Lonnie Hyde

Hello to all. I am just getting beck into the hobby again. I am looking at all of the kinds of hardware available now. I have seen one piece that puzzles me just a bit. I don't know what it is, but it most certainly has something to do with the flex shaft tube. It is a nice aluminum billet piece that has the shaft tube sticking out of it a little bit, just before the engine coupler. It has four small bolts that fasten through the bottom of the boat, over the hole where the shaft tube exits the bottom of the boat. The small bolt holes in the piece are slotted, for perhaps for forward or aft adjustment. I do not know what this little piece of hardware is called, or even if it is necessary, but it looks very nice. If this is something that will make setting up the boat easier for me, then I would like to know a little more about it. After being out of the boating hobby since @ 1976, There have been a tremendous amount of changes, especially with all of the new kinds of hardware. Please advise when you can. Best regards, Lonnie Hyde.

Justaddwata

My Feedback: (3)

Believe what you are referring to is a Stuffing Tube block (or butch block) which is used to seal the stuffing tube to the hull where the shaft exits the hull on catamarans and hydros. I have a few on some boats but think they have disappeared in use over the years. Most use epoxy or silicon to seal the exit point and I have seen some racers not even seal the exit. I took a look at a few of the different retailers and couldn't find the blocks so can only assume the just don't make them.

https://www.modelgasboats.com/magazi...20-butch-block

https://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/spe...her-block.html

Dana W

My son inlaw makes 3D printed blocks. I personally tested a set and they work awesome. PM me for additional info.

Hydro Junkie

I personally don't know of anyone that uses them since, with the boats they build/assemble, the drive shafts don't have one fixed angle they go through the bottom at. Something else to think about is the drive shaft itself. What size are you going to use in a build? There are three common flex drives commonly used:

• .187(3/16") flex cable
• .250(1/4") flex cable
• driveshafts using a single "wire", commonly referred to as a "wire drive"

Each has it's own stuffing tube requirements so you would need to have butch blocks of different sizes as well as angles to meet your needs. I would guess that's why they aren't use much anymore. I personally have used epoxy with silica fibers mixed in for wood hulls and silicon in FG where the material was too thin to use the epoxy mix.

Note to Dana, your son-in-law does nice work.

Woods153

Cool 3D printed stuffing tube block!

Dana W

I tested the 3D printed block in my FG Chief Canard. It held up with no issues. The block is designed to have a 11/32" sleeve inserted with a 5/16" stuffing tube. Before that I ran the canard with a 11/32" sleeved through the hull epoxied in place. No issues with that set up. The stuffing tube blocks just look much cleaner.