MY NEW PROJECT...or two.

Footski wrote:

I have the same problem when quoting a message to reply to. Not tried pictures for some time, so can't comment on that.

Try clicking on the last icon on the right 'Switch Editor Mode' - after the smiley etc. That returns you to something like the old version where you get the raw HTML, which allows you to put your reply where you want.

Don't know if this will solve the picture problem!

Barrie

Barry your quite right i was working on that but you saved me the hastle use the 'Switch editor mode' button which will show the text as you are all familiar with this should help you Neil with your photos. if your still having issues please let me know so i can look into it further.

Fix Help can be seen here

Roadrunner wrote:

Barry your quite right i was working on that but you saved me the hastle use the 'Switch editor mode' button which will show the text as you are all familiar with this should help you Neil with your photos. if your still having issues please let me know so i can look into it further.

Fix Help can be seen here

Thanks guys...........and no need to delete anything Barrie.........I'm not one to have happy banter on my threads, including picks of other's builds.....no probs at all..........leave it there.......it'll remind me to do the process again should it happen..............

will now get on with catch up, lol

I'll start by telling the tail of woe with regards to the steering of these two boats.......the original inverted servo to give pulley steering and movement of the steering wheel was woefully inadequate, so with some suggestions fro "other sources" I took out the servo and rod with pulley and switched to a conventional servo movement............and EUREKA......I have now got enough rudder through to turn the boats hopefully on a sixpence.

And now and until I start rigging the boat, it's just a case of glueing all the pre made and painted fittings onto the boat, and that's what I was doing this afternoon after fitting the drop keels.,

Hatchets, knives, steering boxes, and foot rests for the rowers, have been fitted......along with a couple of fittings on the engine casing.

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I added the grab rails and offset fairleads to the two boats today, by firstly masking off with ordinary low tack masking tape to stop the drill bits slipping,the grp tops to which they seat, were then marked of with pencil for the positions of the pins in the grab rails were drilled and set into these with cyano and the fairleads were also glued on with cyano

After this I then set to making some wooden cleats for the masts and rigging tie offs.















the mast cleats have been made from laminating two pieces of mahogany together using aliphatic glue, and then, after sanding to width, cut and shaped with abrasive paper..........nothing harder than that........just laborious.......and painfull to the fingers.

























I miscounted and made 13..........3 for each mast plus, as it seems...a spare one

There are certain points in ones life where you do something that you never forget, or things that you remember, and one of those was at a Music and Arts festival many years ago as a 14 year old self conscious shy lad when I had to stand in front of an audience of about 600 persons and recite "Night Mail" by WH Auden for my elocution teacher

And one of the lines in that poem went something like "Pulling up Beatock, a steady climb..............the gradient's against me but we're on time"

This b****** build reminds me of the line in that distant poem of my youth!!!

Never have I had to build and fabricate from scratch so much woodwork to take heavy rigging as these two, and I am finally running out of steam.

I have only ever given up on one model in my life, but I sat in my workshop the other day and had it not been for the help of HowardQ stepping in and being go between with Keith Jewell at Modelling timbers, I just might have done so.........the thought of having to make over 3 dozen working blocks for the rigging tackle had beaten me, and I just couldn't face it.

It gave me a spur on to know that I was in receipt of these soon so that I could get the rigging up and working. Had they not been available I was very tempted to put the two boats on the back burner.

As it is, I have spent the last four hours whipping them into the rigging yarn that I have had for a while, and all is now set to rig all four masts and gaffs and booms ready for taking sail.

there is little to do now on the boats other than the rigging and a few fittings, but as well as whipping the blocks, today I also fitted the wooden cleats to the masts and bulwark sides for tying off the halyards and also gave one of the boats another form of motive power in case the oarsmen went on strike.

Paid a call on my mate wodney,this evening and was a little fed up but he cheered me up and then told me of his own problem of having to wait over a month for a model hull supplier to send him his hull, for which he;s paid up front........and after 31 days no sign of the hull of the trawler..........at least Modelling timbers sent my fittings over night.

It certainly put my moans about my boat into perspective???

anyway, below are a few shots of todays finger aching work.

having now whipped all the blocks onto their ropes for the sheets and halyards, today I began rigging them with the necessary turnbuckles and shackles to the spring clips I am going to use for working rigging.

