SS Miss Belmar

After the renovations you see at the bottom of the previous page, at some point she went back to Gulf Craft for further renovations which included adding a canopy over the top deck and adding a pulpit to the bow. The mast was also modified, swept back further. Not sure what year this happened, will have to research this. Here is what she looked like after those renovations. I found this in my archives and don’t recall where the picture came from. I don’t know the whole story, I’ll have to talk to Al Shinn, but she was taken down to Florida in the mid to late 90’s and after that I don’t know where she went. I do have detail pictures of the boat as she appears below that I used to rebuild the model but I have to find and scan those.

Do it yourself mold...

Sometime after building the first version of the model as a plank on frame, I had a thought to make a mold and maybe sell some hulls. I made a plug, then made a mold from the plug. I have no pictures of the plug. Here is the mold which I made only one hull which I used to build a new boat. I also made the hull slightly deeper to accommodate additional weight. Ended up not being interested in selling hulls, but I still have the mold.

Building the model to appear as she looked prior to leaving Belmar Marina for good...

The hull I used is from the mold in the previous set of pictures. As you can see in the first picture I already added the four stuffing boxes. I laminated wood to create a sheer support for the deck. They were shaped so there was no bending of wood. They were then glued to the hull. Crossbeams were then installed and they were cut to provide access to the hull and to support the cabin. To access the hull interior, the cabin and aft deck hatch is removable. The deck sheathing is 1/8 inch basswood.

Deck diamond plate...

Once the deck sheathing was on I was ready to start creating diamond plate. First I made patterns of the deck areas. The patterns were then used to cut metal window screen. You cannot buy old weave style screen in stores these days but I did buy mine from McMaster Carr. To start, a layer of polyester resin was applied to a section of the deck, the window screen was placed on the wet resin and was weighted or clamp down so the screen was in full contact with the resin and basswood. Once the resin cured, the weights and clamps were removed. Then the next section was added the same way until the entire deck was done. Once all sections were laid down, another batch of resin was mixed and this was applied to the entire deck making sure the resin was evenly distributed throughout the screen. You can see the final result in the last picture. Later on you will see the deck painted and the final result on how it looks.

Aft hatch...

The aft hatch was assembled from pine. You can see that the hatch and the main deck has a camber to it.

Bollards...

The bollards are made from K&S brass tubing. The cross member was soldered in place, then the bollard top was added. I also added an extension on the bottom which will go thru the deck and glue into a solid piece of wood. Since it will be solidly attached to the boat, I can tie dock lines to them.

Gunwale supports...

These were cut from pine. Once they were cut into individual pieces the edges were rounded, then they were sanded and primed. They were then installed onto the gunwale and you will see them throughout the following pictures.

Anchor pulleys....

These anchor pulleys will be mounted to the anchor tree for two anchors. They are made from sheet brass and rod, bent to shape and soldered where required. The final result will be seen in later photos.

Anchor tree...

The anchor tree is also made of brass. Once the boat was done I found the original one stuck out and tended to get damaged. The original one was permanent. So I changed the design and made the anchor tree removable and I made spares just in case they did get damaged.

Anchor station...

Here you can see the bollards for the anchor, the anchor windlass station and tubes which lead to the rope locker. I don’t have pictures assembling the anchor windlass. Some other things to notice is a deck plate to the rope locker, the anchor tree and the railings which I have not described yet how they were assembled. Also notice the gunwale supports in place which are not structural. The anchor windlass and bollards are firmly secured to the hull and I can lift the hull with any of them they are that secure.

Main cabin railing assembly...

This assembly is for a railing that goes inside the cabin and surrounds an entryway below the deck. Brass tubing, cut, fitted and soldered.

Main deck railing assembly...

This railing consists of many stanchions. Each was cut to length then the upper end was filed with a radius to fit the rail. A pin is in the end of each stanchion as it is soldered to the rail. The pin provides strength to the joint. A pin is soldered in the bottom and this inserts into a hole in the gunwale.

Upper deck railing assembly...

