Whilst having no computor for 3 days, I have been doing a little tidying of my workshop. mounting the boats on their styands and starting to sort the fittings ready for painting and applying them eventually top the two boats.

 

 

But firstly I had to "waterline" the hulls.

 

 

Unlike the modern fast afloat boats starting with the Waveney class lifeboats which have straight lines the old classics followed the curvature and lines of the lower belting.

 

 

And so I applied the waterline in car pin striping 12mm [6 "inches" in scale] to the first of the two boats, the Princess Mary of Padstow. The second boat will be done this afternoon.

 

 

Once that has been done, I'll finish sorting the fittings and then start on the two cabins.

 

 

 

Edited By neil howard-pritchard on 19/04/2023 14:17:20

I have to admit that when I laid up the 2nd and 3rd cabins I didn'ty spend anywehere near as much time, care or patience on them as i did on the first one that i gave to Martin Kinghoward, a friend and collector/fund raiser for the RNLI.

As such they both contained uneven layup, including hollows and lumps in the finished surfaces and both nereded folling after a good sanding to take away the lumps.

Last night I couldn't find the Dolphin Glaze that Dave Savros Jones had recommended to me a while ago, and so had to fill with p38 filler, [the cabin on the left], but this morning found it tuckedf away and so used it on the right hand superstructure! Typical tbh.

More sanding of the superstructures will take place later today.

After sanding smooth all of the hollows in the laid up cabins, yesterday I set about readying the insides of the cabin cockpits for detailing.

Firstly I made sure that the instrument/access [to the inside of the "engine room" ] on each boat fitted correctly ant marked the outside edges of each structure to the inside of each cabin.

This would allow me to fix the first strakes of the inner framework that would hold together the "planking" making up the actual boats' cockpits.

Then the task of marking and cutting the strakes was next.

I am NOT a rivet counter, and even on the original Ann Letitia Russell and the Liverpool class prototypes I cheated and made those inner frames from picture framing mounting card, 2mm thick.

I cut a whole pack of them, 3mm wide last night, and then this afternoon also cut the backing plates for the inside port light closures, that I have cast in resin already. The front port lights have a 20mm dia hole in the centre of the plate, whilst the side lights have an 18mm dia hole, all cut with compass circle cutter.

Finally I glued the first frame strake in to the cockpit of the RNLB Princess Mary.

I will leave the card to glue to the GRP Cabin, and then this evening I hope to have the interior of both cabins "decked" out with the full frameworks.

The glue I used for gluing card to GRP is Aliphatic wood glue.

getting on with things now, and now that the funnel bases have been made to fit, the next part of the engine room housing is to construct the sets of ventilators…..4 different sizes ,heights and shapes for the two different boats I am building!

But now that I have found the parts to fabricate them, I will cast some parts missing tomorrow morning and put them together.

 

 

Edited By neil howard-pritchard on 24/04/2023 22:40:47

One or two simple parts to make from brass tubing for signalling lamps and I think that is about it, but as I use the fittings already made, the pile will get less, untill all are used that I have made,

This evening I have fabricated from the parts already cast, the six slightly different cowl vents for the RNLB William and Kate Johnston.

Four fit fore and aft on the engine room casing and two fit on the deck immediatelly forward of the engine casing itself.

Edited By neil howard-pritchard on 27/04/2023 22:51:10

Quite a bit of card work done today on the two cabins.

This is a great medum now and then for some detailing of work, and is easily hardened up using a few liberal coatings of celulose lacquer that impregnates the card easily and once set really does make the card almost as hard as timber.

And so both cabin interior frames were finished by filling the gaps marked yesterday.
Next came the cappings on the edges of the grp mouldings and the ends of the framework by adding the top pieces where the cabin "roof" finishes at the aft end of the cabins, before fitting the cabin side cappings. Aliphatic resin was used to glue all these pieces to the grp cabins, bering held in place using low tak masking tape.

And finally, but aplied earlier today, I gave the engine room casing two coats of grey primer as a base for the Ford Polar grey top coat, which will be the finished colour of those parts.

Then I decided I might just need a beer as a treat for my finicky work today.

Rope bins have been detailed to the point where they now need sanding smooth and then staining and varnishing ready for the fastenings can be painted, ready for fitting later.

As I wasn't taping on to anything that I had sprayed with Russet Brown earlier I decided to mast uo both cabins around the areas that will be "planked" later!

Using masking taped and printing paper that I found a few days ago as foolscap size { bit of history there, lol } they were masked so that when layed on the bench there would be no chance of any overspray getting in to the already sprayed cabin interior.

As soon as this western has finished on TV I shall go into the work shop and spray up a coat of grey primer on both.

The superstructure stood on the radiator is just having a very small area about the size of a finger nail filled with surface filler, that had a couple of pin holes in it from where I cut off and re modelled the area of the companionway that still remains on the Princess Mary.

SO, I cheated on the first cabin by using printed dolls house wood panel wall paper, and PVA glue………….

And then I cheated some more with the second cabin……….

I found similar covering but that was for laminating bench tops and such that want similar wood laminate coverings.

This has a self adhesive backing………which saved glueing seperately.