I am buzzing with excitement, and it doesn't take much to excite an old fart like me these days.

I have never ever seen a model of the class I am going to build next anywhere at a show,on a lake or in a show case.

The model I am going to build is of one of 4 built, and is of the 60/61' Barnett class lifeboat, and is to be built at 1;12 scale, giving a model of 61" LBP X 15" beam and 4" draught.

The plans up on the drawing board are for the 60' RNLB William and Kate Johnstone, but with slight mods I will extend the main keel and backbone by 1 inch to build the longest of the 4 boats built, the RNLB Princess Mary, which I think is the nicest looking of the 4 boats which were in build order:

William and Kate Johnston, 1923, New Brighton,

Emma Constance, 1926, Aberdeen,

Robert and Marcella Beck, 1926, Plymouth,

Princess Mary, 1929, Padstow.

only for a plug for a fibre glass mould, George………..my years of building Billing boats in the late 60's and through to the early 80's taught me one thing………….a POF hull waas just a means to an end with plenty of P38 filler and plenty of sanding lol.

Thats the way to go.

send me your address ray and you can have my 12th scale set of plan that i had enlarged……….there is a 12th scale part built 12th scale Tyne on ebay at the moment at a decent price if it doesn' go any higher/…………..have a look………….saves a hell of a lot of work.

TYNE CLASS LIFE BOAT (INCOMPLETE) 1/12th SCALE-WITH RUNNING GEAR | eBay

i've never seen a model of her, even in my early years reading model boats. Brian King came close to it when he either built or restored the smaller 51' barnett that he wrote about in the magazine.

my only problem is, the switch or lock on the tailgate of my old workhorse has gone wrong and I can't get the rear open until next week when my mechanic is going to look at it…………as such i can't get any lengths of ply for the build in to the car lol…..

been dong a wee bit of behind the scenes work today.

first of all i finally managed to purchase some planks of obeche timber from a company that had promised to dug them out from under another pile of timber in May………..that was May 2019, all it took was a telephone call to the manager and a 45 minute drive from my home in Poulton le Fylde.

and through all sorts of problems, including covid i was finally able to track down the sawmill's manager and explain to him just how many times i had asked for this timber.

it took the manager just 5 minutes to actually dig out the 3 planks that i wanted for just over 3 years…….and then said………i can't understand what the problem has been…..just 5 minutes work!!!

and the best bit was, i got it at 2018 prices………..absolute magic.

so tonight i started doctoring with Tipp-ex all the un-needed lines on the small plans from a book so that i can get the GA's for the Princess Mary, as oposed to the William and Kate Johnston that the main set of lines are already for the build!

The "MARY" was 1 foot longer but same beam as the "Johnston" purely because the "Mary" had a more pronounsed stem post and as such lengthened the boat by that one foot….
the plans can now be photo enlarged at Granthams printers, Blackpool digitally next week.pictures are of the plans, and my 3 planks of obeche, 10" x 1" x 16 foot with the green end grain colouring'

The work will start later next week.

that is interesting George…….at the time around the early 1920's the RNLI were not only selling licenses for the Germans and dutch and Australian lifeboat services to build from the RNLI plans drawn for them, but they were also building at sime stage full boats to the purchasers requirements.

now cleaned up the enlargment with tipp-ex and calculated that I now need to enlarge this set by 275% to give it a hull measurement between perpendiculars of the 61" required.

It actually comes out from that enlargement at 61.05", which i can deal with lol.

It is now a lot clearer of the deck lyout, the size and shape of the cabin and engine casement and all of the deck lights, hatches, fuel filler and bilge pump deck caps, with just a few slall details such as the bow anchor windlass and another small fitting on the engine room casing next to the front of the raised cabin cockpit that i am not sure of, but most of the fittings and such are items i have in stock from my other lifeboats that i have built……..

Quite happy about that…….

roll on geting my obeche on thursday of next week.

just bought some in Ray……………..cant wait to pck up my obeche on thursday and get stuck in………the plug soon takes shape once i start……..will just have to sharpen my spoke shaves lol.

When I built the 51' Stromness type Barnett RNLB Mary Stanford 11 years ago, I didn't realise that so many of its fittings were a copy of those fitted to the earlier 61' Barnett.

And so I looked through my collection of fittings from 10 years ago to find quite a number that are synonimous with both boats, which will save a great deal of time developing new ones.

Two I dug out and decided to put together first were the mast tabernacle, and the bow manual rope cutter to sever either an anchor rope or a tow rope that was fastened to the main bow bollard.

Here are the bits, cast in resin, years ago.

I'm not sure but I have only ever seen the rope cutter fitted on to the two Barnetts mentioned.