The Boat That Probably Won't Be !!! - LIVES AGAIN - UPDATE

flywheel61 · The Boat That Probably Won't Be !!! - LIVES AGAIN - UPDATE

I was recently given this boat in the hope that I could finish it and a charity could auction it on completion. It comes from a local gent, in his late 70's who now has first stage dimentia and parkinson's disease. Unfortunately he was an hands on person and made some very interesting boats in his time, but like this one it was all from his memory and there are no plans

It is supposed to be a tug boat and measures about 98cm long x 30cm beam. The first problem I see its the shape, the stern of the boat is much narrower than it should be. Secondly the propeller seems to be a long way up the boat, I would have thought that it should have sat in line with the base or top of the keel.

Another problem is that he can't remember if there was more to the keel than is shown, it seem to have an awfully shallow draft.

I think the engine is of OZ manufacture, but I don't know whose,

Also the engine seem quite small in comparison to the boat, the boiler is almost the same size as as a Mamod SE1-2, about 4" x 1 3/4" diameter,

The piston and cylinder assembly has an oiler and is fitted to the crank shaft via a flexible joint.

I have a lot of balsa and other sheet material, and even the remote control (still in its box) and I would like to finish the unit for him, but don't want to invest time and further money on a possible "lame duck".

I have checked out some Australian suppliers, and found suitable tugs, the size (about 77 x 19cm) seems to be more appropriate, but at $AUD645, the prices are out of the question.

http://modelcomponents.com.au/ind...tion=com_virtuemart&Itemid=26

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Chris

MooseMan

Hey Chris,

I'd say that that engine would be more suited to a "Mabel" type launch - plans are on sale here, it's a really easy simple hull.

fcrammond

Just looking at the hull it screams shallow water barge handling to me. A screw version of all those flat bottomed paddle steamers that used to bring the wool bales down the rivers of Australia at the turn of the last century. Tall hull = calm waters. flat bottom = shallow water with snags and sand bars. High mounted prop, ditto. I'd have a look at what was used on the Murray if I were keen on finishing the existing hull rather than building a Thames Gentleman's Conveyance ( or Posh Poms Plaything) like Mabel

Fred

kk

Hi Chris,

I would say that the engine will not be able to move that monster of a boat (compared to the engine) even at a very shallow draft. The resistance of the hull would probably be to much.

Sailing it in other than totally calm wheather would not be possible, because of the huge area exposed to the wind.

I would of course complete the task as the lines seem to be something quite special. Even the lined engine compartment is a good idea.

To steam it a more powerfull steam plant would be necessary.

Boiler looks like a Wilesco D10 or so.

mogogear

It could at the very least be a good way to get started ---Definitely looks "tuggy" to me too!!

MooseMan

Ooops...forgot the link:

http://www.myhobbystore.com/c/73/Plans---Steam-Launches.html

flywheel61

Thanks for oyur suggestions and help every one, I've decided to start again from scratch, with a set of mabel plans - looks like the owner won't be gettign the tug boat he wanted. At least the finished boat will hopefully be saleable for the charity.

Cheers

Chris

flywheel61

Well, after paying more in P & H than the plans cost, I finally got to work on the Mabel plans, a stylized English river boat. Thanks to Odilon, I ended up using carbon paper under the the original plans (after getting several copies made a a large scale copy shop first), and a small stylus tool from mt dremel kit to trace over the plans. As I wanted to use as much of the material given to me as possible, I chose to work in exterior ply wood rather than the recommended balsa.

These plans are classed as simple, and simple they are, without a single measurement and quite a frew bits of information missing, like how to make the other side of the base,when only one half is shown. A bit of brain action and I realized that I could use kitchen paper and simply reverse the copy as show,

. I soon ended upwith the boat base ready to cut out.

All went well, until I started to glue the sides to the base and spacers together, I found that clamps were necessary and that my cutting didn't necessarily follow the base line as closely as it should have. I think I am using a lot more wood putty than I would like,

.

