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[nhp651]

got up early this morning \nd made a start on the other cabins.....such a long haul yesterday that I thought the sooner I made a start the sooner I'd have them all finished.......hopefully have them all done today, lol

[Tug-Kenny RIP]

I like the idea of the card. I didn't know it would bond with Aliphatic resin to fibreglass.

You made a good job with the straight edges and the effect is great.  Keep them good ideas coming.   

ken

[nhp651]

It sticks like the preverbial, Kenny...........and it's so quick to bond, after a couple of minutes being held, you have to cut the section off with a scalpal if you make a mistake,

I've never modelled with card before other than for detailing such as plating but can now see why some modellers use this sort of material for actually building their models.
neil.

[nhp651]

I finally finished cladding the cockpit inners with stringers after 13.5 hours work over two days.........finishing them off by sealing with cellulose sanding sealer and then allowing them all to harden off before doing anything else.

Finally today I fitted the side plates which incorporate hand grab rails onto the fore cockpit of the Field Marshall and Mrs Smuts.

Strangely this boat and the Earlier Anne lettitia Russell are the only two boats in the RNLI fleet that I can see were fitted with such plates and the plates are generic fittings from the Anne Lettitia Russell kit, with slight modifictions to the shape of the bottom end and the surface which butts up to the grp cabin to make them fit the Field Marshall cabin..

These were drilled with a 0.8 mm drill bit, pins inserted and then corresponding holes drilled into the grp cabin sides.........fixed with cyano they'll be allowed to set wnd then the plates will be faired in with polyester filled and then sanded down tomorrow.

[nhp651]

Today , in modelling parlance, was a day I liken to the title of one of my favorite films "Bad Day at Black Rock"...........absolutely nothing went right.

Started off by painting the insides of all the cockpits with Humbrol satin teak brown.......I keep a good stock in of that, as my trawlers all had the superstructures painted in that colour.....and it usually goes on nicely even by brushing..............err NO!!!!

I had two tins half full and thought I'd use those before opening another brand new tin...first mistake!.

Got through the first half tin on 3 cockpits and was painting the fourth when I ran out the first tin, so stirred up the second half tin and used that to finish the 3rd cockpit and the other three left.

The stooopid thing was that I didn't paint one whole set from one boat at a time, but painted the fore cabins of all three boats and then went on to the aft cabins.

Result was that the first tin dried matt and the second dried almost a gloss....and the one that I swapped tins halfway through dried a mixture of both..............as can be seen in the picture.........drat and dammit.

So just as I was finishing the painting of the last cockpit and before all had dried..they still all looked a satin finish at this time......my mobile rang and I picked it up with my hand that had been holding the cabins.....thus I got paint on the thing ( I am a messy painter sad to say)......and who was on the other end.......a courier from Southampton saying that they were picking the model, that I had built for Guernsey, up from my house at 10.00 hours tomorrow morning.....GAWD!!!....I hadn't even labled ther lifebelts yet, never mind packerd the b***** thing..........rushed in to the house with the carrying box to find that I couldn't get into it to pack the boat because my electric screw driver battery was flat, and didn't have time to unscrew the thing by hand.......................but then I also needed to shred a couple of Argos catalogues for packing.........then the damn shredder kept over heating and stopping after about.a hundred pages........it was slow going with a capital S........well I think I would if I had to shred 2000+ pages of glossy paper, lol.

Anyway, finally got the boat packed up, and then went back to modelling.
It was then that I found that the paint had dried like garbage>>:-( ...so decided I couldn't lose much by carrying out an experiment with the "wooden" cladding on the outside of the cabins.

Starting with the smallest cabin first..the fore cabin for the H F Bailey, I decided that instead of cladding with simulated wood printed paper as on the old Anne Letitia Russell, I would use wood grain sticky backed plastic.
I put a piece through the shredder....fair enough..the planks came out perfect and the exact width I needed.........

they laid  and stuck OK, but sadly there isn't the "stretch" in it like there is in wet glued paper and on the larger cabin top of the Mary Stanford, I had to peice around the fore port side front of the cabin with smaller pieces......and it just don't look right........so back to paper strips and that cladding will have to come off!!!.
so all in all.................a very wasted few hours in time, but not in knowledge.........I won't mix tins of paint again, nor will I use stick on vynil for my planking.......suppose a result, really.
neil

[Norseman]

Hey Neil

I think you did get a mention in that film ..........

Hector David:                     Real cool guy.
Reno Smith:                       Doesn't p(br)ush easy, huh?
Hector David:                     Well, that's it. That's just it. He p(br)ushes 'too' easy.

  the devil made me do it

[nhp651]

you must have a photographic memory matey..........I couldn't  remember that, lol

[Norseman]

Nah - I just never go out Neil
and it's one of my favourite films anyway.
I did have to look up the names though.

Sorry you had a Bad Day At Fleetwood

Dave

[heritorasphodel]

Hi, Neil.

I think in the photograph you put up of the Mary Stanford earlier the fore shelter was planked almost the same way as the shelters on the Anne Letitia Russell, ie. angled out from a king plank rather than going all the way across like the aft shelter.

