Star 45 RC Sailboat Build Blog

For best performance you'll want your mast to be perfectly perpendicular to the deck. A simple pair of mast calipers can tell you if your mast is perpendicular. To make mine I simply found a straight piece of scrap wood about 36" long or so. I notched the end to match the angle of most decks. Then I drilled a hole in the opposite end for a screw to eventually go through. But don't screw it in yet. Next I ran the stick through my tablesaw and ripped it down the middle. Now just turn one of the pieces over so that the ends are opposing each other like the picture above. Insert the screw at the top and voila! Use the screw point to determine the center. Because you drilled your hole first, it really doesn't matter if that hole is perfectly centered. The screw point will always be in the exact center if you drilled before you ripped.  Adjust your shrouds to center the mast and you're done! Good luck!    _/)

Tinkered together the RC sailboat mast spreaders today for my Star 475 RC sailboat. #2-56 threaded rod, #2-56 washers and nuts, tangs from Long Beach RC , a #2-56 bolt from Bolt-Depot (but you might be able to find them at your local hardware store... ask them to help you). Two 9 cm. pieces of 1/8" x .014 copper tubing are then slipped over the threaded rod and cotter pins are soldered into the ends. If you're worried about the copper tubing slipping off then simply take some needle-nosed pliers and squish the inside ends down onto the threaded rod. That way they stay put but can also be unscrewed off the threaded rod if ever needed to be removed.  You can also add some adjustability to the spreaders by adding a second set of nuts to the outside of the inner nuts. That way the inner nuts secure the tangs to the mast but the outer nuts can be moved to the outsides to give more or less spread as needed. Pretty cool huh?  You'll see it again after it's all mou...

Made an RC sailboat stand for my new Star Salish 475 RC Sailboat. This is the third RC sailboat stand I've made and I'm getting pretty quick at it, if I do say so myself. Went with yellow straps this time. My Star 45 RC sailboat stand had red straps. My first stand, for my Tippecanoe T37 is a similar build but much taller. That rig easily fits under the ceiling even with the taller stand. Also made it shorter than my other Star 45 stand so that the bulb is just off the ground in order for the rig to fit in my ceiling. It's still going to be close though and I'm not sure what I'll do if it doesn't fit! Here's my kiln-dried cedar RC sailboat stand... Notice that the bulb is just off the floor. Fingers crossed that it fits under my ceiling with the rig up. Here are some pictures of the bottom of the hull. Alternating planks of light cedar and darker cedar . The bottom is kiln-dried cedar while the decking is kiln-dried clear fir with a strip...

I've decided to let the first round of clear epoxy paint , and the other colors underneath, cure for awhile before I sand and then start polishing. It takes a week to ten days for it to reach maximum hardness ("sword" hardness) so I'll let it cure that long. Right now I'm not sure if it'll need a second round of clear epoxy. If it does then no big deal as the more layers the deeper the shine. We'll see what happens and how it all looks as I start to sand. In the meantime, while it's curing, I thought it would be fun to see how the whole thing looks when it's set up. So here is the first look at the new, experimental, Star Salish 475 RC Sailboat, hull number 001x! (UPDATE: It is now called the Salish 475 as of 10 May, 2015! Click the link to see the completed boat!) When I eventually finish the 'finishing' then I'll be onto the rigging, and then finally sailing. Let me know what you think so far. It may be a cou...

Did a few touch-ups and some sanding, and then started applying the final layer... clear epoxy paint. Right now it doesn't look like it went on very well. Lots of small holes and 'fisheyes' and such. I wiped it down with reducer but I guess that wasn't good enough. Sigh. Will just have to see what I end up with when it dries. Then I can sand it and polish it. We'll see how it turns out tomorrow. Peace!   _/)

Well today was the big day for immediate change! I sprayed on the blue. It looks OK in most areas with one big goof. Took about an hour to mask... never did get it very straight. Oh well... Here it is with the first pass of deep blue from Klass Kote .  I sprayed on a coat of white over the masking so that the white would bleed onto the white underneath. Then you spray the color over the top. This makes for a very sharp masking line with very little bleeding. The goof: However, I apparently sprayed the white too heavy because I had a HUGE sag. Ugh. What to do??? The sag was white so I couldn't let it dry and then sand it down later because the white would show through. The only thing I could think of was to take a paper towel and wipe the sag off. Ugh! It still shows the wiping streaks but at least now I can sand it a bit and not go through the blue to the white. Hopefully when I add a few coats of clear epoxy it will be virtually unnoticeable. If you look carefully at th...