Another problem is that the plans didn't show that the base of the bow stem, needed to be slotted into the boat base,

. Luckily I realised that the 'foot' in the stem was higher than it should be by about 1/4" (the same thickness as the base) and had to cut a slot into the base, which had the advantage of making the bow more stable as well.

Having got one most of one side and and the bow nicely glued, I then tried to curve the side ply around the stern, I got so far and then crack, bugger,

. I might have been able to 'cripple' (cut slots) into the ply, but as it is very thin, about 1/16", it would have been vey easily to cut too deeply. Now I know why balsa was recommended.

I'm past the point of wanting to start again, so I think the easiest thing to do is to cut the stern off square, along the line shown, to remove the cracked ply and to make glueing of the other side easier, so I don't run into the same problem again. The boat will be a couple of inches shorter but by judicious placement of the the steam plant and the remote control gear, I don't think it will make any difference to the balance.

I've just had a cataract removed from my right eye, so no more work for another week,

, but will keep posting as the boat progresses.

Cheers

Chris

tmuir

Bummer about the crack.
I've never had great luck bending any wood.
Hopefully everything goes smoothly from here on.

Les

A great start with a couple of minor problems. Had you thought of steaming or soaking the wood before bending it??

MooseMan

Chris, I think the stern must be the design bottleneck, because mine has a square stern - and it looks great!

You're doing a fantastic job there mate - keep it up!

Stitch

Mate, the joys of dealing with the Mabel plans.

Like you, I had awful trouble with getting the other side of the base and did the same as you did. Wait to you get to the deck. What I did was to turn the boat upside and trace around it, leaving a margin to be trimmed off.

Seeing your work is a revellation. I didn't realise that base in the bow was slotted

I agree with cutting off at the stern, but why not try packing the gap with a block of ply up to the hieght of the sides and sanding to shape. Essentially, that is what I did with my Mabel and it turned out quite good.

Wishing you a speedy recovery

IndianaRog

Chris, such a challenge! I have to agree with Stitch that if it were mine, I would slot in a wood patch where the crack is and sand to shape. My concern with shortening it two inches would be both balance and overall looks...awful lot of work to jeopardise either!

Rest the eye and speedy recovery on that front!

Rog

johnreid

An interesting build please keep taking pictures as you progress.

tinkttt · eyes

lovely gesture helping the old guy out and hope your ey is ok now bro,you only get 2 so look after them heh,its a lovely looking object imho,i can imagine the shapoe etc when its finished heh

mogogear

For bending wood - this is what I use! It has a nice flat attachment that has a cloth cover. It steam up a storm..found it at Goodwill for $5.00

It can sure make wood very pliable!! Steam..bend a little ...steam bend a little more.. as many times as it takes..

johnreid

I used to use an abandoned Expresso Machine for small bends, for bigger bends I used a torch heated pipe and soaked the wood, easy way to get burnt by the way.

flywheel61

Thanks for the ideas folks, problem is, as I said before, I used exterior plywood, which means it's pretty well waterproof, and won't be effected by soaking in water or using steam,

.

I think my choices are to either use an end block as Shaun suggested or cut off the stern, as with Odilon's boat, which doesn't seem to effect the balance on his anyway.

Cheers

Chris

mogogear

The rounded detail of your hull is a winner with me--It is a widely used technique for the obiche wood block ends for boats.. on the bow and the stern.

If any bumps happen while sailing-- you just use wood filler to make the dent go away..plus if that is where your rudder tube is going to be, you have a firm piece to insert and hold the tube

steamboatmodel

I glued a block of wood at the stern of mine and sanded it to shape.
Regards,
Gerald

flywheel61

Thanks for a the tips, since last posting, I have decided to place a round block at the stern rather than trying to bend the ply around the curve.

Also since the last posting I have obtained a copy of the oringinal instrctions printed in the December 1979 issue of the UK magazine, Model Boats through fellow member Stitch, and this has helped in several areas, and is greatly appreciated.

