To get a better idea of how this boat will be made I decided to build a 1/12 scale model. It turned out very well and was easy because most of the plans are printed as a 1/12 scale. I ran up to Hobby Lobby and purchased a couple small sheets of balsa wood. I simply traced the stringers, bulkheads and hull onto the wood and cut it out with an exacto knife.

I was then able to assemble the inside structure, consisting of the bulkheads and stringers, in no time at all. I then sheeted this inside structure with the pieces of the hull. All but the very tip hull near the bow were fairly easy to glue into place. The balsa wood did not bend to well near the bow so I had to build this section up with additional pieces of wood to give the balsa the strength to bend without breaking.

I modified the deck near the bow and the motor well quite a bit from the actual plans. The deck on this boat will look much more like that of a Mitzi Skiff, round in the front, not pointed like a traditional flats boat. This larger bow makes casting a fly rod much easier by allowing ample room for the fly-line to rest on the deck between casts to tailing reds.

After building the center console and fairing out some deep spots in the balsa wood, I painted the boat white and added a blue stripe. The rub rail around this boat will be about 1.5 inches tick, the plans call for a rub rail of only ¾ inch. I like the appearance of the thicker rub rail and this allows for the installation of an actual rubber rub rail. I am interested in the Taco style rub rail. The inside strip of a window wiper, the part of the blade you never see because it is in the metal track, worked perfectly as a small version of the actual rail. I installed it with little straight pens and colored the heads black with a permanent market. This made a very realistic rub rail. To top it all off I built a small wooden boat stand so the model could be displayed on the bookshelf.

Now that I have built the model I know what other areas of the boat I would like to tweak. I am considering building a second model to get a feel for what they would look like. Maybe this next one will be red.