I have used West System 105 mixed with 410 Microlight to a paste-like consistency to fill the grain in Balsa. Apply along the grain and then remove as much of the filler as you can by scraping it off with an old credit card or similar diagonally to the grain direction. Don’t build up any on the wood surface, only in the grain. When cured sand lightly and repeat if necessary. Then apply paint or spar varnish to seal the wood.
You might also try the liquid grain fillers that are used in guitar building. I have used these on several instruments that I’ve built but I haven’t used it on Balsa yet. I suspect that it would leave the Balsa more flexible than the epoxy system and might be easier to sand off. It probably won’t matter too much if it is waterproof or not if you are going to paint the surface anyway.
Thanks for the info. I used z poxy finishing resin blotted as much as possible and then sanded down to smoothness. Now I’m at the point where I just need to sand the bow block and give it a finished coat of paint. I’ll provably do it camouflage blue so no other boat sees me coming … lol I’ll try to take some pics in a min.
Thanks for the advice!
Enrico
We managed to finish both and yet to finish making sails. We hope we can get them wet by Tuesday afternoon. We have made rig A for my Dad in Law’s boat and I’m sporting my C rig from my Razor 3 just for the looks. Very nice boat. Cant wait to get it in the water.
Well, we had our first maiden of both rangers yesterday. Conditions where with steady 5-9 MPH winds. My dad in law boat was first to hit the water with the C rig. I came next after settling my sons Footy. O was using a 600 mm mast with high aspect ratio sail. Both boats tracked straight upwind and had no tendency to submarine down wind. My boat was a tad faster overall. In general both where fast boats. We tried running a few legs upwind. And also down wind and gave my son about 10 ft start. Halfway to the mark we would catch up and at the mark we would be about 4-5 ft ahead. My dad in la had a bit of water sipping in issues but in general the rangers where nimble to tack and turn and react to accelarate from a stand still. Both boats are equipped with hs81 for sail and t-50 for rudder. My ranger with a 6 channel park spektrum receiver and single cell 420 Maj liposuction weights in at 320 7 grams. In comparison my razor 3 weights 317.5 grams with out battery. Sorry forgot to take pictures in the excitement. We’ll do more tests and have the razor to compare before the end of the week.
Thanks Bill for such great design!
Enrico
You had perfect conditions for your maiden voyages, Enrico…glad you like the boats.
While you were sailing, we got 5 inches of snow here! Spring will come soon, though.
I’d like to see a picture of your high-aspect rig, if you get a chance…people might be interested in an alternative from the rigs in the plans, and it sounds like yours worked fine.
Hi Bill,
I’ll take some pictures tonight after work. The rig looks great with such a sleek boat. I think it was a coincidence it worked out good since I tried it on my razor 3 and it was iffy. I guess the higher aspect ratio goes well with the narrower hull. Please don’t take my word on it, I am just supposing … My theory behind it is that compared to to sailplane wings, higher aspect wings require higher speeds for the same lift of a low aspect wing. So my bogus conclusion was, The higher aspect ratio I can make it and the boat can handdle, the faster its going to be. The sail 312 from my razor in the previous pictures is a C rig high aspect sail. It works fabulous with the razor, makes it go fast but I works lousy on winds speeds lower than 10 -14 mph. The other reason I tried it was because I ran out of material making my dad in law’s sails and I wanted to test the water desperately! LOL
Not sure how to say this: It worked best with the sail with a bigger curvature than it being too tight. (sorry, not sure the terminology ) I guess its the down haul? anyway, It worked good also when the wind died down from barely blowing to 3 or 4 mph. I’m still going to make the A rig from your plans, I like it! Big! sure it will have a good advantage in very low wind conditions!
Sorry, to much writting, is just too exciting!
Thanks
Enrico
Glad to see people ate taking to the ranger like a duck to water.
I met up with another footy sailor over the weekend in derby, and we has some sailing competiins in complete drifting conditions.
We both had very close to the same area, and the light weght ranger would just get up and go past the BUG in winds the bug would only just move in. Unfortunately rather too dark for photos, but good fun
I also had a sail of my Ranger hull in the pavilion garden pond in Buxton. I had the BIG rig from my razor on it, and it handled i well. the wind was very light to start with, but picked up quite a bit.
