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Here's a picture of the major parts used in the Soling. The fiberglass hull, deck, rudder and keel all came from HARTMANN
FIBREGLASS R/C. The long curved pieces on the floor are the sheer clamps. They are used by gluing them along the inside
edge of the hull, just below where the deck sits and provide for more gluing area than just the narrow edge of the
fiberglass hull. The long sticks on top of the hull were used to form the mast and the small box-like structure on top was
used to hold the rectangular lengths of wood at a 45 degree angle to allow the an angle to be planed into them so they
can be assembled against each other to form the mast.
 Here is the mast glued and clamped. The tiewrap was my first idea, but it was difficult to get a lot of clamping power
out of it. I then tried an old-fashioned "Spanish Windlass" which loops a line around what you want to clamp, then inserting
a stick inside the loop and winding up the string. I could generate quite a lot of force like this and it clamped the mast
together quite efficently. The best clamping pressure was just as the string started to crush the sharp edge of the lumber.
Up to a 1/16 inch of crush didn't hurt the mast because this was material that was going to be removed.
Here is a cross-section of the finished mast. This design was taken from a magazine article about building "bird-mouth"
spars and masts. This turned out to be a good, inexpensive approach, but I'm probably giving away a lot to the carbon
fiber crowd. The drawback is the mast is pretty thick, so it's not the best for this racing sailboat.
This is the hull with the internal structure and equipment installed. The thick cross pieces support the mast,
since it sits on top of the deck. One thing missing here are diagonal "knees" at the widest point of the hull.
After the first few trips out, the deck started lifting away from the hull, under the strain of the mast shrouds. After
re-gluing the deck, I added four diagonal supports to help transfer the load to the hull. So far, they've worked.
Another view of the subdeck and equipment.
Here's the deck freshly glued on. It took every steel tool I owned to weight it down so the epoxy adhered to the
fiberglass. If you do this, be sure to preposition clamps, even slow hardining epoxy kicks off in a surprisingly short
time when you're busy looking for clamps.
In the paint shop, a dry day with the sun setting in the west. I used Rustoleum teal for the hull and red for the
waterline, using the molded-in reference lines.
This is masking off the deck. The surface is grey with white highlights. The pattern uses the contours molded
in based on the original Soling desk made by Vortex. I also painted the hatch (missing in this picture) white, which
was a mistake. When racing the boat on a port tack the white hatch on a white and grey deck made the boat look like
all the other white decked hulls. The hatch has now been painted to match the hull.
And here it is on it's shakedown cruise. Named 'Intrepid' I raced her for a year, then dropped out when I became
frustrated from losing all the time. I've since gone on to crew on a full sized racing sailboat, which has taught me
how to use the racing rules that the rest of the skippers were using to beat the pants off me. Now, I'm looking
forward to racing Intrepid again soon.
For more information about the Soling 50 or model yachting in general, click here to go to the American Model Yachting Association's
home page.
On to a powered model. GO COASTIES!!!
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