Deck is now on and trimmed and chine spray rails and gunwale rubbing strip are on. Will be making the toe rails next and a few tweaks here and there, and inside edge of deck trimming to balsa facings (to be fixed) before undercoating. Cabin is a work in progress and still to be 'fitted'to deck ( whole sandpaper sheets strapped down tight to deck, and cabin placed on top and sanded fore and aft till a good fit) Cabin will fit over an internal coaming/upstand to keep water out.
Spray rails and rubbing strip are hard balsa toughened with cyno (toe rails will be the same) Glue for decks was West System 105 resin with 404 powder additive (magic stuff, most widely used epoxy for full sized boats in NZ.)

Bit more progress, bit slow as I had to have a change and 3/4 finish some 1/2 finished jobs on the house). I've fitted the toe rails, glued on the cabin roofs, made the floors, (both 2pc so as to be easy to remove to get at the bilges,) made the shaft support blocks, milled out the shaft slots and slotted the hull to match, ( still have to epoxy blocks in when happy with shaft angles ), made the motor mount plate and trimmed the inside edge excess off the deck.
Still have to make the rear cockpit floor and rear cabin /door panel but I'll wait till I've fitted the motors, as I have to see where the engine boxes end up, (they will probably end up being in the correct place with the motors partly inside the cabin but if I'm clever enough it won't be noticed.
The odd pic out is of some of the tools we use to make our models and don't even think about. I know most of us have our special home made 'tools' for different little jobs (ie sandpaper glued to flat or shaped blocks etc) but I thought for anyone just starting, it might give them an idea of what they could need to make it easier to build a model.
Obviously there are fillers, paints, brushes, planes, drills etc (couldn't fit my mill on the table, weighs about 400lbs) and a number of other items for doing the larger bits. Mostly it's some of the simple smaller tools which are the handiest (assortment of modelling knives, small hacksaw, cutting board, pencils and sanding blocks/paper. If you are fortunate enough to have a lathe you will obviously save a lot of money on scale fittings, shafts etc, but most people don't have one and have to come up with other methods or $$.

Prop shafts positions are set up and shafts ready to epoxy in. Have made the brass coil motor cooling tubes and just for fun (and a bit of an experiment) closed circuit heat exchanger so I can use it in salt water, Probably not really necessary but why not,? real boats have them!. The body is part of an alloy bicycle pump and the core is copper tube soldered into 1/2" copper water pipe, crushed down in the vice onto 4"nails to make spaces for the small copper tube to solder into. End piece is a blanking plug for Buteline polybutene house water pipe ground down to a tight press fit in the open end of the pump tube. Exchanger internals look a bit rough but you don't see them. All sealed in with auto gasket silicone.
Motor coils are made of brass tube (can't buy 1m lengths of copper tube from the hobby shop any more, as I found out while doing my 60km round trip) so went with brass. Annealed the brass and wound it tightly round a vacuum cleaner tube which was 10mm smaller in diam than the motor. Once wound they were unwound slightly as they were fitted/screwed onto the motors, giving a good tight fit.
Also made the oiler tubes for the shafts which will have a reservoir tank connected.
The heat exchanger will have its own pump and the main raw water feed will as well. Might have to fit a small header tank above the exchanger if it's needed, but it will never get hot enough to need one .

Have made the rudders, shaft struts and steering arms. Steering arms were brass strip (6mm x 1mm) drilled to suit 3mm ID stepped OD aircraft wheel collars (HK,- large OD 7mm, small OD 5mm). Kept strip in full length while drilling then soldering each collar, then cut to length afterwards (easier to manage). Have made the rudders, shaft struts and steering arms. Steering arms were brass strip (6mm x 1mm) drilled to suit 3mm ID stepped OD aircraft wheel collars (HK,- large OD 7mm, small OD 5mm). Kept strip in full length while drilling then soldering each collar, then cut to length afterwards (easier to manage). Drive shaft tubes are epoxied in but still have to tidy epoxy up and streamline the drive shaft tubes back and front where they leave the hull (see sketch)to avoid cavitation at higher speeds.
Struts are same brass strip, wrapped around shaft tube and drawn tight with pliers, then legs cut and filed to size and soldered to hull 'mounts' (again using full length strip and cutting to size and filing later). These will be epoxied into the hull and thick cyno'd to the tube as they are only for decoration. Steering will be by a plastic aircraft cable (40yr old Graupner left-over cable actually) running up past half way to the servo. No new technology here!

Finished making the floors (which are all removable) and the engine boxes. Finished closing in the rear of the cabin, (still to make the door) The engine boxes will be glued to the rear cabin and will come off with the cabin as one piece. Took a bit of mucking around to figure out how everything was going to come out easily but it's no fun if there's no challenge!
Still have the internal wheelhouse to rear cabin door to make, and dash, wheel, masts, lights etc, plus I might look at making the wheelhouse fold up access/windows workable although it's just something else to break. I might set the rudders up then remove them ready for painting the hull.
I have given the deck and coamings a good coat of dope (real aircraft stuff which I buy by the quart, much better than the watered down expensive stuff you buy from the hobby shops) to seal everything. As previously mentioned, the inside of the hull up to the chines will be resin coated.