As you can see in the pic, it handled it well.
Even in thet wind, the ranger only ever nodded its nose under (the shear lines mean the deck is almost parallel to the water for the first inch at that point, and so it tracked straight, and bobbed stright back up when the gust passed (all the while running very close to Hull speed given shape of waves)
I gathered some measurements on the sail and rig.
RIG:
mast: 654 mm
Boom: 228 mm
Distance from main mast to pivot location: 68mm
SAIL:
General: luff: 618 mm
foot: 205 mm
The sail is divided into 3 sections.
section 1:
foot: 205 mm
luff: 250 mm
Section 2:
foot: 155 mm
Luff: 180 mm
Section 3:
foot: 105 mm
Luff: 185 mm
Head of sail is 33mm wide
The angle of the main mast in relation to the pivot point falls directly perpendicular, that means, the top of the mast is aligned to the pivot point.
Here are some pictures that may help illustrate. Please this has done by the TLAR method and a simple formula, if Bills sails have a XX% of ratio to the pivot point what percentage should I do mine. Please try it and let us know of any possible modifications, improvements, etc!
Thanks
Enrico
It is incredible how time flies when you’re having a lot of fun!! The Footy Regatta sailed at Vero Beach, Fl, proved that I really need to hone up my skipper skills. So many mistakes, too many missed the mark and couple of 360.The important thing is that it was a lot of fum.
Well, back on the ranger subject, We did get a chance to compare it to the rest of the boats. Mainly pool sharks 2 and 3 and some other sleek designs too, the Ranger was one of the skinniest in the block!! It took me a while to trim it out and start finding the sweet spot. On the way, I also had to verbally sail for my dad in law so many times I lost complete concentration on what I was doing. As for the Ranger, we started with the A rig and a constantly switching back and fourth between the A and B rigs was going on. At some point the A rig was nice going down wind but lacked somewhat forward speed. The B rig in general (my own explained on the previous post) lacked both up wind and down wind efficiency. I think I need to add 1.5 inches to the trailing edge to give it a little more “drive”. The C rig I think i got it just about right! On my 7 th race I had a great start, I gained an advantage on the upwind leg of about 5 boat lengths; on the reach leg I really was able to pick up about a 50 ft distance between me and second place boat. On the down wind leg to the finish line, the spread between my ranger and the second place was about half way of the total distance to go. In few words, I bit the H2o out of everyone else! nice! good thing It only lasted for one race, but it was enough to prove that the Ranger has huge, and I mean HUGE potential to beat anyone anytime. Note: The c rig worked great due to the higher wind that started blowing at that moment for this particular race, subsequent races the wind died a little and I wasn’t able to to get the same advantage (plus a lot of mistakes!!)
All in all I must say that I’ll probably have to build a second ranger just in case I wear out this first one! More experimenting with the sails is required but the theory about the high aspect did somehow work! (just be careful not to give it a tooo high aspect ratio)
On the aspect ration issue, the B rig had a 0.3534 aspect ratio percent while the C rig had a 0.5 aprox ratio percent.
Here are some pictures from the regatta!
Had a think about this one, after the day which was fun. Clearly the Bug would need to hold and would hold, a much bigger sail than a Ranger for a given wind. I guess we would be talking twice as much as it has a deeper fin and more weight on the fin. I would guess neatly twice as much area. Interesting thought, huge sailed Bug/Awk vs small sailed Ranger. How big can you practically make a sail? In a gust bug would react slower to heel (more inertia) and hold way longer. Slowwr to acceterate but would coast longer. Did the much hoped Moon Shadow vs Awk/Ice ever happen and what was the result? It may cast an interesing light on Light vs Heavey boats. Must say I was stunned by how small a Ranger is vs a Bug 3!
I was able to compare my razor 3 against my ranger. Ranger ready to sail weights about 320.7 grams the razor with a heavier battery weights 350grams. Razor has a wider beam compared to the ranger but in the long run, the ranger had the following advantages:
tracked higher against the wind
tracked straight on hard down winds ( where the ranger submarines and turns to a side )
reacted swiftly to acceleration
These three points greatly outrun the razor.
On one of the races I was over the start and had to go around and reenter the course. From dead last I was able to catch up and gain at least 3 positions during the race.