Finally started painting today!! Sprayed on a few nice coats. The weather was perfect, 65 degrees with no wind. The coats were 'medium' level... not particularly light. That worked well for the hull, rudder and hatch, but I have a couple runs on the fin that I'll have to sand out tomorrow. Busy day tomorrow unless it rains... which it may. If so then big day Saturday. Next steps: Light sanding on some places, heavy sanding on the run on the fin, mask for the blue paint, overspray with more white and spray fin again, spray on the blue. Peace!  _/)

Today I made the mast crane. This is the bit that fits into the top of the mast and extends aft 3". The backstay will attach to it. It's cut from .064 aluminum on my bandsaw and then sanded with various grits. Then I drilled some holes in it. One at the end for the backstay, one for the jackwire to attach to, and one for the halyard to attach to. I made the backstay one larger but really for no good reason. They can all be pretty small. It fit in the mast well but would twist side-to-side so I CA'd some popsicle sticks to the outsides and now it fits snugly and straight back. Peace!   _/) 

The trick of matching the fin to the curve of the bottom worked so well that I did it to my original Star 45 tonight. Can't wait to see how it looks in the morning. Here's a better picture of the taping: And here are some pictures of the two boats together. The Star 475 looks smaller in these next pictures but that's only because of the angle that I took the pictures. It's really 2.5" longer. Peace!  _/)

In my last post I had just tried an experiment and used thickened epoxy to perfectly match the top of the fin to the bottom of the hull. Today I removed the hull from the fin and it worked perfectly! Yay! You can't see any light at all between the fin and the hull for the entire run. Why didn't I think of this on my last boat?! I think I'll add it to the Star 45 Construction Manual .  The hull only took a slight tap from underneath and it popped right off leaving a very smooth, perfectly curved top of the fin that matched the hull curve. A small bit of cleaning up and sanding around the edges, plus a tiny rub of sandpaper over the top to rough up the epoxy so paint will stick, and voila! Should I try the same trick with the rudder? I'm thinking not but right now I have a fairly large gap between the top of the rudder and the hull. Hmmm...??? Otherwise it's now simply a waiting game until warmer and drier weather so I can paint. Later this week looks...

This evening I noticed that the fin didn't exactly fit the bottom of the hull. I could see light through parts of it. So with nothing else to do except wait for the weather to improve so I can start painting, I decided to take a risk and see if I could fill in that bit so that the fin exactly fits the bottom. Put some strapping tape on the bottom and carefully cut out the holes where the threaded rod goes through. Then mixed up some very thick epoxy and but a bit on the top of the fin. Then I carefully slide the hull down onto the fin and squished out most of the epoxy. Cleaned it up really well. Now we'll see if I can get it off tomorrow morning! Fingers crossed!! Fair seas!   _/)

Because of changes to the rig I had to make an additional mainsheet support column aft of where I originally intended it to be. Last week I installed a piece of dowel through the deck and epoxied it to the keel. Today I installed some larger pieces to the top of that dowel that will give me some room to play with when I mount the mainsheet block. It's not what I intended but it looks decent enough I suppose. So that's about it for construction! I may have forgotten something, but as far as I can see my next steps are painting and finishing, followed by rigging and then sailing. Now I need to wait for some weather that is conducive to painting. Looks like later this week or next weekend might work. Peace!  _/)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I plan on sealing the hatch with a layer of neoprene. I've peeled the cloth backing off so there shouldn't be any issue with water wicking through. As long as all the edges are in contact with the deck then it should be fine. Here's what it looks like so far. I like it! Sorta reminiscent of an actual racing sailboat cabin. It shouldn't be raised too much either and the jib sheet should clear over it fine but if it's too low I can just add a piece of wood under it to raise it up a bit. The edges will be a lot cleaner after I glue the neoprene to the hatch, but that's not until after painting. Next chore is to add more support for the shroud racks. I didn't add enough when I had the chance... stooopid! Peace!  _/)

