grendel

since I woek for a company that installs the mains supply for gas, electricity, fibre, sewage, water, and district heating. I can usually find someone who knows a great person, the big problem is living over 60 miles from where I work, most of the good ones dont need to cover more than their local area.

before we bought our house the council fitted central heating, this basically involved cutting a 6" wide channel through the chipboard floorboards to lay the piping. this done they proceeded to fix the 6" strip back into place just supported on the joists, now the standard chipboard flooring uses tongue and groove to tie the boards together, with none and a 16" joist spacing - guess how long it was before a foot went through one of the 6" strips. we have replaced the floor in 2 rooms (Bathroom and 1 bedroom) with 3/4" plywood, and the other bedroom will get there soon, as the casters of the bed are sitting in small holes through the chipboard already dont you just hate cowboys.

do you want me to prove they are not webbed and I dont hail from Norfolk?

LOL, yes, I have to admit that like many who take selfies, I dont even pay notice to what else appears in my pictures, but that one actually makes the model look bigger, its all a matter of perspectives.

I feel much as MM does, but it also puts some pressure on any boatyard asked, would they feel 'obliged' to name a boat, and then would they in future years feel obliged to keep it going after its sell by date had been reached. with a private boat the owner could get the same feelings about selling the boat. much as it is a good idea and a lovely sentiment, I do foresee problems going down this route.

I have ended up doing all my own plumbing as a few years back we had 3 years in a row where the central heating packed up on boxing day, each time it ended up with me diagnosing the fault and getting the part at great expense from B&Q and fitting it myself, due to none of the emergency plumbers being available or even answering their phones over christmas. for boiler servicing I get British Gas in on a one off contract (a bit more expensive than some, but reliable and dont try and rip you off too bad). My parents had a good lady plumber, but she has given up now, and they struggle to find a good one despite living next door to a local builder.

A few more pictures of the bow taken this morning.

Tim, for a niche holiday you need to go to Al Cove

photos still arriving I guess, anyway heres a few more, shaping resumed on the bow block, lots of sanding dust everywhere (oops). a rib glued, and another rib steamed along with another roof beam. some more deck supports glued in place, I will rough out the other side tomorrow night, down to a mm or so of the final shape, then it will be a finer sanding belt, eventually going to hand sanding

chocolate sundae?

15 GB is peanuts compared to what i just carry around for day to day use. I quickly realised that most memory sticks were not big enough, and nowadays everywhere I go, I have my trusty 500Gb external hard drive, I may have to get a bigger one as this only has about 25Gb free now. On the home computers I have one that is running about 6 drives, 2Tb internal and another 1Tb external, this is equipped with a sata hot swap caddy into which spare hard drives are plugged in to access their data (that has about 5 swappable drives available) photos are backed up across 3 hard drives on 2 machines, and at any one time there are at least 4 machines running and available on the network (others can be fired up as required) I use macrium reflect to back up hard drives (and also for cloning new hard drives for my laptops when I change out the standard drives for solid state drives.) Toucan provides a good piece of software for backups and copying photos to backups (it can read through and just adds new files since the last time to the backup)

tonight the bow block was temporarily screwed in place, and shaping was started. yesterday I trimmed the prop shaft support, this meant mating 2 P supports to make a single shaft support with the prop shaft in the middle, then another rib was fitted, and a further one steamed, a roof beam was steamed, and while the steamer was doing its job 2 more deck supports went in. quite a busy evening all in all.

How about a chalk board at the quayside with the days specials that also has the times to depart to catch the tides across Breydon,

just a quick update, I have worked out how to do the steps, they will in fact be fixed to the floor of the cockpit, not the sides, so will lift with the floor (they will actually provide a good handle to lift the floor) the red line denotes the extension of the side to support the step, the false wall being disguised by the step brackets that will be extended slightly to the top of the skirting rail to hide the 'edge' a 5 degree slant cut onto the rear edge where it abuts the transom will give the necessary clearance for the edge of the floor where it goes under the skirting on the transom to positively locate the floor in place.

anything from bacon butties to full english breakfast makes me happy

so, after inserting some dummy sides into the rear cockpit, the floor has been measured made and trimmed for a perfect fit, this is in lightweight 1.5mm plywood, most of the interior detail will be done using this material to keep the topsides weight down. now I have the floor, I will need to make the flooring details, a faux hatch for access to the steering gear, and the holly / teak flooring, this will call upon my draughtsmans skills as the darker stripes will be lined in with a drawing pen of the right thickness, I think the wood will need to be sealed first to stop the ink bleeding into the wood, the hatch edges will be made with some aluminium tape, and then the whole sealed in place with some more varnish, I will be practicing with some scrap before I do the finished article. I have Charlie's pictures showing the detail of how it should look. the only difficulty I can see is the steps on the sides of the cockpit, if I fit these the floor wont fit past them, a problem I will think on.

While waiting for the glue to dry I have trimmed the rudder shaft (outer) as long as I can fit, adjusted the length of the inner shaft. just for fun I dry fitted the skeg and prop shaft (they wont be finally fixed in place - nor the rudder, until a later stage.) the last picture shows the clearance to the underside of the floor to the tiller bar.

Tim that is obvious -

a rib has been glued in place and a new rib steamed and formed, I have not started the first roof beam yet, as I want the pieces I added to set the glue for a bit longer before I start using them. now all I need to do is wait for glue to go off properly

the last forward deck beam has gone in, precision cuts here as there is no way of clamping, so the spacing has to be perfect to fit tight with 2 spacers fitted between this and the last beam, this has to be tight enough to prevent the beam moving while the glue sets, the answer precision. The next pair of deck supports are in and clamped - more precision cutting here too. the final picture is the former for the roof beams being prepared, due to a lack of space, I have glued some pieces onto the two halves of the former, these will be used to clamp the formers together, rather than using wedges.

This morning after a trip to a disappointing damp boot fair, I set to the task of shaping this part on the table saw. first the split through the thick direction, then clamping some of the offcuts to the sides as I dont need a lot more, just to make it about 6mm wider each side, the taper soon gets past the point where this extra is needed, I thought I had allowed enough extra width, but didnt allow for the extra width of ribs and planking, so my block came up short.

another deck beam in place, 1 more to fill the gap, and I have been looking at the bow, I have cut the oak for the bow in two pieces, I may have to widen the oak block, but as it will be tapered, that can be achieved by cutting the taper and sticking the offcuts back on wide side up, its only a fraction too narrow, so the glue line will be barely visible, I will see how the first one does before tackling the second. this will be shaped much in the same manner as when Charlie did Broad Ambition, with a chainsaw, well in the modelling world that is a coarse sanding belt on a finger sander, I might temporarily screw the block onto the model for initial shaping, eventually it will be screwed in and glued. maybe a job for tomorrow.

showing some of the work on the front decking beams.

more deck support work, plus a couple of overall views of the dockyard.

so far this morning I have added more deck beams at the front, some more deck supports and glued in place another rib, as I type the steam is softening the next rib and front deck beam.