"The time has come,' the Walrus said,.
To talk of many things:
Of glues ,and ships, and sealing tacks, of fillers,
and rigging strings!"

Hope you like my parody of a famous poem by Lewis Carol,

but as I lay out all of the fittings of the three models, two of which I am building and 1, I am supplying to a friend which I promised before I had even started the project, I have now realised that I have no more building work other than now to concentrate on the two hulls in the garage/workshop.

And so! tomorrow I shall be having a good straightening up of the work surfaces, getting rid of some junk and re assigning some parts and boxes to other areas.

Time has come to start sanding and then building two 61' Barnett class lifeboats………..no excuses to put it off any longer.

Just some of the boxes of fittings that I have finished preparing, sanding and readying for painting anf fitting. the other boxes are still in the workshop…….actually overwhealmed by the amount I have done over the past couple or so months.

I'll add up one day how many go into furnishing the model.

The breakwaters for the bow of each boat i am building have now been drilled as 20mm approx spacing in the centre of the 3mm thick ply with a 0.8mm drill bit to take the same diameter 25mm framing pins, and set in place with odourless superglue.

Once they are set, they will be set straight and at 90 to the bottom of the breakwater so that they are matching the holes i will drill into the hull deck tomorrow and dry fit, but once the bow fairlead roller has been placed and glued on to the bow itself

Well that process went a little better than I thought it would.

The breakwater bulwarks for the longer parts have been fitted in place without any real drama.

The possitions of the pins was marked onto the deck and then drilled with a 0.8mm bit, dry fitted to make sure the holes were in the correct possitions with only a very small amount of adjustment with about 6 of the 28 or so holes and then 20 minute setting 2 part epoxy was added and the breakwaters were set in place and held down to the deck simply with masking tape.

There were a couple of gaps between the breakwaters and the deck which was expected and a small amount of sorting and filling between the two bow gobeyes and the main roller casing, but once the epoxy has set hard later today, all gaps can be filled and the joint for the gobeyes to the roller bracket will be filled and shaped with milliput………

Next will be the Princess Mary with the short Breakwaters, but first i will have to find and fit the open cleats for this one, as she didn't have gobeyes fitted.

The breakwaters and gobeyes have now been faired in to the main bow roller housing using Milliput white and some nice warm water and fingers to smooth it all down

Had I done it with any type of filler I would not have reached the same effect with filler and had I used fillers I would have had to do a great deal of sanding just to have reached the same state that I have reached so far with milliput and warm water!

Now all it needs is a gentle sanding to take out any finger prints, and the shape of what I wanted has already been acheived.

cheers Ray……….Gives it some support when it hits the concrete bank lol

as for cold, the second boat has now come in doors to have its bow breakwater fitted……co cold to work in the workshop.

I must have MUG tatoed on my forhead, but people see me coming!

Was asked nearly 6 months ago if I could sort a friends jet drives out on his MBD Shannon……..so went round and had a look………..It was still sunny and warm/.

Told him to get rid of the brass rods between the servos and the KMB buckets, that seemed to be broken the buckets And buy some aeroplane "snakes". all quiet for two months, then a call can you come and look at it as I've been told you can buy better looking buckets……..so off I go!

That was 3.5 months ago……..the brass rod still in place but the snakes were there…….which I showed him how to order on ebay.

Can you have a look and see what I can order……….so on to the internet and found what I was looking for…………there you are……..just order them………can you and I'll pay you back…………..NO! YOU order them and if they are wrong, then you can send them back……..

10 days later………….can you come round as I cant remember my passwod to get on………….

An hour later we had found his passwords and ordered them.

9.5 weeks and a lot of moaning because they hadn't arrived within 2 weeks from Hong Kong later and I picked everything up!

Three days later, and a lot of progress I hope to have it ready tomorrow,…….. day four!

I HATE MODEL SHANNONS, AND JET DRIVES, with a passion……..as nothing fits universally, and EVERYTHING needs to be worked on and adjusted to fit!!!

please someone put my name forward for a humane society medal.

I love this point in a build WHEN the hull is almost ready for painting, as one of the boat hulls is, and all of the fittings are just lying there and ready for painting and "plonking" on to the boat.

I can now more than just imagine from photos what she will look like once all comes together.

SO! will glue the decks down tonight with aliphatic waterproof glue and batteries for weighing them down, and fill the edging joints in with Dolphin Glaze filler tomorrow and then sand those edges off before doing the same on the second hull in the next couple of days, readying for taking to Wales.

One final job on the hull is to place on to the hull the wooden belting that follows the "boot topping" strip that is the deviding line between the blue upper hull and the green lead anti fouling on both boats.

This will be fabricated from 6 x 4mm obeche' wooden strip, glued on with 30minute 2 part epoxy.

The whole of the decking has been laid on the Princess Mary and left to set.

The partitioning planks around the hull access and the main backbone of planking the length of the boat have been added.

All ply has been glued with quick grab aliphatic waterproof glue made esbecially for timber and recommended by builders, so the advert says…….have been using it for a number of years, and wood to wood stays stuck!!!

A word of warning though as to the blue tipped spring clamps bought in Poundland, for a quid a pack of 4…….ok for clamping pieces together no more than an inch thick, but any thicker and they spring off, and have had two break on me already……….buy cheap, buy twice, sorry to say in this area. .

The first boat to have the deck overlays to be fitted is now ready to have the upper part of the hull, above the belting to be readied for painting.

This means that I have to trim any excess ply decking that overhangs the line of the deck before filling the gaps with Dolphin Glaze filler. and once filled and sanded will form a perfect deck line that will give the boat a nice sharp line. around the deck line.

To trim the deck timber I shall use one of my spokeshaves that I haven't used in a long while.
then with all the batteries for weight, and some carpet tape to hold the ends down, I will glue the deck panels down for the second boat, and eventually shave the excess off and fill that boat too.

Edited By neil howard-pritchard on 31/01/2023 13:34:06

Looking through the very vague plans for these boats to see if I had missed anything I found two items on both boats!

One was a number of brackets which were just eyebolts most probably either for rigging or for tying mooring buffers too!, and so made those out of copper wire and plasicard bases, glued together with odourless cyano..

And the other set, just two off each boat and from the lines drawn on the plans in oposite directions these were brackets for tying the log line to….so, I made these in a similar way with thinner brass wire with the two loops in opposing directions.