KeithAug

Yes Tom - the end of my sailing career came 5 years ago when sailing into Dartmouth on a rather rough day. My sailing pal of some 37 years suddenly handed the helm over to me and said he didn't feel in control of the boat. That was the beginning of the end. I have night sailed across the Channel a number of times. Never an inspiring trip particularly when trying to find a gap in traffic while crossing the channel traffic separation scheme. The Hebrides provide a much more pleasant sailing experience.

No Keith. Narrow boats have a high perimeter to volume ratio. As the youngest crew member I select short fat hulls to minimise the opportunities for the older crew members to drive their zimmer frames overboard.

Tom - up and down. we don't have long rivers like you continentals. It is a reunion trip with all my old sailing buddies. Alas now all very old and not safe seafarers any more.

It might seem that the internet was invented a hundred years ago but it was 1983, when some of were still in our middle ages! Maybe in 2000 years time the dating system will have changed from BC and AD to BI and AI.

That works well Eberhard. I will bank it for later.

Excellent progress Andy. You are very quick!

Eberhard, Andy, The Black Twins, Grant, Roel, Richard, Pat, John and Mark. Thank you all for your supportive comments even though many of you felt my description of the finished prop was a bit understated. In defence I have to say that I think next time I will try giving the blades a more hydrodynamic section. I perhaps fell into the MSW "I can always do better" mindset. Also thanks to all those who left likes or just visited. Today I finished off the prop assembly. I turned up a stub shaft A. The previously made boss that attaches to the end of the prop tube is item B. The prop retaining nut is item D and item E is the lock nut. The assembly sequence is a s follows:- The prop was disassembled and built back up on the boat with the skeg in place, proving the assembly sequence worked. I now finally feel confident about gluing the skeg in place, but that will be after my booze cruise.

Ouch! - Lets hope the current builder has better luck.

Beautifully done.👏👏👏

Quite an educational series of posts. Thanks to everyone.

Good to see you have made it over to the dark side Richard.🙂

Eberhard. The prop was fitted when she was rebuilt prior to completion in 2009. I don't have any information on the original but clearly the design is not of 1901 vintage. As you say the original was probably 3 or 4 bladed.

I was trying a bit of irony.

A pleasure to see your deck hatch work Mark.

Nice progress Raz. The steam pipes must have kept the cabin warm.

Thank you all for your prop comments but today's effort leaves me a little more satisfied with how it looks. I started this morning by designing a rather elaborate soft jaw bending tool. Ok, so not that elaborate🙂, but it did the job. the plywood soft jaws were held in place by double sided tape. My twisting jig also borrowed something from the Heath Robinson school of engineering. The vice is clamped to the workbench. The blue arrow is pointing at a plywood shim which controls how much of the blade is clamped by the vice. The red arrow is pointing at a line on the vice jaws that allows me to position each blade at the same spot in the vice. The green arrow is pointing at a line drawn on the bench. When viewed from above the edge of the wrench indicated by the black arrow aligns with the line on the bench at the completion of each blade twist. Close up:- I manually controlled the twist with the wrench at three positions - 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 of the blade length, judging the degree of twist such that the final 3/4 position twist brought the wrench into alignment with the line on the bench. I nested the 5 blades once twisted to check they were all essentially the same. They nested well but unfortunately wouldn't stay in place for the photo opportunity. I then sorted out the hub attachment. .040" holes were drilled in hub to connect the root slots with the hub bore. The blades needed to be a good interference fit in the slots so I raised a burr at the bottom of each blade with a centre punch (red arrow). This done the blades were pressed securely into the slots. Once assembled I set about soldering the blades in place. A small piece of solder was placed inside the bore of the hub. The next photo isn't the best but I think it shows the soldering set up. With the set up complete I then heated the bore until the solder melted and ran into the blade roots. The resulting assembly was then cleaned and polished. The soldering proved to be particularly clean requiring no excess solder removal. The excess hub was then cut off with a hacksaw. A brass rod was then glued into the bore and this was used to hold the prop in the lathe for the facing off operation. I was relatively satisfied with the result.

Looks a bit like “mother and child reunion” to me.

Thank you Rick, Mark, John and Richard. The last week flashed by but by the weekend we were back home and the workshop was reopened. The target is to get the prop finished this week before a week of river boating on the Thames (booze cruise). The progress update thus far:- You will recall that I was considering making the blades with location lugs. However having cut the hub slots I decided that the hub would provide adequate location without the lugs. 5 blade blanks were cut from .045" thick brass sheet. The blades .005" too thick so the thickness will be reduced to form a tight fit in the slots. The 5 blades were held together with double sided tape for the edge shaping operation. The shaping was done by a combination of milling and filing. I don't think that profiling the blade will add much to the looks of the finished prop so I am making a version without profiling. If I am unhappy with the result I will revert to profiling. The blades do need to be annealed to ease the twisting operation. The blades were heated to cherry before bing allowed to cool naturally. I did a bit of rough clean up before checking the fit in the hub slots. Without the twist the prop looks pretty poor. A bit of further polishing eased the fit and improved the blades visually. The blades were then disassembled and now await twisting. I have worked out a plan for doing the twisting and will have a go tomorrow.

Excellent progress on number 2 Andy.

Yep, disdain for authority kicks in early these day Andy. Thank you Keith. All his family agree with you.

By popular request here is an update. The good ship Ben was launched one year ago on the 1st September. His fitting out phase is proceeding to plan and he is due to transition to sea trials once his sea legs have stabilised. His armament has been somewhat delayed but we hope the Ben will be getting his teeth in the next couple of weeks. The hull is still a little porous but the caulk wadding is effective at preventing imminent disaster. By en large the Ben is a very happy little ship.

A neat set of frames Andy. Good scrolling.

I find a laser level works quite well for that.

It's quite a complicated thing isn't it. I assume it had many uses including powering the forward derricks as well as anchors?

When my Byrnes saw failed I was able to make it run by manually rotating the blade. Once started it ran quite normally even with a dud capacitor.