Greetings to all... It's a few weeks since visiting RCU as I've been busy with my first project. Basically it will be a 'body-board' tunnel hydroplane - I call it this as the two halves/sponsons are literally from a body-board. The sponsons (former body-board) have a condensed polystyrene cell with an ABS bottom and condensed foam top layer - the ABS is not a problem to finish, paint, etc - but I knew that the top foam could be if I'm not careful - because it's slightly absorbent and will react to solvent based products. The thing is - sorry to carry on - that I was already given good advice earlier ( forget the members user-name - apologies) of applying very thin balsa wood to the top half, and then applying coats of polyurethane, and then finally priming and painting... The problem is - I hate balsa wood ( no offense to who gave me the advice ); I know it's lightweight, etc, but I know from past experiences that very thin balsa splits and cracks easily - and yet it would have to be very thin layers (thick balsa wouldn't cut it as I see it - pun not intended...) to even attempt matching it to the bottom foam half of the sponsons - and more tricky; to the sides of the sponsons (the sides are also covered in this foam). This is because the sides taper down both horizontally and vertically towards the front of the sponsons. Catch-22... And I have really tried applying thin balsa - but the variations in angle make this v.difficult - so instead, I've thought of using lining -paper!
I don't know - maybe this is desperation, but the reasons are this. A)It's very cheap B)It's easy to match to contours, etc - and C) is very easy to apply (or I think it should be) to the foam with epoxy resin glue - it would also be very light, even two or three layers - and could be made waterproof with Polly, primer, paint.
But I don't know for sure - any clues... I'm thinking I shouldn't have gone for the body-board idea in the first place because of the foam top/sides that's posing such a hassle; but then I was thinking that I already had virtually ready-made sponsons and that I would save a good $70/£60 or so for a factory made one at the same time...
Anyway - any advice would be appreciated...
PS: To who gave me the initial balsa wood tip:- I know how some of this/that might sound - but I just couldn't match-up thin balsa strips to the angles, etc, evenly enough. But I'll definitely be using thicker balsa for the main box...

[&:]

ajenery,
Sounds like it ought to work, so, why not? One of the 'nice' things about modeling is that you can use almost anything to 'do' almost anything. Just depends on what you have handy, how familiar you are with working with it, and how 'desperate' (or 'frugal'? LOL) you are!
- 'Doc

PS - To show you 'frugal'... The grey plastic bags computer cards come in make great tinted 'windows'. Want a darker 'window'? Double the layers...

To LtDoc... Good - cheers. I'm going for the lining-paper. Nice tip on using computer card bags for tinted windows, hadn't thought of that