Bedford

Chris that's really starting to look like a boat, good on you.

The feeling you'll get as you first set out in her is something to look forward to.

5 hours ago, Keith Black said:

 I quit vacuuming the inside of my truck years ago, no carpet, just a rubber mat sill to sill. I use the leaf blower, much simpler. 

 Nice job on the canoe, Chris. You have many leisurely days out on the water to look forward to.  

Mate, I used to have a Defender, the floor was just above the door sills and it was designed to be hosed out, best way ever to clean out the floor of a car that gets muddy.

As a deckie who has used the davit system for lowering/raising such an anchor  I would suggest the aft position is due to the stays. It would be extremely difficult to raise the anchor inside them especially with any kind of rocking.

The process is to lower the anchor on the falls while taking in chain with the windlass until the anchor is hanging on the chain just below the hawse pipe. The falls are then detached and the anchor lowered. The retrieval operation is the opposite. That being the case the falls must have quite a length of line to reach that far forward.

It's interesting to note that the falls are not stowed attached to the lifting eye on the anchor shaft, rather to an eye on the pin rail. On Waratah it's not as pretty but the falls are stowed hooked to the lifting strap on the anchor.

I think you'll find there are two types of electrician, the one who takes pride in a job well done and the one who just slaps it together the easiest way he can. I think we can tell which did that wiring job.

I have the same problem on S.T. Waratah, a lot of the wiring has been done by the latter type and I am slowly trying to improve it.

Beautiful work as usual Eberhard.

The photo of the aft deck / helm station shows beautiful work by the ship builders too, from a time when even a war ship was beautifully made.

Always a lesson here Keith, beautifully done as usual.

I can chime in on the coal port question as well, given my work on Waratah. She has a main coal hatch on the deck forward of the wheelhouse which is about 3 x 6 feet but also has side bunkers which have round hatches of approx 20 inch diameter at a guess. These hatches have surrounds of about 4 inches in width so the overall diameter is in the order of 28 inches. I'd imagine that's about the right size for dumping a bag of coal into.

Sand paper is your friend, for now but you'll come to hate it.

One tip I learned part way through sanding epoxy is use wet&dry with a little water and once the "dust" becomes paste it really starts cutting well

I probably should have said this earlier but a lot of stitch and glue builds use cable ties. Easier to tighten than twisting wire.

My friend, slowly but surely it takes shape and from my own experience I can assure you there are myriad ways of handling and holding bits of boat that will present themselves to you in absence of reliable assistance. 

"Reasonably representing the real thing" he says while making the most beautifully detailed model!

Gary, I'm always glad to be of service be it confusing or not.

The Waratah is great fun, just last weekend myself and the Commodore of the fleet gave her deck a salt water wash and scrub, oh the joy!

4 hours ago, Jim Lad said:

As has been said so often before, Chris, the secret of model (and boat) building is not so much the ability to construct as the ability to recover from disaster.  Nice work so far.

 

John

Truer words were never spoken, ask me how I know

I'll answer your prop walk question, or confuse you.

I crew a 1902 steam tug named Waratah, she has a right hand prop and the tow hook wasn't generally used because they had been deemed dangerous so a line was made off to the port towing bollard and the wear from the towlines is very evident.

The reason the port bollard (which is mounted directly behind the cream coloured superstructure and about 1mtr off centre) was used is because the prop walk wanted to turn the boat to stbd and the tow line to port helped correct it.

When coming into our berth if the master orders the engine go astern the stern starts walking out to port straight away. 

This all seems somewhat contradictory because you'd expect her to turn one way going ahead and the opposite going astern and to confuse you further, when going ahead without towing she tends to want to go to port and she needs about 3 degress of stbd rudder but that may just be because the indicator isn't calibrated properly.

I wonder if when dragging the net they steer the boat to stbd to run a large sweeping circle? 

Yeah I didn't think you'd make a mistake like that but thought it should be pointed out just in case. There are people who really can't get their heads around gears and the like.

A lot of the ability comes from the machines and patience

Beautiful work Valeriy but unless I'm missing something it appears that one of the "V" cut gears needs to be turned the other way, those teeth won't mesh like that.

I found the perfect collet chuck for holding those tiny nails etc. It was the chuck in an elcheapo dremel knock off I used years ago. Glad I kept the motor part when I chucked the rest out. The chuck was held to the motor shaft with a grub screw so it was easy to remove and does a great job.

In the last pic above you can see two brass studs with conical heads. I have used these throughout the build and they are the small brass nails that come with ship kits. The heads on them are awful so I have reduced them in size and centered the heads by turning the angle into them.

To do this in my lathe was difficult because even the jacobs chuck that fits the headstock would not hold them. After I bought a set of ER32 collet blocks and chuck I still couldn't hold them because they are only 0.87mm but I remembered a cheap old dremel knock off I had and the collet chuck was very easy to remove so it is now in the lathe tool kit and does a great job.

A little bit more hardware, the screw jack and socket for the arm used to turn the gun when aiming (so the vertical and horizontal aiming system)

Yes, the wooden handles are belaying pins!

How about some trunnion clamps for want of a better word.

I clamped two pieces of brass together in the mill vice, drilled through on centre, separated them and used them as press molds to shape the clamps before bending the brass around to form the hinge. I then filled the rolled brass hinge section with solder before running a drill through it to get a nice round body for the hinge pin. The fixed part of the hinge was milled from bar stock and drilled before being cut off with a slitting saw.

Thanks Popeye

4 hours ago, Egilman said:

You going to dress her out for combat or leave her as an exemplar?....

More a display piece I think but it will have some of its associated equipment

The hub hardware was simply turned from brass stock and a few rings and some chain left over from ship models

Then the hub and spokes, the hub was done in much the same way as the rims but instead of drilling holes I milled slots, again the resetting to allow the second set of cuts required a lot of measuring, checking and re-checking. The spokes where round stock (Tasmanian oak as with the rest of the wheel) which I set up in the square collet block to machine a 3mm square section before mounting in the lathe to round out the rest of the shaft. It was messy and Tas oak tends to splinter in the lathe so there where a few that ended up in the bin.

The spokes are not glued to the rims or the hub. The built up body of the hub combined with the alluminium tyres hold it all together much like the real thing.

On the subject of the tyres, I just happened to have a piece of alluminium stock that was just big enough to turn for the tyres at 110mm O.D.

The tyres where heated in the oven to expand them prior to fitting. They are very tight on the rims and no glue was used.