As previously mentioned I decided to add a door and frame detail below the centre cabin roof hatch.
I made the door from a bit of 1.5mm scrap ply and 'engraved' the panelling grooves on it's face, I also added a frame leaving narrow gaps to form the hinge lines. Once in place I will add a couple of bits of wire to simulate the butt hinges, some extra door detail and some door furniture.
UPDATE: I have added the door detail, I just need to make a knob or handle to finish it off, I have a fuzzy 'photo showing the door but it isn't clear what type it is.

Now that the hull has been skinned in fibreglass and given it's first rub down the next process is to fit the rubbing strakes
The gunwhale strakes are made from strips of 3/8 x 3/16 obechi and they need to be bent and formed to follow the curvature of the bow, so it's out with the wallpaper steamer and steaming tube again!
I steamed the strips very thoroughly to get them as flexible as possible because they need to be bent in two planes, the first is the curve of the bow and the second is the change of angle, in effect a 'twist' where the side skin angle changes.
I dry fitted the strakes and clamped them in place to conform to the hull shape and pre-drilled holes for the fixing pins. After the wood cooled and dried it was possible to remove the temporary clamps and pins and happily the strake kept it's shape so that the final epoxy glueing and pinning should not involve stressing the wood to much further degree.
The strakes were fixed with the upper edge slightly proud of the deck so that once planed down they will be flush with the deck.
A little bit of filler was needed to fill the gap between the lower edge of the strake and the hull and in the pin holes left after the pins were punched into the strakes.
I repeated the process for the other side and felt quite pleased and relieved that it went so well, and without anything snapping 😁
Another piece is fitted on the transom and this only has a gentle curve and is a breeze to fit compared to the other parts !
Now onto the Chine rubbing strakes.

The chine strakes are made from 3/16 x 3/16 obechi and also need a very thorough steaming to get them into the correct shape.
As with gunwhale strakes these also need to be bent in two different planes, the first being the curve of the bow and the second is the rise and fall in angles required to follow the line of the chine stringers.
Pre-drilling these strips prior to glueing with epoxy and pinning is very important as the wood is very thin and would very easily split if not done, remembering that the wood is already under stress because of the bending process 😰
Fortunately this also went well without any disasters, and after a bit of filling and rubbing down I'm finally able to apply the last two coats of resin to give the hull it's final surface 😀

With the rubbing strakes fitted the hull can now receive two more coats of epoxy resin.
The resin was mixed to the 30:100 ratio in sufficient quantity to coat the whole hull, and the 90 minute pot life meant that this could be done at a sensible pace. I found it best to apply a thin even coat and not to over-brush the resin, that way there were no runs and the brush did not drag, 'less is more' is always the case. The strakes absorb the resin quite well so they should be harder and more resistant to knocks.
The resin was left to cure and harden for a couple of days before a rub down with a 400 grit wet & dry abrasive on a sanding block.
The weave of the cloth is now fully covered and the resulting surface is remarkably smooth even at this stage.
A third coat of resin builds up the finish layer and when dried resulted in a very pleasing mirror finish and the glassfibre cloth is now completely invisible!
As satisfying as this shiny surface is it must be rubbed down to give a good surface for the primer paint to adhere to. I used a 1200 grit wet & dry paper with plenty of water to flatten and key the surface ready for when the painting process could be started.

The wheelhouse construction on first sight seems to be reasonably straightforward but in practice it was a real PITA as the instructions are somewhat lacking in detail and the drawing supplied isn't of much help either so I largely disregarded them and placed the cabin and windscreen formers so that the geometry was correct. This involved putting in extra supporting pieces and bevelling the formers so that the windscreen panels and roof skins would fit properly when I was ready to fit them.
Also, the instructions say to fit the glazing to the windscreen panels and fix them in place during this phase of the construction, something that I considered very impractical and unwise so I decided to find a better way to do this at a later stage 💭
Whilst working on this it was suggested to me by a family member that perhaps the searchlight could be engineered to be a working feature? I had always intended to build a high power LED into the searchlight controlled by a R/C switch, but could it be possible to make it rotate as well?
I decided to take time out to research a practical means to do this as it would be quite a nice feature and also a good excuse to upgrade my choice of R/C system from 4 channel to 6 channel for not much more outlay 😀