Poor inertia but you have to compensate by sailing wise and if you do so you gain advantage in accelaration, speed and higher tracking. Mostly comes down to the skipper. I’m pretty sure if I didn’t make so many mistakes, my outcome would have been much better. Anyway, back to the building board, need to make an intermediate sail between the B and C rig.
Just my 2 cents
Enrico
I’m speculating here, and open to other ideas, but perhaps the main reason so many different designs are competitive in this class is the limitation of hull speed. At some point, more sail no longer equals greater speed…so a light boat with less sail and a heavy boat with more sail reach the same limit fairly quickly with Footys. The heavy boat has the advantage of greater momentum, so it carries through lulls and tacks better…the light boat accelerates faster. Which characteristic has the advantage may depend somewhat on course layout and personal sailing techniques…but Lester Gilbert did some testing a few years back that indicated weight differences in IOMs turn out to be insignificant in a typical course. If this is true, then a light boat would likely have the edge in very light air where it could use large sail area, and the boats might spend a fair amount of time sailing at less than hull speed…conversely, in very heavy conditions, a heavy boat might have the edge because of its more stable platform.
That seems to make theoretical sense, but I don’t think anyone knows the answer to the question, “How much?” I was sailing with Scott Spacie the other day, and he mentioned that in spite of the years of development and experience we’ve gained with Footys, we seem to have few answers…and more questions than we had when we started!
Walt, I haven’t ruled out the foam, but I feel like foam hulls are more suseptible to damage than balsa hulls. I also have found that I can build almost as light with balsa. I also just like building with balsa better. So no strong reasons, just an inclination or preference. If I saw a significant advantage, I’d go back to it in a heartbeat
Bill i’m am inclined to agree with you.
Combined with the friendly comoradaree that seems to be abound in the footy class it always makes for a fun day.
Thank you for a wonderful design, the ranger is an absolute treat to sail.
I am struggling to make mine point, but i have the feeling its coz i have too much twist in my McRig. When sheeted in hard in strong wind i can get to the point its sailing ok, but the top 1/3rd seems to be out too far, and almost inverting at some points.
I’m hoping if i can cure this it will point a bit better, which should see my sailing improve no end.
Arrrrr maities…
We’ll the more I sail my ranger the more I like it, and I have to say I liked it alot just from the looks when I was just building it. I. Have spent quite a bit of time with each rig trying to fine tune it. My A rig seems to be working better but maybe ithe mast flexes a bit too much and I loose power closed hauled. With my B rig I tried luffing it a bit more and the extra curvature in the canvas provides for a better propulsion and top speed. The C rig works just fine as is so I left that alone for now. My testing went on a closed circuit between the two markers at our pond for the starting line. 3 laps and stop watch on hand ( actually thank God for computer radio’s! ) and one small adjustment at the time. After comparing the last time to previous times you could tell if going the right direction.
Well keep building them! That’s the most fun you can get close to the water without getting wet!
Enrico
My Ranger is now registered in the UK as #347, so i shall make up a decent set of rigs for it (may even try some luff curve, or even panelled sails…) and set about sailing it
I was at frensham pond last weekend, racing my Razor 3 in the open. Interestingly my Wicksteed park debut with the Ranger in the UK must have sparked some interest as a wooden on turned up. Unfortunately he only had 1 rig for it, and it wasn’t quite right most of the time… however when the wind was right for the rig… by gosh did it fly. I do believe it was over taking ICE’s downwind
Not bad, considering, it turned out a little lighter in the keel then mine is
This is a great looking design so I thought I try and build one but am encountering problems
I’ve printed the Ranger plans, cut out the panels on 1.5mm balsa but can’t seem to successfully glue the panels together.
Which order do you fix the panels together ?
Should I be pre-bending the panels ?
Should I be joining the panels around some type of former ?
I presume that the hull length and relatively short keel mean the boat fits in the box diagonally side to side and up and down ?
Any suggestions would be gratefully received
Thanks
Phil
lol I’ll try to take some pics in a min.
) I guess its the down haul? anyway, It worked good also when the wind died down from barely blowing to 3 or 4 mph. I’m still going to make the A rig from your plans, I like it! Big! sure it will have a good advantage in very low wind conditions!
Please try it and let us know of any possible modifications, improvements, etc!