Member postings for neil howard-pritchard

looking superb Bob.........lovely characteristics of the stern lovingly captured.

how do you want to stick the frames on.........if you have a look at my Tyne class build,pages 36 and 37 you will see that the window frames have been stuck onto the cabin of the Mersey class lifeboat i was restoring for a friend. all of these frames were stuck on with double sided sticky tape.bought from ebay........

and once they are stuck on, they wont come off either.....available in numerous widths, it is superb, and no glue runs at all.

Double Sided Super Sticky Clear Tape Red Strong 5m Craft DIY Roll 3 6 12 25mm | eBay

i only ever had one person say that sort of thing to me, and he was dressed, like his annoying little offspring in a football shirt..........

probably thought he was being clever mouthing off in front of his kid......

and when he said "what do you get out of building a kids toy,"...

i just said..........."keeps me away from people like you"

he just stood there for a few seconds with his chin touching his knees and then walked off............

never been plagued by morons since.

back to the carriage....

the 3 different coats have been added today starting this morning with the yellowish filler primer, and then after noon i put on the grey primer, and left to dry with a hot fan blower to warm up the workshop to a nice warm atmosphere before adding the topcoat of Hannerite hammered silver, which actually dries like galvanised steel........

however, unlike the halfords primers which in the warm atmosphere have dried within a couple of hours to repaint, i sprayed the Hammerite at around 18.00 hours, and have just checked it, and it is still slightly tacky,

so will finish spraying the "B" side [underneath] tomorrow once the garrage has gained some warmth, and can then be left untouched for the day

All timber on the trailor carriage, was tonight given 3 coatings of cellulose sanding sealer to close the grain ready for spraying with an undercoat and then a top coat.

Tomorrow will be paint time

so true Ashley.....its no good laboriously slogging on if your heart and soul isn't in it at the time.

it took me 4.5 years to build this one for my daughter......there were many problems with making things accessible for R/C and so i would get frustrated and leave the thing for months.

in the end i realised it wasn't the model, but myself suffering depression due to personal reasons, and sat there one morning just after christmas and told myself that nothing was insurmountable if i got off my bum and cracked on............and by the end of may of that year, after taking 4 years up to that moment, i had finished it....all 60 inches of her.

so, unlike what i told Dave Stavros Jones last night when i was a little fed up with the thing that i was going to leave it all until the back end in autumn, i just couldn't leave it all in a state of flux...........

i did that once, when i was building my daughters Calmac Ferry and it took me 4.5 years to finish..........

so i got on with it this afternoon, and glued, drilled and pinned it all, and it feels sturdy enough..........sturdy enough to put the boat on it that it is built for...........my Liverpool class boat..........

and it has not buckled and bent and broken this time.........thankfully.

you might be right, he's already told me i had better not have scratched his paintwork lol.

here i was, thinking i had finished.

i had made the final piece in the puzzle..the triangular draw bar to attach the carriage to the tractor and attached it all......

so i decided to just see what it looked like with a boat sat on it....and so i decided to use Mick French's Mersey...............

Frenchie.........i have a bone to pick with you!!!!

i put your mersey on to the carriage, and................

well all i can say is,there was a resounding CRAAACCKKK, AND i'm bloody glad i hadn't wasted my time and built a SLARS.........because the whole bloody carriage collapsed under the weight of the boat...............

what an utter complete waste of bloody time..........So don't know whether to laugh or cry.........at least i have a pattern should i want to rebuild it in 3mm plasticard at a later date...........but for now, i shall have a beer, a bar of Lindor chocolate and put it down to experience, lol

not to add insult to injury, i'd been out to Halfords this afternoon to buy some galvanised steel colour paint to paint the sodding thing with..............bahhhh humbug!!!.

and so today, i scraped all of the glue off, reglued the wing on and left for a couple of hours........

i will then drill and pin both sides with framing pins of about 0.5mm diameter..........and depending on how strong it seems..............i'll try it out with some brass strip bracing to the thing...........if not, i'll switch to the main frame in timber and bond plastic to the insides of the framing and use 3mm plasticard to make the brackets.and glue with plumbers pipe weld.

i hate electronics Chris, so that is the last thing on my mind at the moment........but once everything is done [not the lifeboat as that is a project beyond at the moment] i'll wire it all up and have a play with it.

the trailer will look better when i finally get round to painting it with a cellulose sealer, and then a galvanised steel colour.........i hope lol.

