Originally Posted by
kennethfunk
I like the Miss Circus Circus on Tower Hobbies,and saw the hardware kit on Dumas site,is this kit not hard to do?..how long does it take?...I can frame a house in one month,so it couldn't take that long hopefully...Lol...and are the plans easy to follow that come with it.
Trust me, there's a lot to do to build that boat, starting with replacing the framing. The framing is basically a mahogany door skin, making it porous, brittle and heavy. I'd replace all the mahogany with aircraft grade birch from the hobby shop, using the supplied framing as templates. My recommendation would be to make the replacement parts as follows:
1/4" ply: right sponson and rear transoms
1/8" ply: all lengthwise frames, left sponson transom, sponson sheers and chines
1/16" ply: all remaining cross frames
I would also gusset all butt joints with 1/8" to 1/4" square stick stock. These will make a much stronger boat as well as seam cracking less likely.
Since a light boat will be easier to get to run, plan on cutting lightening holes in the frames to make the boat lighter. These holes will also aid in removing water that does get inside the hull.
As far as how long it takes to build, plan on at least 24 hours between steps to allow the epoxy to cure so framing could take at least a month, if you replace the parts as I recommend.
I would recommend you not use the Dumas hardware kit. You can buy much better hardware from other places, such as Speedmaster, Virginia Craftsman and Accutech, to name a couple.
The plans are generally easy to follow but, like any kit, there are things missing that I would have liked to see if I was building my first boat.
If you would like to see how I did the very things I'm recommending, I did a build using the 30" Dumas Pay'N Pak kit. The thread is at
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/spee...-payn-pak.html