Trawler Rebuild

Well guys and girls since the weather is still not heating up for spraying, i'm forced take on another project and restore a so called bean trawler i picked up recently at a model exhibition.

As to the actual trawler i was assured it is an older beam trawler, although it reminds me more of a ring netter, however the masts and booms are that of a beam so i'm going with that for now, the ordinal build isn't in that bad of state, the masts have been destroyed the wheelhouse needs a little bit of TLC, The state of the hull isn't in bad order, however it leaks like a sieve.

Overall this is a minor restoration, which will be to seal and repaint the hull, fix the masts and repair the wheel house and a few modifications of my own to allow the model to be used regularly.

First thing i did to the model when i got it home was detach all items that were basically hanging off, and give her a good scrub down with some hot water and washing up liquid, hard at it for 2 hours with a tooth brush to remove the years of stubborn dirt and grim that was attached, this is the end result of her look, not a bad little model.









From there i have started work, First thing i did was sand down the inside of the hull with 600 grit to key the surface, add a coat of sanding sealer to the surface and then using some ''fastglas'' resin fill the hull to block all the gaps and reduce further plank movement, and basically water tight the hull.
using the simple method of mixing up smaller batches and pouring it between the bulkheads and using its own fluidness joggle it about the hull to give a nice coating.
She is now water tight and ready for hull work.



Before all other works starts on the project the hull needed a new stand as the one that came with her was basically a 4mm ply bit of crap and cut out to take a shallow V hull... that's not good for anything so with some flare a nice decorative stand was produced out of 10mm pine (skirting board) , stained and varnished.







My next job which I've completed today was to fix the wheel house roof, now since this models wheelhouse roof was already off, i have taken a shine to lighting up this model a little, especially since the wheel house is rather nicely decorated inside, be a shame to let that never be seen, so after drilling out the port and starboard light fittings on the wheel house roof and fitting 6v grain of wheat bulbs to the fittings.
I have also made up a fake roof plate which will sit on the underside of the original roof, this fake plate 'floats' which allows enough room for me to solder down some connecting plates for the lighting, this also enables me to replace bulbs each enough should they blow as i will attached the floating roof with some hot glue and the whole roof section will hook into a plate at the front end which I've yet to fabricated and a simple screw will hold it in place.
The wheel house light again is a 6V bulb but a red one, this will illuminated the cabin enough to see inside and also be the right light colour!

It started as some template card



Using some spare length of 4mm lime i planked the template card.



And then finished off with some of my 5mm mahogany around the edge's. the Light has yet to be drilled and fitted as i'm awaiting for the varnish to set but with this photo you can see how the 'float' fits and hides all the wires.



And that's all I've done in the past few days. this build fortunately has been originally enameled so i will be able to progress with this one no matter what the weather as i will only be keying the original surface to take a new coat or 2 of top coat.

RR

she's a very nice model RR......you did well to get that.....the hull and deck are lovely.

she'll look a real treat when finished.

neil

A lovely little boat she is.

A ripper model.

Lovely wood finish...........and a better stand than I ever make!!!

Thanks guys.

The stand is hand made, no fancy electric power tools to make it.
It started life as a 8 foot length of flat skirting board cut down to 10", from there i simply used the old method of using some lengths of solder to take a basic hull shape, which i transferred to my template card, tweeking the fit before i copied to the wood, once i cut the inside out with the coping saw, i simply used 3 different cans of paint and the WD40 spray bottle to form the outside curves, again cut with the coping saw in the vice,and squared the edges with a bit of PVC pipe wrapped in 80 grit.
Its held together with some lengths of 15mm DIA pine doweling which have been set into the wood using a 16mm, cutting head, then then glued and screwed in place after splitting the edges with a chisel, this way when u tighten the screws in conjunction with the glue, it spreads & locks the ends into the wood good and solid, that stand is strong enough for me to stand on!

Finally it was given a dark oak wood stain and 2 coats of yacht varnish.

N.BI will do a tutorial on making up boat stands since i have a few projects to do of late all needing stands, i can demonstrate different methods of making stands as well and stands that are more decorative or functional other then a boat stand (stacking stands etc)

RR

Little update over the past few days I've got the roof section finished and ready for final mounting once i put in new glass to the window frames.

Next job will be to figure out the mast and boom positions and look at making up a tabanackle should it need one as the main mast is far to tall, we'll see i guess on that one, i expect i'll make a mast break and brass brace for transportation and mast collapse.









I did however find an image of this model on the net which will help with my rebuild some what.

Did you ever finish this one RR?

And did you ever compose the article on stand building?

Yes i did bud, all finished and now sat in the workshop waiting for my son to come home & sail her.( she looks the same as the last photo just with the masts in place and the name ''little lukie'' sat on her bow.

As for the stand building something i neglected to do, i'll see if i can remember for the current project im working on, since all my models now get built boat storage boxes at the same time, my stands are built as part of the box function, actually if u check the aeronaut classic build you'll see a stand version i made there for that model,