I claim now for the purists, that the rigging on these boats wouldn't have had turnbuckles set into the boats but as I need to drop the masts to fit them into my car to take to the pond, I felt that it would be the easier way rather than untighten the blocks and tackle every time I rig up and so have gone against the scale for this area and used working brass turnbuckles to allow the dropping of masts easily..

the clips to hook up to the rings set into the boats end boxes are from fishermens tackle rigs and have a strain pull of 60 lbs force which should be ample for this sailing rig.. I have begun methodically by starting off with the main mast and will rig that first.

that's it......build now up to date.

neil.

hi neil
they are now looking the real thing what a difference all the bits make . can I ask you what radio gear you are putting in, are you like me still on 40 MHz fm. and where the battery sits as it looks very tight on pictuers . when I built the Liverpool one it was very tight for battery and had to make one up my self to fit. not into lipos  yet sound a lot of fussing when charging.

david

hi david..........the motorized boat will just have a small 12v 4amp hour battery......will on a Buhler motor give me hours of sailing when I incorporate the sail power with the motor.

the sailing boat ( light blue one) will have a small 6volt 7amp hour battery that will outlast me , lol.....as it will only be powering the receiver and servo for the rudder......no sail winches used.

as for radio.....I went onto 2.4ghz when I put the three lifeboats on the water last year.........but as I sail on salt water they are really affected by interference, and am thinking of swapping back to 40meg, which I never had any probs with..

now to todays build..................

spent this afternoon doing some rigging of the masts and shackles to the booms..........they are getting there, slowly, but picking up a pace........and finally placed a wheel onto the steering box........it needs cleaning up and painting though before final fixing

this morning, before I had to scoot off to see a mate in Southport and pick up some nice old mature and seasoned Cherry timber, I rigged the aft boom and gaff at the right angles and height to take the mizzen sail on the sailing boat.

As my wife will be making both sets of sails identical, I can just repeat the process for the motor sailor with the same measurements.

Looking great 

done quite a bit today on the rigging but it doesn't look much different so will save it for a day or two..........as by then they'll be finished apart from the sails being rigged.

neil.

am now close to the end of the build.
 
spent today putting the rowlocks with retaining chains onto the boats...might be wrong but adds a little detain when there is so much rope around the place.
The brass pulleys to the rudders have been rigged and work.......just waiting for some more working turnbuckles to come from ebay to finish that rig off so that I can have permanent tight cordage to the rudders and those will be fully operational too.
 
Also added the stanchions with chain...........and finally devised a method of painting both sides of the steering wheels at one time....the centre holes had been drilled to take the steering rod so I tapered the ends of two pieces of dowel and put those onto the wheels and painted them matt brown.
tomorrow will give them a couple of coats of Colron mahogany dye to give them a wooden effect before painting the brass  binding on both sides.
 
finally a few shots of the rigging, taken off my rigging plan and followed as faithfully as possible baring in mind that there will be no miniature crewmen to operate the dipping lug sail rig.........so this is the closest the boats will get to authentic sail rig, so that they will sail.
 
By Wednesday, when my good lady wife is going to make both sets of sails, both boats will be finished and named..............eeerrrrr hopefully!!!!!

cheers matey..........
Just as I thought I was coming to the end of my build...........YET ANOTHER B****** MOULD
 
I contacted my old mate Dave Metcalf the other day to ask if he had any padlocks as used on the rocket firing lockers on the old Anne Letitia Russell kit.......they were notorious to get out of a mould and  he only had two padlocks in stock............and so sent me them up as I said I'd put them into a mould and cast a few for him.........I need 5 or 6 for each boat myself.
 
so when they arrived on Saturday morning I had a think.....today I pressed them into plastecine repeatedly and then cast a few in resin  and have now cleaned them up and put them into a mould with a few fairleads as I need a few for the smaller guage rigging. these will be cast in white metal to begin with and if they fail I'll have a bash with resin.
 
Whilst doing that I made a mould also for the  bow "pudding" which was made from milliput and then covered in a nice knitted fender cover courtesy of my good lady.
 
This has been covered in a few coats of sanding sealer to harden the knitted cord, and then the open  stitches will be filled with release agent wax before moulding........a similar method was used with my three lifeboats last year, and they worked well when I cast them in polyurethane resin.

The process has begun...................templates cut and drawn around and two sets of sails cut ready for hemming up tomorrow.......hem going on the port side as ritual and practice dictates.

the sails have been now marked with pencil lines for the sections of the sails, ready for a running stitch tomorrow, before the double hems are stitched.............My misses would be proud of me using those technical terms.

cheers mate.

seam lines stitched in.

Congratulate your talented wife Neil job well done

will do Damien......took her out for fish and chips tonight......last of the big spenders me, lol...........gave us indigestion all night, lol



Hems stitched ready for sowing on the bolt ropes.
 
Spent some time today finishing off with small fittings....padlocks to lockers, , anchors with rigged chains and rope to main bow bollard, and navigation lights. I also started rigging the grab lines to the hull and got the port side of Maude Pickup, the pulling and sailing boat done.....will do the rest to MP and the William and Laura tomorrow, and then hopefully get time to name them both with boat names and station names plus they bow emblems..............pre 1907 one for the Maude Pickup and post 1907 shaded flag with flag staff for the William and Laura..........all courtesy of BECC ltd

It's always nice when a lifeboat gets her name...........and a model is no exception............it's also good when she can steer her way out of trouble.....