beautiful work George........so much love and hard work going in to this..........love it.

the next part, the steering bogey and wheels took a somewhat quicker time........just this afternoon.
I cut the sub frame of the bogey from Cherry wood and made some staples from mild steel wire.
i sat the axle for the bogey wheels in a piece of plastruct half round plastic moulding and set in place with blobs of cyano, before filling the half round containing axle with 2 part epoxy.
and before the epoxy set, i sat the axle and half round on the bogey, and set the staples into the pre drilled holes and left to set.
finally as mentioned earlier in the carriage build, the rear bogey tracks were not seating true and flat on the table surface, and so i put some fillets of Obeche timber to the side of the bogey rails, and once set cut those on the band say so that the bogeys fitted to the side of the carriage frame vertically.......
job done.

well, this little part was a long process......it wasn't making the parts, but the gluing process of timber to timber...........so many small parts to be glued that the whole process took two days to produce....as i was having to glue with aliphatic resin, clamp for at least 4 hours each part at a time and leave until the next

i talk about the cantilever section between the main frame of the carriage and the forward fixing section which the two front steering wheels are fit. this has a locating pin and a locking pin to keep it in place.

when the locking pin is withdrawn, the trailer and front wheels bend in the middle like a one string fiddle.

so here it is in photos.

it was invented by an American nutritional scientise, especially for the hi altitude B17 Flying Fortress crews for their daylight bombing raids on germany during the 2nd World War.......

aparently the combination of the chocolate infused spread, mixed with crushed hazelnuts gave them the extra nutrition in rye bread sandwiches to keep them warm and alert and more to the point awake........and was a substitute for coffee and caffine.

I was fascinated a short while ago when i found out who and where and why and how long ago Nutella was "invented".

do you or anuone else know before i share the info...........i found it amazing.

I know it is missing the front steering wheels and axle and all things associated with that section.................

but the main carriage has turned out better than i had expected and hoped for.............

no twists to it, it feels solid now that the strengtheners have been successful in tightening it up.

there is a slight adjustment i have to make to stop the inward camber of the bogeys to get the tracks to meet the ground squarely, but i am satisfied with the way it has gone so far.

and the next step is to make the front axle and set up, and i have decided to keep to the wooden theme for the basics for this, and will start that later on, possible tonight.

more probably tomorrow after visiting the garage to see how much a new clutch is for my old momo, as fried it today coming back from seeing the lads and families in New Brighton........ohhh **** bother

thanks Richard, i know what you mean about cyano after this attempt.........it was absolutely useless for the job and in the end i discarded it and rubbed down all parts ready for a second attempt.......

the carriage main framework is just about there after a few failed attempts..

i found that the first sets of frames to seperate the outriggers from the centre U trough on which the boats keel slots in to were very delicate and so have beefed them up,using the epoxy glue for joining the two and then, strength wise with extra timber top and bottom,glued in place and clamped, using alliphatic resin, but for all the mucking about and extra glues and timber reinforcements, it actually looks ok.

once all glues have set, later tonight [will give it about 4-5 hours to do so], i shall give it a good sanding to smooth all joints down and add the tracks to see how they look.

this afternoon and evening i have spent time gluing in the brackets, but sadly it was two steps forward and one back, as the end plates of the brackets which i had glued yesterday with cyano were just not strong enough when claped up and kept departing company fron the main bracket.............not one or two ........BUT EVERY SINGLE ONE"....

And so they were all cleaned up of the cyano and then glued in place with 30 minute setting stuff, and finally glued back in place on to the out riggers.

finally they were set hard and fast and i glued each outrigger via the brackets to the centre U shaped roller base.

and forgot to say that i drilled the holes in to the U section for the pins that suport the rollers. The rollers are going to be made from plastic, and will need no maintenance once set in place after painting.

the second frame is gluing now and shall be left for a couple of hours to set before the spring clamps are released, and the final piece of "flat iron" is glued onto the top of the U frame overlapping the bracket, giving some more glueing area to stop the frames/brackets from coming adrift under pressure.

once saw the real boat, in a race off the south coast. was teaching down in maidenhead in the late 1970's and a fellow teacher and his friend were members of UKOBA as it was known then, but now known as UKOPBRA and they took me to a race in the Solent.

to say it was exciting was an understatement.............distant memories, but still remembered.