KeithAug

Not withstanding your trials and tribulations the hull painting turned out remarkably well. The red waterline is particularly crisp.

Beautifully neat work Valeriy.

Thank you for the tip. I'd better stock up before they ruin them. like Colron wood dye and Nitromors paint stripper.

Great progress Nils. I am feeling a bit dumb because it was only in your last few posts that I realised she has a means of propulsion. The Trinity House light ships I am more familiar don't have propulsion and are towed on and off station.

An impressive little ship, excellent work.

Mike - i hadn't considered using a scroll saw. I don't have any metal cutting scroll saw blades other than the very fine jewellers saw blades. I really need to order some. I think I can manage the cut with a combination of hacksaw and mill. Thank you John and also thank you to anyone else who has left a like.

My daughter has gone off on what she calls a sabbatical. So far as I can tell this involves an extended holiday from work drifting around Europe chasing the snow. She parked her car here before she went which is how I discovered that it was more of a garbage truck than a family vehicle. Anyway, today I spent 6 hours getting it back to being tolerably habitable. The good news is that I found enough half eaten snacks to replenish our pantry for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately I didn't find any money. Today wasn't very productive in the shed but fortunately I did get some time yesterday. I started by machining the wedge angles on the edges of the rudder frame outer thickening pieces. I used a block of wood to hold the pieces on the mill at the correct angle, the angle being set using a bit of trigonometry. I don't have one of those clever little digital angle gauges but sometimes the old methods work perfectly well. You can see in the picture that the thickening pieces are screwed to the wood, but what is less apparent is that they are set in a cut out which supports them on 3 sides. I decided that relying on the screws alone probably wouldn't have worked. I machined both thickening pieces without removing the wooden block from the vice - thus ensuring that the wedge angles on the 2 thickening pieces were identical. Using a similar technique I machined the other two wedge angles with a different block set at a different angle. You can also see that I used the central piece as a template for scribing on the final internal shape of the thickening pieces. Then it was back to the jewellers saw to cut out the internal shape. I still hadn't ordered the coarse saw blades so inevitably it took longer than it should have with more breakages. Old fools never learn! I then machined on the final chamfers on the little nib on the left hand side in the above shot. The three pieces were then assembled together using the small brass locating pins. The assembly was held together with stainless steel clothes pegs and flux, solder and heat were applied to turn the three pieces into one. Apologies for the messy soldering, I was rushing a bit. The good news is that it cleaned up quite well. Now I have to cut the bottom profile which of course is now 0.3" thick and well beyond the wildest aspirations of my little jewellers saw. I need a different plan.

Wonderful work Eberhard. When I have needed small diameter hardened brass in the past I have taken a length of brass wire and put one end in a drill chuck while clamping the other end in a vice. While keeping the wire taught I have turned on the drill for a few seconds to twist the wire, thus work hardening and straightening it at the same time. I got the idea from looking closely at some 0.6 mm brass rod supplied by Cornwall model boats. under the magnifying glass you could see a definite helix along its entire length. Unfortunately I don't have a ready supply of brass nails.

Keith . My wife, daughter and daughter-in-law swear by these books. They all have dishes where you load all the food on one tray and bung it in the oven and about 45 minutes later you have a very tasty meal. I can confirm the food is very good and the washing up is minimal. I don't know if you can get them in the USA but it is worth looking. Here is a review - https://vaithehy.co.uk/2020/07/book-review-the-quick-roasting-tin.html

Hats off to you Keith, it seems to me that you are doing a marvellous job. You will know you are on the home straight when Maggie starts complaining about the cooking and offers to take over.

Looking like a fascinating build. I am hooked.

Looking very smart Valeriy.

She is quite a cute little ship with a lovely smoke stack.

Roger - I think it's called technical dementia. Thank you John.

Eberhard - When I think you are done you find even more detail to add. Do you have an end point or is it a project for life?

Marvellous John. She may be slow but she is majestic.

Facinating Andy. Worthy of Sherlock.

Beautiful looking hull Gary.

Pipes have never been so interesting.

Lets hope she lasts longer than the original. A great project.

Flashing along at your usual pace Nils. If I blink I am going to miss the next instalment.

Its all very ingenious, I look forward to seeing her working.

Exactly so! Back to boats:- I did a bit of pencil and paper draughting and dimensioned up the centres for cutting the various circles that will eventually form the core of the frame. I then glued the template to the brass sheet and mounted it on the mill. The various diameters of circular features were then cut with a step drill. At this stage I also drilled location holes for pinning the thickened sections of the frame in position (red arrow). These were drilled in a location that would subsequently be removed. I then started sawing away the unwanted parts of the frame. I didn't have coarse enough jewellers saw blade but I ploughed on anyway, taking an excessive amount of time and breaking an excessive number of blades. I really must listen to my own mental advice in future and put stuff aside until I have the correct tools to hand. Anyway - some time later:- Next a bit of filing:- Then the 2 thickening plates were cut and drilled with 4 holes. The lower pair of holes match the location pins in the central frame piece (pins already inserted in the photo). The upper pair of holes are for retaining screws to clamp the ticketing plates for later machining operations. They are also in the scrap area and will be cut away later. Now back to moaning about planned obsolescence. 🙂

Rick - I have an excellent Samsung Smart TV but it is increasingly failing to support recently updated Apps. I am committed to doing without the Apps. Eventually I think I will be watching a blank screen!

Ian - BMW tried it but it turns out that the public weren't as stupid as BMW thought they were. When I heard about it my thought was "never go into a BMW showroom ever again". See official update below. BMW has decided to stop charging car owners a subscription fee to use their heated car seats, though the German automaker remains committed to paid on-demand services. The manufacturer began selling access to factory-installed heated seats and the heated steering wheel in 2020, though only in some markets, such as South Korea and the United Kingdom. In South Korea, seat heat was available for the equivalent of about $18 per month, or $406 if purchased in perpetuity. In the UK, the price was about the same. This was after the company said it would charge an $80 annual subscription fee to use Apple CarPlay in BMWs and subsequently reversed that decisionfollowing customer complaints.