My new sails arrived from Carr Sails ! They look great. The jib is obviously larger than the standard Star 45 jib (which is tiny) and the main is much more high aspect. It looks similar to a Maidenhead Class sail. I'm very excited to get the boat rigged and sailing now, but still have a couple weeks to go. I also had to make some adjustments to the hatch today. I cut out the neoprene and test fit it under the hatch. Turns out the the underside of the hatch didn't reach down far enough to sit on the king plank even when the mounting screws were pretty tight. In fact it started to warp the outside edges up. So I added some shims to the underside and it should now work better. Will test fit more when it's dry. Making progress... slow and steady! Fair winds!  _/)

Yesterday I installed a screw-down for my hatch. I used the same technique that I used for the drain plugs on this boat and on my T37 , so I'll give the short version here and you can figure it all out.  Started by drilling an oversized hole in the forward end of the hatch and then through the king plank. It was just a drill bit size larger or so, enough that the screw easily slips into the hole and can wiggle around just slightly. You need room for the thickened epoxy. I then rubbed in very well some wax onto a 10-24 screw and then put a very small amount of tape around the top of the screw. Mixed up a small amount of epoxy and lightly clear coated the inside of the hole on the hatch and into the hole in the king plank. I used just enough in the king plank that it would soak in a bit but no more. Then I added thickener to the rest of the epoxy until it was very thick. As best I could I forced a bit into the hole and then I gooped it on the screw, and then gently twisted t...

One of the items that I've needed to change since meeting with Rod Carr earlier this week is to add a new post to mount the mainsheet block to. The reason is that the entire rig is having to be moved aft and for that to fit I can no longer use the original extension. Sigh... Oh well. This though should work. Yet another hole in my cockpit sole but it's all good. I'm already working on some sort of wooden fitting to add to the top, or at least around the front and back, in order to add some wood for my mainsheet block eye strap to screw into. It's just too wide to fit onto just the post. More ideas on that as I sleep on it. I also clear coated the bottom of the hatch that I worked on yesterday. By the way, the added curve idea worked! Yay! So now hopefully when I add the neoprene the outside edges will be pushed down hard enough to seal the hatch. Fingers crossed! Here's the underside of the hatch. You can also see where I added a strip of clear coating...

I met with Rod Carr yesterday and he is going to work with me to make a new rig instead of using the standard Star 45 rig. This way we can make the jib larger and the main smaller. This will give the boat more luff which should help it upwind. However, it also moves the Center of Effort (CE) forward so the entire rig needs to be moved aft to better balance it with the Center of Lateral Resistance (CLR) of the hull, fin and rudder. What that means is that the mast step needs to be on top of the hatch. So instead of screwing down a piece of metal I simply drilled holes in the top of the hatch that the mast step can fit into. Then I backed it with a larger piece of 1/32" ply and then a smaller strip of 1/16" ply. Then I taped the hatch down quite strongly so that the hatch curves more. Hopefully I'll introduce a bit more curve than I had before so that the neoprene is held down firmly enough at the edges. You can see in the picture that I gave myself a LOT of holes....

Tomorrow I'm meeting with Rod Carr to go over the placement of the new mast, booms, and sails. I'm lucky that he lives in the Seattle area, but also very concerned about how far aft I'll need to place the sails. Fingers crossed. Not much else to post but I took a picture of the future mainsheet return block support for your viewing pleasure... it's still not installed yet though and won't be until after painting and finishing is done. The rudder control line is from Sullivan Products . It's their Gold-N-Rod 503/504 line. Might be painting by Friday! Again... fingers crossed. Peace!   _/)

My new experimental Star 47.5x RC Sailboat had her first meeting with water today! The float test went well and I was able to see where the waterline is and how she sits. Looks good. Also have been chatting with Rod Carr about the rig and sails. He's got some great ideas and we will meet later this week to go over any changes we'll do. It's going to be an exercise in positioning the Center of Effort (CE) of the sails in the proper relation to the fin and rudder.  Raised a ton of dust today when I sanded the filler coat. Looks good. Just now noticing a few areas that still need some sanding, mostly on the transom, but I don't think I'll need a second coat. As you can see in the pictures most of the filler coat was sanded off. That's the idea. Couldn't start the painting today as it was raining all day and was too cold. Later this week maybe if it warms up and dries out... but this being Seattle I'm not holding my breath! The paint arrived las...