After a bit of head scratching I think I have a plan 😉
I bought a Turnigy mini servo, a servo tester and a battery pack from Hobbyking, and a 3w white LED and reflector from Maplins.
The LED is mounted on quite a large heat sink and needed trimming down to fit inside the searchlight body, I checked all the time for continuity and that the conductive tracks on the heat-sink would not short to the metal body, I drilled a hole in the underside of the body for the wiring and epoxied the LED in place.
I temporarily connected a dropper resistor and battery pack to the LED and ran it for a few minutes to test the heat gain which was negligible, clearly the metal I removed from the heat-sink is amply made up by the mass of the white metal body.
The servo was temporarily fixed in place with a couple of screws so that I could test the rotation with the servo tester (at this time I didn't have any radio gear) .
It works a treat ! 😀
The servo was then mounted within the WF3 windscreen former with the output spigot directly below the proposed searchlight position, a supporting structure and a retaining bar holds it in place as I don't intend to permanently fix it. I will cut an access hole in the cabin roof below the hatch to allow access to the bracket so that the servo can be replaced if required.
I'll make a lens and protective grid later and also re-make the searchlight cradle and base in brass as the white metal one is just too flimsy and would bend and break in no time.
Now I can get on with the rest of the cabin construction 😁

Happily the fitting of these three pieces is quite straightforward.
The skins were heated with a hot air gun and gently curved to the correct profiles, then I ran a sanding block over the cabin sides and wheelhouse formers to contour them to the correct profiles so that the roof skins fitted well. The edges of the two outer skins was chamfered where they meet the edges of the centre section for neatness and to minimise filling. The skins overlap all sides of the cabin walls by about 1/8 of an inch and they were trimmed to allow this before fitting.
The skins were then glued in place with aliphatic, pinned and clamped and left to dry.

I initially followed the instructions and used canopy glue to fix the centre Perspex screen in place but the practical reality is that the glazing is better fitted to the panels after construction and painting.
Fortunately the canopy glue can easily be removed from the Perspex without leaving a residue, so no harm done.
The three panels were chamfered at the meeting edges and dry fitted/removed a number of times after various shaping adjustments until I was perfectly happy with the fit.
My earlier 'geometric juggling' of the cabin parts has paid off because all of the windscreen panels now lay flat properly across the formers and at all the correct angles.
Once satisfied that the fit was as good as it gets I glued and clamped each piece one at a time, and after a bit of filling and rubbing down the end result was worth all the effort 😀

The three panels make up the wheelhouse roof and the outer two needed the heat gun treatment to curve them in two directions so a bit of patience is required here to get this right.
When they are correctly shaped the mating edges of all three need a little chamfering, they also need to overlap the cabin walls by 1/8th of an inch. I cut out a hole in the centre panel to give me access to the bracket that hold the searchlight rotation servo in place. Before fitting the roof panels I added a couple of small blocks either side of the cabin formers directly beneath where the mast feet will be to reinforce the areas so that I can bolt down the mast legs on threaded studs and also to enable it's removal for storage if required.
Once again I used a file and sanding block over the formers and cabin sides to profile them so that the panels sit flush on the framework. The outer panel on which the searchlight sits was also pierced to take the 2mm threaded stud will connects the servo to the searchlight base. I'll need to make and fit a circular wedge fillet on the roof to meet the searchlight base because of the curvature of the roof at that point.
The undersides of the panels got a couple of coats of sanding sealer and a brushed coat of a black satin water based paint, being careful not to coat the areas where the glue lines will be. The rest of the interior of the cabin also got another coat of black paint.
The centre panel was fitted first making sure that the hole was correctly aligned with the servo shaft position, when the glue had dried the two outer panels were glued and clamped.
I fitted the sliding hatch rails on a couple of bearers and made a frame around the access hole for the hatch to fit onto.
The other small hole at the front of the centre panel is for the navigation light wiring.
Thankfully that's the end of the superstructure construction which was unnecessarily difficult due to the less than helpful instructions and drawings and poorly fitting parts.
Some room for improvement here by the kit maker I think ❓ .....

Next episode coming to screen near you soon.... 😁

A couple of small features to add to the deck are the three lifting eyes on each side and the foot rails that run along the edge of the deck from bow to stern.
The eyes were made from some brass sheet and bent so that they eye is vertical above deck but the base is angled into the slots that I have routed into the deck. I used a very fine routing bit that I bought at a model show in my Dremel drill to cut the slots.
The foot rails are made from the 3/32 x 3/32 obechi strip supplied with the kit, I pre-drill holes for some pins that temporarily hold the rail in place while the epoxy glue sets. I felt that trying to pin these rails would be difficult and the glue will hold them just as well.
The foot rail ends were given a finishing detail with a file at each end for neatness.
The pin holes were filled and the rail rubbed down lightly and given a couple of coats of sanding sealer.