Eezebilt RAF Fire Boat

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Should say started painting not stayed painting!

Tim

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Some more fittings have been made for my Eezebilt Fire Boat. The  largest is about 15mm high. Just hope I don’t run out of things to make until the weather improves enough to start painting the hull outside. The Nav lights will have micro LEDs in them. The vents are 2 piece kits that I have altered the height.

Working on some handrails and securing the roofs at the moment.

 

Tim

 

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Good effort Tim

It’s difficult making such small fittings!

Ashley

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Thanks Ashley

Dread to think how many bits and pieces are hiding under things on my desk or have dropped on the floor.

I know bits wire have ‘pinged’ out of pliers and wire cutters to disappear.

Next on the list is some flexible pipes stored on the stern , a small hand crane and some scrambling nets.

Tim

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Thinking about fittings, for Eezebilt boats, made me think about the first one I built the small MTB, Terrier(?). I was probably about 12. So 60 odd years ago.

Making the twin machine gun out of paper clips and sticky brown paper..

The smell of the balsa cement and trying to paint it with bottles of smelly paint. My Parents must have been very patient and understanding, and always encouraged me to do practical things.

Here I am making fittings for another Eezebilt model out of bits of brass, wire and polystyrene.

Tim

 

[Richard SimpsonModerator @richardsimpson88330]

Its only when you look back now we can realise how much our parents supported our hobbies, which helped to make us into the practical thinking people we are.

As a teenager my modelling bench was a chest of drawers underneath the cellar steps with packing under the feet to level it on the very uneven floor.  My Dad gave me the chest of drawers so I could have my own little workbench and I must have made dozens of plastic kits on it.  The lamp was a normal bulb in a lamp holder screwed into the back of the cellar steps!

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Richard
<p style=”text-align: left;”>My Mum and Dad were the same. They moved an old small kitchen table in the front room so I could build in the evenings. They were happy to buy things to add to my Meccano set, as well.</p>
They were not that well off but managed to find money for my brother and me to learn practical things.

I have tried the same with my own 3 sons but not with the same success. One does do things in his own house but I tend to get a message that says ‘Have you got a xxxxx’.

I guess I was lucky that I could take Woodwork and Metalwork at School, plus Technical Drawing which was an advantage at work and something I still use today.

Tim

[Richard SimpsonModerator @richardsimpson88330]

My choices after two years were either woodwork with building drawing or metalwork with engineering drawing.  I chose woodwork with building drawing as I was destined to be an architect before I bailed and became an engineering cadet in the Merchant Navy.  Before we had to choose in the first two years at school we had a woodwork room, complete with lathes and many other machine tools, and a metalwork room, complete with drills and machine tools, and between the two we had a combined workshop that had lapidary machines for polishing stones and belt sanders.  We used to make jewellery to impress the girls!  In the combined workshop there was also a forge where I made a fishing rod rest.  Can you imagine the horror on a teachers face nowadays at the thought of kids using a forge!

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Richard

No don’t think it would happen now!

My Grandson came to do some woodwork with me a couple of summers ago, as he has done some at school for a term. First thing I had to teach him was how to use a mallet and chisel properly.

Guess it’s just the way things have changed. We had a Woodwork teacher and a Metalwork teacher who came from came from having earning living in those fields, after having served an apprenticeship.

I guess it’s the move away from being a Nation that builds things.

Old man rant over!

Tim

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

I believe that Ernie Webster’s original design called for two Lewis guns, made from paperclip wire and brown paper.

 

I favoured twin Oerlikons. Here is an original on a Terrier from way back in the 1960s, and, for comparison, a similar one at 1/48 scale made for the EeZeBilt PT boat about 10 years ago, together with one which I drew up recently for a 3d printer…

 

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

I have spent a couple of weeks, on and off, trying to make pipes that I assume supplied water to the pump for the water cannon. They seem to have been stored on the stern deck

I used a central core of copper wire, then built up layers of small pieces of ABS tube. After a few failures I managed to get two I’m happy with although not as good as I had hoped

Tim

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

I think you will find that they are hoses used to pump out water from leaking seaplanes. These boats were intended to support seaplanes, and ones which landed with holes in their hull would have no easy way of baling out.

You have done a really good job at 1/48 scale!

