Star 45 RC Sailboat Build Blog

Today I cut two holes in the bottom to accept the 7/32" brass tubes for the fin. The keel is set extremely far back for a normal Star 45 but I'm hoping it's just right for the new Star 47.5x. Because on my first Star I blew out the king plank trying to drill through it after it was installed, today I drilled the holes on my drill press before I installed them. I had cut the strips extra long so that I could adjust where the king plank holes were relative to the bottom holes and still have enough plank to work with. Worked out great. Now I'll need to reinforce the sides of the king plank.  Then I laminated two oak strips to form the king plank. Because this variant on the Star will have an open transom the king plank will not run the entire length as it does on the normal Star 45. I've ended it where the mainsheet block will go. You can see that in the pictures. I had a big question answered today. I had been wondering what would happen when I cut the to...

Last night I laminated on the remaining layers of the rudder and clamped overnight. Today I sanded and shaped it. Will still need to fiberglass it though, but that will need to wait until another day as I'm cooking the Thanksgiving turkey right now and people are coming over shortly! Happy Thanksgiving!!! Peace !  _/) Wood RC sailboat. Radio sailing. Seattle, Wood framed rc sailboat. Wooden radio sailing. Star 45 rc sailboat. Star 47.5x radio sailboat. Cedar bottom sailboat. 

Epoxied in the rudder post today. Tomorrow I'll sand it and then maybe epoxy on the other layers. This picture is before I added thickened epoxy to the slot.  I did the rudder post early enough in the day that I was able to also laminate the remaining layers on tonight. Peace!   _/ ) Wood RC sailboat. Radio sailing. Seattle, Wood framed rc sailboat. Wooden radio sailing. Star 45 rc sailboat. Star 47.5x radio sailboat. Cedar bottom sailboat. 

Sanded the fin today on my stationary sander and it turned out well. Just a few little pits and such but otherwise I think I have a nice cord and shape. Did the first three layers of the rudder tonight. Got it clamped and weighted down. And then I used some of the extra thickened epoxy to fill some of the pits on the fin. Will sand them tomorrow. Then will epoxy in the rudder shaft next. Starting to consider what I'll do for the deck and the cockpit. The normal Star 45 has one continuous deck but if I'm simulating an ocean racing yacht then it needs to have an open transom and lowered cockpit. Got some ideas but haven't settled on anything yet. Peace!  _/)

Sanded the fin today and then added a layer of slightly thickened epoxy. Will let it dry and then tomorrow sand it again. Hopefully that will be sufficient and any shallow areas will be small enough that they can be filled with Interlux Primer later on when I start painting. Aloha!  _/)

Put the fin, and my knuckle.. ouch, on the stationary sander tonight. It shaped up pretty well. Tried to leave it as close to the original size as possible so that it doesn't fall under the tolerances of the Star 45 rules. Not sure why I care because this boat will never be allowed to race anyway. But just in case... I'll trim it tomorrow morning if it's not too cured, but otherwise I'll fight with it tomorrow night. Could be a challenge. Fair winds!

This morning I started to sand the hull. Discovered that there were some ripples. See picture. This was taken after an initial light sanding. The shiny bits in the picture above are the low spots that didn't get sanded. At this point I had to make a decision: A) Do I continue sanding until the shiny spots are sanded too, risking cutting into the glass too much, or B) Do I stop sanding now and add another layer of epoxy, wait for it to dry, and then sand the entire hull again? I did A, but probably should have done B. So I started to sand in earnest and while I didn't do any really serious cutting through the glass, I did expose a bit of the weave. See picture below. When I spray clear epoxy paint on this it should completely disappear, although worst case it might show at certain angles or might be a bit milky. I'm pretty sure I'm fine but we'll find out eventually. But, if I were to do it again I'd have opted to put another layer of epoxy on instead...