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Hull Construction
Hull Construction
Unlike the IOM rules, materials in the the RG65 class are not restricted. This has allowed me to make many of the internal structures out of Depron foam board. This material is very light and strong enough for RG65 and can be bonded very well to the hull or deck using UHU Por contact adhesive. For the joints where I can't use a contact adhesive I used Gorilla glue which is a foaming polyurethane adhesive. It's an ugly adhesive which; you really don't want to get on your skin, takes a long time to cure but bonds to polystyrene and Depron (expanded polystyrene) very well. It’s also; waterproof, forms a fillet around the joint, fills gaps, is far lighter than epoxy and requires no mixing.
Example of a UHU Por joint
From a 9mm thick Depron sheet I cut two 12mm strips for the gunwalls . These were bonded to the hull using UHU Por which being a contact adhesive required no tricky clamping. After this was done I bonded the stem in using Gorilla Glue which created a water tight hull and allowed me to work out where the lead bulb was to be positioned. Bill Hagerup states that the front of the fin is 13.78” (350mm) from the stern of the boat. This looked a little too far forward to me and I perhaps foolishly decided to move the fin 20mm further back. I did this because I like the rig to be as far aft as possible to give an extra bit of forward bouncy to reduce nose diving on the run. Bill states that the center of the mast for a swing rig should be 8.55” (217mm) from the bow or 78mm (by my maths) in front of the front edge of the fin. The swing rigs I make have slightly larger than average jibs allowing me to position the mast further aft and from what I have learned on my Vanquish65 I decided to put the mast 250mm from the bow or 65mm in front of the fin. This is a long way aft of Bills suggested position and I may end up moving the rig forward which will be quite a major task.
Knowing where the fin and the mast will be, I started working out where to put the internal elements of the hull. I decided that I needed a forward beam to reinforce the hull where a conventional jib or the swing rig sheeting point would be positioned. A central bulkhead to reinforce where the fin attaches and an aft beam to reinforce where a conventional rig main sheeting post would be if it were installed. Most of these elements were glued into place using Gorilla glue.
I worked out where all the r.c. equipment could be installed which is difficult on a boat as narrow as this by drawing full size on a piece of paper.
The radio tray was made by liminating one layer of 200g/m2 carbon cloth to each side of a 3mm Depron sheet using epoxy. The rough finish is there because peel ply was used to give the best bondable finish. The white blobs are epoxy micro fiber paste to give the self tapping screws used to fix the servos something to bite into.
A fin slot was very carefully cut IN THE WRONG PLACE using a dremel with a cutting disc.It is in the centre of the hull but should have been cut at the other side of the tape. This was repaired by covering the outside of the hole in parcel tape and bonding one layer of class cloth on the inside. The remaining shallow hole was filled with epoxy and micro ballons. Fortunately the repair only added about 2g to the weight.
Care was taken to align the the rudder to the fin
The fin box was fitted to the hull using glass fiber tape and epoxy. This bonds to the styrene very well once the surface has been roughened . The Depron bulkhead to the right of the fin box is there to create a compartment for the battery
Using carbon fibre which creates a lot of fine black dust and Gorilla glue expanding everywhere does not make an attractive build but it is; strong, light, and functional
A blob of epoxy putty was used at the top of the fin box to give a flat surface for the screw holding the fin in something to tighten up on
The rudder tube is a thin walled 3.5mm brass tube held in place with a beam made out of 9mm Depron stiffened with c.f. Having the rudder tube under the deck does give water a potential access point but this has not proved to be a problem on the Vanquish65 which is a very dry boat.
Some additional 6mm Depron stiffening beams were used to reinforce the deck around the mast tube.
Bent wire was used for the deck fittings. This was fixed to the deck with an epoxy microfiber mix
A single sheeting line passes through to the deck
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