Slow Stick Flying Boat - Modifications, Builds, Components and much more.

Mounting The Spreader Bars.
Because I knew it was likely that I would be changing the floats and spreader bar length I mounted the bars using tubes in the hull. Also this made covering the hull easier. These tubes were old push rod tubes which turned out to be a perfect fit for the .157” graphite tubes. Since you know the float size and spreader bar length should be right you could mount the spreader bars directly to the hull. My forward bar was mounted just ahead of F3 and about 1 1/8” down from the top. The rear bar was about a .1” ahead of F4 and about 1 7/8” down from the top. Because it wasn’t touching the bulkhead I glued a strip of foam between it and the bulkhead.

Struts
Build the struts over the plans using epoxy for glue. Remove them and add the 1/32” ply caps. I mounted the struts in back of F2 and in front of F7. After doing some flying I think it would be better if the forward strut was about an inch back. This would give you more flexibility in positioning the boat relative to the fuselage. Rather than adding another bulkhead I would laminate some foam strips and glue them to the sides to give a place to attach the struts. Cut holes in the top so you can insert the struts and epoxy them in place. The tops of the struts should be about 5 ¼” from the top of the hull. This will give you clearance for an 11” prop. To make sure the strut was square, centered and at the right height I used a square as shown in the photo to hold the strut in place while the epoxy cured. After the initial epoxy setup I added some more epoxy to somewhat fill the gap between the struts and hull sides.