and games with two printers jamming up, not being happy with sheets of paper taped together to try and achieve a 14” long sheet of paper as demanded by the plans, but eventually we found some water colour art paper that was cut down to size and the printer persuaded to accept it. 

By checking with the scale guide given on the plans, I was able to confirm that the plans were to the correct scale when printed.

I purchased three sheets of standard 1/16” ply and managed to get all the components of the two boats cut out and bagged up before I took off for Spain.  I also visited a local model shop and acquired some suitable tubing for the rudder pivot and some quality glue!


 


Bruce, my son in HK had started his build before me and had made a slight error in the purchase of the wood and ended up with 1/16” bass wood, slightly stronger than balsa but more difficult to bend.  He started his Footy by building it upside down to try and get the correct shape, and ended up with a lot of epoxy on the outside of the hull which is difficult to sand down!




Learning from that, I attempted to tape mine together, using masking tape to bring it into shape, with the idea of tacking it together on a temporary basis with Cyno (Superglue) and then filleting it in with epoxy. 

The first attempt was not good, the whole structure twisting out of shape and fingers glued together……….

This was then dissected into its component panels and I started again by tacking the two hull bottom panels together with cyno, trying to replicate the stitch and glue method of construction that is used on Mirror Dinghies and similar.  This was much more successful, with the bottom two panels pulling up into shape as I went along.

I use cyno from a model shop and also use a “kicker” to get an instant grab with the joint – it literally joins in four or five seconds!







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