[Richard SimpsonModerator @richardsimpson88330]

The look really good Tim and just what is missing from the rear well deck of my model.  I’ve been meaning to do something similar to mine for around ten years now.

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Thanks Dodgy and Richard

That makes more sense than supplying the water cannons.

Tim

[John W EParticipant @johnwe]

hi there,

late as normal, last but not least as they say.

I was never late for me dinner though mind!

An old friend of mine who had a passion for the crash tender boats, now no longer with us – showed me this trick a while ago about producing wire bound fire hoses.   It is to use net curtain wire – spring covered with a heat shrink and they are about 5 – 6 mm diameter.   You can generally pick them up in various lengths fairly cheap.   If you have a look at them closely – you will see you can see the spring beneath the heat shrink and it gives the affect of an armoured hose.

The other method which can be used to assimilate these hoses is a tube bending spring and you can get these on line in various diameters and they can be found at about 5 mm diameter and about 300 mm long.   You can cover these with either white or black heat shrink and this gives the same affect.

Bit late now, but, may be useful for you or anyone in the future.  Managed to locate an image of HS93 the late         Mr Peter Henshaw’s excellent model of the Fireboat.   These hoses were constructed using the wire spring method, as mentioned above.

John

 

 

[Richard SimpsonModerator @richardsimpson88330]

Now I remember Peter, he came to visit me when I lived in Halifax with his wife, what a lovely couple they were as well.  I can’t remember for the life of me what he was visiting for, it was model boat related, but I do remember him and his wife.  That must have been somewhere in the region of 15 to 20 years ago.

That is probably one of the best representations of the fire tender well deck area I have seen.  I really must get around to making some hoses and steps etc for it one day.  I notice Peter has also added the fire hose connection in the bulkhead to connect the hoses to.

Just a thought for Tim, hoses that supply water, such as fire hoses, are usually floppy so they can be stored easily and the water pressure will inflate the hose.  Suction hoses have to be reinforced to prevent the suction collapsing the hose.  So you can immediately tell that these are suction hoses.

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Is that the 4″ Aerokits model at 1/12th scale? A lot easier to make fittings for than Tim’s at 1/48!

For small sizes you could merge the two techniques. Pick a suitable diameter copper wire for the central core – then wrap a much thinner wire in a spiral around it, and cover with heat-shrink.

I was wondering about the Terrier guns earlier, and drew up a Lewis gun at 1/72. It’s VERY small – about 1.5cm long. I suspect that. at very small scales, a model looks better if some of the detail is a bit oversized. The Warhammer figures accentuate detail in this way…

 

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Dodgy

Re Warhammer.

I have painted quite a few Warhammer figures in the past. The Games Workshop factory is only a few miles away from me. My youngest son got interested at playing the war games at about 14 and I enjoyed painting them.

When he was doing his A levels he had a weekend job at the factory. It meant I had to get him there for 6 am! But he was allowed to buy figures by weight! By the time I had finished painting them all he had finished his degree at University !

Most of the figures were sold when we thought we would move house (but didn’t) I just kept one box of some of the best.

Tim

 

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

I have finished (I think) the small crane. It’s my version so probably looks nothing like the real one.

Also, I have had a try at a scrambling net using waxed thread. Think I will have another attempt .

[Richard SimpsonModerator @richardsimpson88330]

Bear in mind Tim, when its rolled up it will look completely different to when it is laid out flat and you maybe don’t need to be quite as critical as you might think.

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

This is the crane on my prototype – made from (not very well!) soldered brass strip. It has a tube at the base which slots into either the port or starboard holes, and so can be swung inboard and outboard. The brown strip of canvas at the end is a body sling.

I can probably draw up a 3-d print file for one if you would like it…

.

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

That’s true Richard. I’ll try rolling it.

Tim

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Thanks Dodgy

I’m ok with mine.

Tim

[Chris FellowsParticipant @chrisfellows72943]

My neighbour wanted some netting for one of his model boats and said that used in older fishing keep nets was a good match. My BIL who’s a fisherman and frequent visitor to car-boot sales got him one which was just the  job.

Chris

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

That netting looks quite realistic to me. Here is a photo of 93, showing the rolled-up netting over the engine compartment. And, incidentally, the davit and winch which I copied for the prototype…

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