I did a little more sanding this morning before the wind and cold weather set in again, and I fled the scene.

But not before I cut, ground and sanded the bottom of the cabin of the boat I had been sanding, so that it fit snugly to the sheer of the deck line with no gaps.

OH AND YES, BEFORE YOU ASK…….I donned my factor 20 face mask to keep the sh 1 t out of my lungs.

Using a sharp pencil first on a piece of ply to mark off and then take off the big chunks at bow and stern [as in the cabin not yet started] I used a small toothed disc mounted into my small drill to cut the majority off.

Then using just a pencil, marked the cabin again to get a perfect parallel line of the deck on to the cabin, and sanded that off with a delta sander and 40 grade grit.
A nice uniform fit was achieved.

And just for future use, I marked off inside the cabin where the mechanics' consol will go into the cabin.

The pictures show the untouched cabin that will be transformed later today into the "almost" finished cabin, fitted to the William and Kate Johnston.

Finally on that mould, the rased platform that on which sits the survivors companonway for the Princess Mary is not a feature on the Will and Kate, and was removed yesterday.

However it left a raised strip on the fore end of the cabin, and this was today removed with a grinder, but will be blended in with filler once a new facing is added from ply!

The problem with building old, obscure and low volume lifeboats is that very seldom do they still exist, or if they do, they are changed in many ways from the original build, and without constant change to what one has produced already from the rare photos available, one will always be "castigated" by the rivet counters of the world for getting the boat wrong from the original!

Last night with the light faiding and the beer taking its' toll I saw a very faint dotted line on the plan of the William and Kate Johnston that had cause for me to mark that line more heavily so that I could look more closely at it this morning.

It was a line of the cabin top that I had originally from another line, thought that the top of the cabin was squate on to the sides.

And so I checked in the photos of the existing William and Kate that there was a concave curve to the top as relating to the plan.

And so this mistake was corrected in my usual way of cutting grp shapes, and now hopefully one problem avoided.

hope to have them finished by end of May at the latest…………its just this cold weather thats holding me up on everything……………no fun working when the boats are so big you can only work in the cold workshop.

I have been so hung up about getting the hulls of these two boats painted, and the weather being so cold, I have neglected the other important jobs, such as the two I have done today.

The first job was to turn the card templates of the inner cabin consol to 3mm nicely grained ply, using the templates to mark and cut the timber, and then glue together with 20 minute setting two part epoxy.

I also glued into the fabrications, using the same adhesive strengtheners that would give a better gluing area once the consols were ready to fit into the grp cabins. They fitted in to the area very well with no extra sanding or altering….success!!!

This morning I decided to crash on and fabricate the foreward breakwater for the RNLB Princess Mary, and so set about, firstly by marking out where the breakwater is possitioned on the bow area!

For the initial marking out, I dug out one of my French Curves and laid it on the deck, marking in pencil the aft point to where the base strips will fit,. The base strips actually were the same width and so i parked both on the deck and the 1.2mm birch faced ply and cut out the two halves using a scalpal knife.

Cut the two halves out and made them fit both to the deck edges and the central meeting point with no gaps.

Once these were stabalised on the fore deck I got some from "stores" and proceded to draw, and cut to size. Because the breakwater "cants" forward to brush off water flying over the bow in stormy waters, just as a plow sweeps to the side its snow, so does the breakwater on the boat, and as such, its bottom edge is not a streight edge as the "blades" of the structure are curved.

Therefore the bottom of each blade needs to be cut concavely so that they will sit flushly to the base pieces. Tis was done by try and errow, taking off a couple of millimetres at a time until each side fit.

It was then just a point of marking up the fore joint on each peice to make shure that the joint is fully virtical.

Almost there with the Breakwater!

Just finished after a couple of hours cutting to length and shape the support gussets and glued in to place on the item! Amazinghow time flies by.

At the next break of my nightly episodes of M.A.S.H. I will seek out a couple of roller fairleads to mount in the pointy end and then place a capping rail on to the breakwater.

Hope to have it finished by tonights beer time, lol.

I have now started on the two cabins and marked out where the engine room casing "lights" are situated.