In fact, the original istructions, whilst they suggest using an infill between the stern sheeting and bulkhead/rib 'E' anyway, it is far easier to make it out of a solid block in the first place. The area still needs a little fine filling, but it is much easier using a solid block, than trying to curve plywood around such a tight radius.

The other area I had difficulty with was with rib 'A' at the bow, all was fine when I attached the first side, but when I attached the the second side, clamping pulled the rib at an angle. Not only did it look wrong it pushed a noticable bump in one side.

The only way to fix ther problem was to carefully saw down each side between the ply and the rib, and then break of the rib as close to the foot of the stem as possible. Of course the instructions arrived after I did the initial glueing, and it says in part, that there is a need for a chamfer/bevel on this rib (closest to the bow), which I have now done,

After glueing the remodeled rib back in again it now looks reasonably square, and ther is no longer a bump in the side. There is a lot more to making a boat than I imagined, and I really 'take my hat off' to the old bloke I'm doing this for who used to do it fropm scratch, without any plans.

Cheers

Chris

MooseMan

You're doing a wonderful job there Chris, can't wait to see her finished. How are the eyes??

flywheel61

Thanks Odilon, right eye is now going fine after a little hic-cup, left one gets done tomorrow, which means another week, before I can get back to the boat again - now I'm in the swing, I can't wait to finish this one and do my own,

.

Cheers

Chris

Kev&Mel

Look forward to seeing the finished boat .

mogogear

Great fixes!! It is what defines boats..things are going to go wrong...the fun part ( most of the time) is seeing what you do to solve the problem.. Keep it up

Stitch

Good fixes Chris

It is all a learning experience and you will be an expert for the next two

flywheel61

HOORAY, I can see properly again, I can even type without glasses. It's amazing the difference to your eyesight, cataract removal makes.

So now I can do more with the boat without risk. One more thing I learned from the original Basil Harley instructions, is that it is far easier to use sticky tap for holding units together whilst the glue sets. I had been using chocks with my clamps and found it difficult to get the correct angle - long live sticky tape, and you can recycle it if your careful,

.

The hull is now complete except for a few minor touch-ups with the wood putty.

Rather than trying to use the plans to cut out the deck shape, I used Stitches suggestion of turning the hull up-side-down and drawing around it leaving a little excess which can be sanded back.

Because I know the line of the hull isn't exacty the same as the plan (let's face it, who's is that perfect), it's easier to sand the the deck back to the hull shape.

To ensure the deck doesn't move, I have clamped it to the hull. I have also purchased some size A1 tracing paper, so that I won't have the problem again with the hull base and the deck cut out, because the plans only show one side of both parts. By placing the inked-in tracing over the deck it will be much easier to move it around slightly if needed, before placing the carbon paper underneath.

Next will come the deck cut out, followed by the cabin area.

Cheers

Chris

Graham-Jilly

great intructional thread this.
you may even convert me to boat building

whistleman

flywheel61

Well, I've done a bit more work on the boat, cutting the rough deck back to the sides of the boat, when I found that it wasn't as symetrical as it should be. This involved cutting down beside a couple of the ribs and sanding some of the rib side away,

The deck was then cut out for the engine and the cabin, again there were a few alterations including a narrowing of the span between the the two compartments to accomodate the the oiler,

It was then on to making the cabin, I drilled holes as close to each window corner as possible so I could fit the jigsaw in.

The finished cabin, before assembly. I think, even with the use of the jigsaw the cutting out and sanding of the windows is probably the mosrt difficult/ time consuming task undertaken yet. So much for such a small addition. The next problem is going to work out the chamfer need on the side walls as the back door is much narrower than the front set of windows, oh well another challenge.

Cheers

Chris

logoman

Great progress Chris, great thread.

RocDoc

Wow, you've made some fantastic progress Chris. I can't wait to see the next installment. Keep 'em coming.