My Maude Pickup now has both, thanks to BECC and some working turnbuckles bought off ebay, that I can tighten or slacken the steering ropes with.......nearly there, now.

Well, I suppose they look okay!   

didn't think they looked that bad, Barrie

  

        Bloody marvellous my man.

Another Cracker Neil, Well done young man!

 

thank you chaps................I'm nearly there, lol

The Donaghadee lifeboat has now ben named and stationed........they look so much better when they have got their stations on board.
 
also got the last of my rigging cleats ready for painting.............only the sails and oars plus crew to do now.
 
I have also I have rigged the up hall and down hall ropes for the rudder...to enable the crew to haul up the rudder on the rudder post when she is being replaced onto the launch slipway.








 



 



 




 

 I think it is time to start putting your mind to the future Neil......What is next?

Hi Barrie........already been given orders........by my daughter...........she wants one of these, and a pal from Scotland has produced a plug which I'll be moulding a hull about 60" long from it.......... driven by two Graupner Voith schnieder units...........looking forward to a change actually..........burned out on lifeboats for the moment............made very little but for the past 8 - 9 years.



 

how about this lot........they look a h...........armless enough bunch.
 
All they need are a couple of banks of oars, lol






 

 

 

 

Oh yeh.........here they are..........get crackin' lads and haul for the shore
 

      

Those figures look odd in that color!!!

As for your next build, is that one of the ferries that run between the northern isles of Scotland? I really look forward to watching that build.

Footski wrote:

Those figures look odd in that color!!!

As for your next build, is that one of the ferries that run between the northern isles of Scotland? I really look forward to watching that build.

they just need a bit o' sun to bring up their tans Barrie,     

as for the ferries............they were the best in the Calmac fleet...hardly ever broke down and were fast as well.............but in Calmac's infinite wisdom they upgraded the routes that they served on with two Schottel drive ferries from Wemyss bay to Rothesay and they continually break down.

as for the Jupiter and Juno..................they were called the "streaker class" because they were so quick, went for sale, and then for scrap because no one would buy them...........a real sad shame as they were good ships.

neil.

I took these photos tonight after working on the boats most the afternoon, putting the bow puddings on and then shouted to myself........FINISHED!!!

I came inside, sat down and then thought.......Lifebelts, end of oars being painted, boat hooks to be painted.......and 26 crewmen with 52 arms to clean, assemble and fill/paint........deflated again..........Oh Bummer said Doughal!!!


























So.......down to it............

an arm.....y of arms and some armless little fellows to be cleaned up......and those little hands where the casting wasn't quite up to speck......a few transplants of thumbs to be given, with a bone made from brass wire........what better way of surgery, lol

Mighty fine work Neil     

Red sails at night...........neil's delight.

the mainsail on the motor sailor has been hung today, and I must say, I am now getting excited.............it has been rigged in a manner that she will sail, rather than true scale but then true scale and model scale have to differ from time to time.

I have been hard at it today setting the other sails....still a few tiny jobs to finish on them both, but I couldn't resist posting pictures of the first boat to actually look finished.............

May I present to you.........

THE WILLIAM AND LAURA, Donaghadee's Lifeboat of 1910.from Northern Ireland.

Excellent Neil - an amazing model.    

Barrie

.....a magnificent model. I am privelidged to have watched her being built...

thanks guys...........but had it not been for the great comments I have had from you guys.......I might have given up...

when I first started I thought that they would be a quick build with little in the way of building and detailing..........HOW WRONG I WAS.........they have taken far more work and far longer to build that I had imagined..........and were hard work ( thinking wise) at times.....and many problems to overcome..........but I am really happy with the outcome...............

hopefully the ferry will go a lot smoother, lol

will be finishing the other boat tomorrow, hopefully.

neil.

And finally......the second of the duo of boats I have been building.............I have only the boat hooks and lifebelts to tie on now plus the crew and radio gear and they are ready for the lake...........yippee.

May I introduce to you.....my old friend Maude Pickup, c 1896 - 1930......an old stalwart of Fleetwood.

Truly beautiful works of art well done Neil.

Stunning and great weather up there in the North West Neil!

thanks guys.....................and yes.........the weather will be perfect for sailing them over the next few days.

neil.

and so to the lake...........she was very steady on the water.............but with little wind, she tried to tack but there wasn't enough to get her going and what little wind there was turned her beam on..............wodney, my very good mate ( trawlerman on here) couldn't stop laughing.......told me to stick to trawlers as they have engines...........

mind you TRAWLERS SINK....????...........Well, his do

Looks just great Neil.     Smashing.


Cheers

ken