Because the casing comes up against the raised combing on the inside, these lights won't be see through, and will be glued straight on to the casing, with the inside coloured black.

However the lights on the front and on the sides of both cabins will be drilled, "glazed" with backing "openers" glued on the insides of both cabins.

And so, I have to cut out the center parts, and do this in my usual way of drilling and reaming out the centre grp and then finish off using a piece of 40 grit abrasive paper rolled into a tube.

However, I will have to wash the blue release agent off the mouldings, before I go further.

hi Ray………..the cabin itself is "veneered", but the flat engine casing is just sprayed Ford Polar Grey.

BY "VENEERED"……….I mean I cheat totally…….I use a sheet of dolls house wood grained wall paper which is beautifully done in 1;12 scale, and I just fead it through a shredder to give scale 6" wide planks………couldn' make it any easier for myself.

I glue the planks on to the GRP cabin with aliphatic resin glue, and after 5 coats of Rustins yacht clear varnish most people look at it believing i have done a magical job of steaming teak planking………..

I always confess of course

well time really does fly tonight, literaly!

In the 7 hours 36 minutes that i have been fabricating the 18 article i am about to show, i have tracked an watched on Flight Radar live a friend in her flight from Singapore to Munich on the 2nd leg of her flight home from New Zealand, and with 6500 km under her wings and 3600 km to go, it has kept me awake during my build.

The 18 items are the base brackets for the jump net and anchor stanchions per boat…….6 brackets each boat………….

i find the Flight Radar forum really interesting, if not allarming sometimes when an aeroplane flashes up read, mid ocean and then has to turn back……………..usually a faulty light or buzzer, but now and then a full scale emergency.

One from NZ Aucland, flew 14 hours before it had to turnround and fly 14 hours back to Auklannd because of security alerts at the airport it was flying to, and it was apparently easier to turn back than fly to another airport nearer the "TARGET" port.

AND THEN, it was on to soldering the brackets for the rudders on the two brackets.

No need really to say more than instead of using silver solder on these, because of the thin brass used, I just used soft solder and flux paste.

And then this evening after bending the brackets to fit the rudders it was just an easy task of gluing them in place with 20 minute 2 part epoxy.

On the final stage of fitting the first rudder, the original wooden one I made for my RNLB Princess Mary, and had proposed to myself that I was going to fit all of the "L" shaped pintols with the leg facing upwards so that I could slip the rudder on to those vertical rods, and to stop the rudders from riding upwards and slipping off the pintols I would put a screw threaded rod in from the bottom skeg and into the rudder……

WHAT A CLOWN I was, thinking that this would work!!!

Having thought about the two points of fixing, I realisedthat the rudder would not have turned as it would have had two points of fulcrum acting against each other in the points of fixing being about 12mm apart, and one would counteract the other .

So I had to think of some other way……..and it came to me during a bloody dream in the middle of the night [we are never far away from modelling even in our sleep……….always thinking of ways to overcome a problem]

And the solution was so simple. To invert two of the four "L" shaped pintols so as to lock the rudders in to place by the horrizontal fittng rod in to the stern peice,

AND that is what I did, to invert the 1st and 3rd pintols!.

However this meant that I had to fit the rudder now, not later, in order to carry on the build in the order I wanted, but at least when it comes to painting, the rudder will be masked up and sprayed as one unit with the boat.

I then put the pintols in place, holding them in position using some plasticine to keep them in the right position, and marking off the pin points for drilling which I did! I used a syring to inject the epoxy into the 4 fixing holes and then fitted the the rudder up to the sternpost and have left it to set for a couple or so hours……….

Oh and forgot to say,earlier before gluing AND just to make sure the female parts of the pintols that attach to the rudders stay attached, I drilled with a 0.8mm bit and pinned the pintols to the rudders using fine artists framing pins………..just to make sure everything stays in place 4 pins per bracket were used.

And so, using 20 minute setting 2 part epoxy I have glued the first rudder in place,

And excuse the pun, but the boats are now heading in the right direction, hahaaa!

Original fulcrum points as below, discarded!