Pete

Les

you are making great progress, well done.

flywheel61

After the difficulties of cutting the windows out, I thought that was the end of the problems, wrong,

. I then had to wrestle with putting the sides of the cabin together,

Even though the front and rear of the cabin was parrallel, the sides, not only sloped backwards the rear of the cabin also sloped upwards to meet the sloping rear deck. There were no clear directions about the degree of chamfer needed to join the four coners, to it was a case of guestimation, and infill the corners later with plastic wood putty.

I also decide that the properller shaft housing going straight through the sloped keel didn't give enough support so I added a support block, made from very dense/heavy Australian hardwood called, appropriately, Iron Bark.

I forwarned that there might be some difficulty in installing the roof, so had a hard look at the cabin walls before proceeding. I noticed that, where the curve at the end of the front and back finished was squared off where it met the side walls. I therefore thought the top of the side walls needed to be chamfered so that the roof curved continuously. I was right as the next two pics, showed,

I found that he walls curved nicely all the way and the 1.5mm roof was easily held in place with rubber bands.

The next task is deciding how I will hold the engine in place. The Basil Harley instructions recommend the use of epoxy resin to glue the engine base to the keel of the boat. However, this means that the engine is in place for good. I rather think I might take the approach of previous designs like the Bowmans Snipe, and bolt through the keel of the boat. I realize this has some issues with water tightness, but feel that modern day silicon products should solve this problem. Bearing in mind that the hight of the engine-boiler combination, is some what taller than the originally recommended engine, I don't want to add anything that will increase the overall height, and potentially upset the balance of the boat.

Any other ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers

chris

logoman

how thick is the bottom of the hull Chris?

flywheel61

I don't know why i've been calling it the keel, doh, but the hull is 1/4" exterior ply (the next best thing to marine ply) and, if I go, "the screw through the hull route", I'll be using 1/8" countersunk brass screws.

Cheers

Chris

Stitch

Coming along nicely, Chris.

I also had real trouble with the cabin and it was that stage that involved the most swearing and cursing for me

I made my cabin a little different in that I put the sides of cabin to the inside of the front and the back. It caused just as many problems.

To secure the engine on my Mabel, I made a tray (with sides) out of light alum. and glued this to the keel. The tray was made to almost the exact size of the tray that the engine and boiler were sitting on and it holds the engine snugly in place.

Good luck with it!

Sandman

Great progress Chris, and excellent workmanship. (Just like your decals mate.)

Graham-Jilly

a bit more progress since we saw it last

flywheel61

Ive done some more work on the boat, after careful consideration I decided to install a keel. The reason for this is to help with stability, due to the top-heavy nature of the engine, and because living on top of The Great Dividing Range means that it's always breezy and having a keel will make it easier to sail in windy conditions,

The keel has been shaped towards the bow of the boat,

To fasten the engine in place I had a choice of either glueing the engine and the flame tray assembly to the base or using screws through the base of the hull. I chose the screw method, as gluing the engine assembly to the base would make it more difficult to service and repair. The screws holding the keel to the hull can also be seen in this image.

The other reason that I chose the brass screw method is that this system has been used in the Hobbies Arrow boats for more than 70 years. As an addition I put a nut on the upper side of the hull, which has two advantages, firstly it aids in steady the screw through the hull, and secondly it leaves an air space between the hull and the flame tray, which will give better air circulation, and lessens the risk of rotting the hull or rusting the underside of the flame tray.

The flame tray in place,

Finally the engine and flame tray,

The deck was then glued in place, using masking tape rather than trying to use clamps and wood lathes, as the deck is held to the hull in many more places than if clamps had been used. This reduced the amount of fill (if any) between the hull and deck.

The completed deck - hull joined

All that remained to do was to sand back the deck to the hull.

Now I have to wait for the weather to improve before I can finish undercoating the boat - -5 C with wind chill factor isn't good painting weather, brrrr.

Next to decide the the colour scheme, any ideas would be appreciated.

Cheers

Chris

MooseMan

Looks the business Chris!

Les

That is looking good Chris, before you started undercoating the hull did you seal or varnish it first to waterproof it??

flywheel61

As I said previously,

Flywheel61 wrote