grendel

funnily enough I was doing some research while wondering why I needed special drill bits to even touch the stainless steel I have used in the model in the past, and it popped right out at me - stainless steel is much harder than high speed steel used for normal drill bits, hence the need for special carbide drill bits to drill the stuff, standard drill bits are at a rockwell hardness of 65, and stainless steel anything from 89 upwards, carbide, while brittle is a huge degree harder than this. no wonder it was taking many HSS drill bits to make a hole in my stainless steel sheet. I do however now possess a good supply of tiny carbide drill bits for the purpose. (even though they do break all too easily)

my parents were brought up during the war, and can remember rationing and being sent away from the kent coast where they were both born, my mother can remember being strafed by german planes whilst walking to school, and my fathers school was bombed while he was in class, older acquaintances and grandparents never did talk about what happened during the war, there are many stories that could be told that never will be, I think this is probably the reason that more hasnt been made of the events - because those who were there dont want to remember or talk about what happened and what they saw. My father has written down some of his memories from that era, but we see them through the eyes of the child he was, memories of his mother (my Gran) having to go to the school and identify the bodies of children, being asked if a body was her son because he was wearing glasses, to respond that her son had a different colour jumper, then only later finding he had survived and been evacuated the length of the town in the smugglers tunnels under Deal. These were not nice times, and I feel a lot of the survivors dont want to remember, maybe in guilt that they survived when others close to them didnt. Yes we should remember, we should be thankful, but we shouldnt force those survivors to relive any of their thoughts and experiences, we should learn from their sacrifices never have to repeat the events of such conflict, and that a peaceful solution must always be better.

last night was prep work for the mahogany transom top rubbing strake, the piece of mahogany was selected, cut slightly overlong, sanded down to a tight fit, then with a pencil the inner and outer curves were marked from the transom. tonight these will be cut out on the band saw, and sanded to shape ready for installation. Then it will be on to the stainless steel parts (once my thinner sheet arrives today or tomorrow)

ah woolly weekends - I did one of those a few weeks back at the early may bank holiday at a local railway museum, my meccano buddy asked me along to do some spinning, so naturally i took my spinning wheel, but also made a meccano one too. I then got into discussions with the ladies who were also there and have been back several times to assist with getting a 4 shaft table loom set up for one of them, and to teach naalbinding to another.

so heres the figure - of course the one for model #2 will have to have the hair a bit greyer.

well somewhere many pages back now there should be a photo of the one I printed out for model #1, I will try and repost it

I have a 3d model of a Griff to use at the helm, so it will be printed up.

Poppy, just gently apply the brake and let the pedestrian swimmer across, it will be a pelican crossing rather than a zebra or toucan crossing because pelicans can swim. either that or frantically wave your arms saying 'get out of the way no brakes' as you sail across them.

I do like the style of the painting on those posters.

boy am I glad you didnt use the first 3 letters of the first word with the last 4 of the second, I would have hated having to moderate your post

when we had central heating fitted they came along and cut a 6" wide section out of the tongue and groove chipboard floor, laid the pipes then just fitted the chipboard back across the floor beams that were 16" apart, it was not long before we managed to put a foot through these unsupported chipboard sections, I eventually took up most of the chipboard and replaced it with 3/4" ply.

I have been taken through several times with about 1/2" to spare, but once last month I was taken through with plenty of space, I think the bridge marker was at 6 foot 7 inches (unusual)

Mental note, if I see a zombie lurching toward me, check that it's not Timbo before lopping it's head off.

I believe the only boat yard that regularly allows their hirers to navigate wroxham bridge without a pilot is marthams, they allow you to navigate any bridge but Potter Heigham (which is done by their boatyard staff) I think Barnes (or one of the yards at Wroxham) use their own staff to navigate wroxham bridge. outside the season the pilots run however you would have to show some experience (Griff owns his own boat) and ask the yard nicely (to be fair every one of the boats on the lads week has a seasoned skipper in charge. I have now done Wroxham bridge 4 times on my own in a Marthams boat, and its not too daunting (mind you they tell you that you can get under any bridge at 6 foot 2" inches on the boards- and take their boats through potter heigham when there is less than 6 foot at the bridge)

I thought that was all recycled into Royal Tudor

what about the wooden leg? eyepatch?

clamps removed, a bit of tidying up done and time for pictures

certainly we were worried at the thought of the hundreds of swimmers predicted, but since only a fraction of those numbers actually took part, it went off a lot better than we anticipated. I wish them the same success this year, and hope the numbers dont grow to a scale where they could become a navigation hazard.

so true, its good to see Tim out on the water enjoying himself. I cant wait for part 2 now

my ancient blackberry lasted my whole holiday, with just one short charge midweek. I still preferred the old nokias for battery life, I could happily charge it up once a week, when it got down to 50%.

it sounds like you need the samsung for that,-self heating battery, perfect for the ironing- well for the first sock anyway.

Actually I dont think Wombat is that far off the mark, there is a lightweight display replica around, that comes in pieces so its a case of wheel it into place and then stick the wings on (its either that or its the full sized airfix kit one that James May made.)

some old cars and vans just go on- and on- hence my volvo v70, 17 years old just on 178,000 miles, by the end of the year it will be 200,000, most of the ones I have owned in the past have easily exceeded the 1/4 million miles, so at least a couple more years left in it (fingers crossed and touching wood) this one replaced my 19 year old v70 that needed a new clutch at 268,000 miles.

I would imagine the delay at the start for some boats may have affected the decision of which order to do things, as that would have given different tidal conditions than they expected to encounter, I am guessing they would have had a plan that went, if we can get to here before this time we will do this leg first as the tides will help, otherwise we will do that.

at my company they have disabled the usb for data transfer, so we use something called owncloud - this is hosted on the company servers, and automatically does a virus scan on any files uploaded. we then log on on our company PC to download the files onto the company network. this also means I can transfer files from my home pc by logging in from that. this system works very well and keeps our company network secure. if I need to transfer photos to my work PC this is what I use. (or just email them)