A friend of mine has a CNC milling machine and lathe. He set me up with a procedure to cut and drill all of these railing stanchions. Each stanchion has a radius at the top to meet into the upper rail. And they each have two intermediate 1/16″ holes for pins for the horizontal midway rails. The aft part of the railing is curved to meet into the side railing. I bent the corners on a jig that I made. The bow, sides and aft railings were assembled separately then joined together and fastened to the upper deck. The side railings next to the pilot house had further supports for the side covering boards. Those supports I used square brass stock. The bow railing was difficult as it was swept back and had flat sections to it. I used spacers to get the desired result. The covering boards were made from 0.020 plastic sheet. Every other stanchion needed a hole drilled into the top of the rail to accommodate a flood light. Pins were added at the bottom of each stanchion as an attachment point to the deck. All solder joins were filed, the railing was cleaned and sprayed with etching primer then sprayed white.

The mast...

The mast parts were also cut out on my friends CNC machine from one sheet of brass. The pieces were solder together and solder joints were cleaned up with a file. Plastic trim pieces were added then it was etch primed and sprayed white.

Vacuum forming...

Model building is many crafts within a hobby. I never did vacuum forming before. I watched a few videos on YouTube and came up with this box which was built from materials I had around the shop. I only had to buy the vacuum reducer fitting. The pictures tell the story.

Here are two quick video’s of my vacuum forming box in action. I’m forming the floodlights in the previous section.

Floodlights...

The floodlights consist of the vacuum formed housing, a surface mount LED, a brass support pole and a clear acrylic lens. The brass support pole is 1/16″ tubing with a square piece of brass soldered on at an angle. This was done in a jig so they were all the same. The downward angle aims the light at the water around the boat. Enough acrylic lenses were cut to the general size then edge sanded to the size needed to fit into the housing. The final sanding was with something like 400 or 600 grit paper. 30 gauge wires leads were soldered to the surface mount LEDs. Two fine holes for the wire leads were drilled into the bottom of the housing. The support pole was attached. Then the housing was painted with Humbrol paint. I had to use a certain metallic paint so the light from the LED’s did not bleed thru the housing. All LED’s were tested before and after they were installed. To attach the lens, a bead of silicone was applied on the lens seat on the housing then the lens was pushed in. Once set they were done. The light support pole inserts into the upper railing at every other stanchion.

Floodlight PCB...

The boat will be running on a 12 volt batteries. The floodlight LED’s will require a current limiting resistor. I’ve been pretty good at creating my own PC boards. I will not describe how I do that here but you can find plenty of information online on how to do this. For this board, one resistor will cover either two or three LED’s. This board will be mounted on the bottom of the cabin.

Floodlight circuit...

I used copper foil tape and ran it on the underside of the deck which sits on top of the cabin. Where it crosses another piece, and there should be no contact, I placed a thin piece of styrene plastic as an insulator. Where needed allĀ  connections were soldered. In the first picture where the taped off area is, that is where connections from the PCB will go. For the floodlight connections, the wires will go down the stanchion, through a hole in the upper deck and exit near one of the copper wires. The ends of these wires will be soldered to the copper foil tape. The entire underside of the upper deck was spray painted white. The copper foil was masked off where the the floodlight connections will be.

Painting...

Not going into details about painting. There was lots of masking off for the different colors. The hull was primed. I used Krylon spray paint for painting the hull. The deck was painted with a silverish-mettalic Humbrol which to me resembled the diamond plate deck.

Transom lettering...

The transom letters came off of the original model. They are something like 0.020 or 0.030 styrene. I sanded them down and repainted them white.

Progress pictures...

At this point I have a new fiberglass hull, the cabin and pilot house are from the original model which I built back around 1980. The decks on top of the cabin and pilot house are new as well as the mast. The lettering on the bow, I think I printed those on clear inkjet decal slide paper from Micro-Mark. I soldered the four stuffing tubes and struts from brass stock. The propellers are Dumas 1-9/16″ props. The rudders I made and came from the original model.

Power and electronics---

These pictures show the layout inside the hull.

Float test...

This float test was done in my pool. Nice to have such a large test tank. But I no longer live at that house and the pool was taken down before I sold the house. These float tests were done at various times.

Never finished...

More to come

More to come

More to come