Trial fitting all the plumbing for the heat exchanger to make sure coamings will still fit. Small pump behind port motor is the circulation pump and the other is the raw water pump. Also fitted the ESCs and made the battery holders. would have liked the batteries and pumps nearer the stern, but not enough room under the floors. May have to put a few sinkers in the stern to get the WL correct. That can come at the end once everything else is done, (paint etc)
Rudder system is also temporarily hooked up and works fine. Will remove and test water system shortly. Using 6mm silicone hose for the raw water pump for better flow. As can be seen, everything tucks away quite nicely out of sight, (was sort of like death by a thousand cuts,- fitted by a thousand slots!) some pretty close fits here and there. could have done without the heat exchanger but I don't do things the easy way.
Got to try fitting a smoke machine in somewhere so I can have smoke coming out the exhausts with the water (more tubes, more bits!) and a sound unit! Might be pushing it, but I managed to fit twin units on the HSL and that's a lot narrower. Might be a rack system yet, plenty of room upwards in the cabin. Don't really want to put anything in the wheel house, just wheel, instruments etc.

Trying out the heat exchanger and raw water pumps. Vid is a bit boring as you can't see much going on other than the water coming out the exhausts. I left a bit of air in the closed cooling system so I could see if the water was circulating (you can see a few bubbles travelling around,-not in the vid unfortunately) Everything works well but the circulation pump is a bit noisy (running on 8v) but the main pump is quiet (running half speed on 6v - through a UBEC ) Both pumps are powered from a 2200Mah 2s LiPo at the stern, under the cockpit floor and operated by a remote switch. Main pump draws water from a pickup near the stern.

Most of the motor electrics fitted (just rudder servo and lights to set up yet.) Sprayed a few coats of heavy acrylic undercoat on and sanded back. Will spray another coat or two before top coat. Weather was good for painting today, so set it up and sprayed it outside in the sun.
Both motor covers are now glued to the bulkhead so the coamings come off as one piece as previously mentioned. Made a Mahogany door for the aft cabin and will probably do the same for the internal door from the wheelhouse.
Faired the shaft tubes as well with some West System resin and filler powder.. Gets a bit more exciting when you can start painting. May give the coamings a spray yet, but need to make sure I don't need to correct anything.
Ordered the grab rail stanchions from CMB, also another sound unit from Ali Express. I have dozens of coloured LEDs for the lights (miniature Xmas string lights) which I bought on
an end of year sale which are perfect for nav and interior lights (just cut off what you need and solder on some leads). They seem to handle the voltage ok . The clear ones I usually paint dark yellow to get a more realistic colour, and power them with a small 2 AA battery compartment (which comes with the lights) which is wired to a remote switch.
Haven't done a lot the past week as I've had a bad case of the plague and I'm just getting back into things.

Just thrown some paint at the hull (sides and bottom 'anti fouling'), fitted the deflectors on the cabin tops and drilled the rear small port hole. Also have drawn up the name template to make the waterslide decal. I can start fitting the shafts and rudders now. Will flat off the 'antifouling' as it's a bit glossy at the mo.
Also, my 'GT Power' sound unit turned up and I've managed to find a suitable sound near enough to the Detroit 453s the original had fitted (unit comes with 58 car/truck sounds installed). With this sound unit you can record a sound, send it to GT Power and they will make a file and send it back so you can download it to the unit via USB (or so the guy says) Might give it a shot.
I'm not using the LEDs supplied (for lights, indicators etc but could use a couple for reverse and forward, (you can program a few things via USB) You can add sirens/horns etc as well. Have another one coming which is the new one piece model, (they even do a bluetooth one which can be phone operated/adjusted by an app) Gives the model a bit of 'sumpin' xtra. (nothing to do with certain Thai 'women' for those who were thinkin' 😜!)

Aerial masts made and wheelhouse ribbing on. Acetate windows cut out (require painted trim around boarder (time to get out the BIG glasses) Tried the shafts out, wasn't expecting much and wasn't disappointed. Shafts are stainless but are soft, and look to have been turned, instead of being made of straight wire. Wondered why everything just about jumped out of the boat at high revs, turned out to be the shafts which looked like pretzels and were throwing themselves out by miles.
Took them out and tried to roll them on the bench top, -ever tried to roll a banana?!. Managed to straighten the worst one about 90% but it was impossible to get it dead right as it had a spiral built in (quality Chinese machining). The bearings are crap as well and 'snatch' quite often (probably soft balls and slack clearance) but I'll replace them with some better quality NMB high speed ones if they don't last, and make shafts from 4mm silver steel or straight wire.
The complete shafts didn't cost much (no more than the brass tube alone required from the LHS) so I'm not too worried. If I'd had a lathe I would have made my own with teflon bushes. The shafts would be fine on a slower revving model (0-5000rpm maybe) but they start flexing at around 8,000 (no load) where it all goes banana shaped. I've also removed the heat exchanger I fitted as I was running out of room for more important gadgets like sound (Just did it as an experiment, nothing serious (I'll do a quick sound demo vid soon, works well)
When my lungs recover from 3 weeks of the black plague I'll paint the coamings and fit the windows, (still waiting for my grab-rail stanchions from CMB). Will make a start on the wheel house fitting out when I get time (need to find a wheel etc, -might have to haunt the toy stores).