Also, only the top was planked. The sides were vertical, and look to be single piece of timber going fore and aft. 

I think this was the same arrangement on all three boats, the fore cabin planked from the centreline and the aft all the way across.

Andrew

[nhp651]

No, andrew....HF Bailey is definitely planked cross ways, the Field Marshal. as you say is as ALR, but yipppeee......as you say the Mary Stanford is similar to the Anne Letita Russell, but with the planks running in a "V" backwards rather than forwards with the sides of one piece ( it looks like)..................so many thanks for that I owe you one.........makes it a whole lot easier.
below a shot of H F Bailey.

[nhp651]

the aft all the way across.
Andrew

you're right about the aft cabins though, and these are a doddle because there is a ridge running down each cabin which demarkates the top from the sides, although the sides on the aft cabins are planked, and not sheets, judging by the photos available.

cheers for that matey.......most helpfull.
neil.

[heritorasphodel]

No problem. Always happy to help 

Andrew

[Neil]

Thanks to the mods team and especially Martin and the guys.....in the immortal words of Jack Nicholson.........I'M BAA-AAACCCKKKK

Mind you I fancied calling myself Mary Staford just to confuse, 

[Neil]

so! back to the build, and a little catch up, lol.

well, I wasn't happy with the cladding I put on the other day and stripped it all off.......that and the fact that Andrew, quite rightly pointed out that I had clad the cabin of Mary Stanford wrongly...........

Anyway..........I set about cutting and gluing on to the aft edges of the open cockpits, the cladding strips in 1.8 mm ply today.......now, that seamed to go a lot better than yesterday, and the cr***y painting is now just a long past minor irritation.

I also made the raised cockpit surround for the fore cockpit of the Field Marshal and Mrs Smuts to take the fold down windshield to protect the helmsman/coxs'n.

Finally I fitted the funnels to the H F Bailey and FieldMarshal boats....I marked them out, drilled the perimeter of the hole to be cut out, and then reamed out with the side of the drill bit, before sanding smooth to take the funnel. Note the only funnel to have a capping of the three boats is the Field Marshal....this was made as a master from milliput and then moulded. in polyurethane resin from a rubber mould.

[Neil]

Funnel fitting

[Neil]

It's the little things that take the time to make and adorn the model with......

today I cut and glued extra cappingsa on to the cabins, sanding them down when set.........also made two sets of locker doors for the fore bulkheads of the H F Bailey and Mary Stanford front well decks.

Those I made from plasticard and brass handles.

I'll post more of the catch up later.

[Neil]

Now getting closer to the point where I will be cladding the cockpits with their Paper simulated wooden planking.

Have today put on to the cabins the knuckes where the tops meet the sides...these were made from 2.. card and glued with cyano.

They will then be painted and the planks lain upto them for a clean finish.

On the actual lifeboats these knuckles were actual strips of timber to cover the joints and stopping water inpregnating them and causing springing of the planks.

[Neil]

been doing a little work on fittings .............cutting the vent cowl shafts to length, trimming the companionway for HF Bailey, and a few more odds and ends.even painted the trimlines on the cabin sides ready for cladding..it all gets to one conclusion in the end.

[Neil]

I was at a bit of a crossroads in the builds the other day, and couldn't really concentrate too hard on the next full on part of the build......the cladding of the cockpits with printed paper planks................ or something else.................I had already repainted the insides of the cockpits with a single pot of Humbrol, making sure that they would all come out one shade of teakbrown colour, so I sat and fiddled a bit whilst I was watching a none decript first formula 1 gp of the season............wish I hadn't now as there were more highlights left out by BBC than actually in the high lights prog..........reminds me of a time back in Canberra Australia when I was watching the "highlights" of an FA cup final match from the UK...watched it avidly for about an hour with a total lack of goals in the game....when at the finish and the chaps came on to talk about the game.......the talked about a goal packed match where one team beat the other 2 : 1......the dingbats at the ozzy TV company had edited out the 3 b**** goals, lol...........anyway back to the lifeboats.

I diddled and doodled today and fitted the fore cabin mast tabernacle with locating pins so it won't slide down the face of the cockpit whilst setting later.
the shot with the cabin and the two squares and steel rule was my method of finding centre on a curved cabin top............

I also cut the timbers for the mast bases that fit and swivel in the tabernackles, and the timbers for the large "samson" posts scattered around the decks of the lifeboats whilst trimming and sanding the base sleaves for the posts.

Finally I made up the water and oil tanks for the boats.....the oil pumps were put to brackets and fittings added to the oil tanks.

[Neil]

set too to make the three main masts yesterday...........burned them down on my laithe using course 40 grade grit paper and then smoothing off with 120 grade......then I drilled the ends of both the mast and the "weighted" balance block which makes up the end of the mast, inserted a brass pin and glued the two pieces of each mast together using epoxy adhesive.

I also cut the samson posts to length and shaped them to profile and fit into the square deck brackerts shown in a previous post.

[Neil]

20 hours spread over the past two days has seen me clad the 6 cockpits in "timber".

I tried earlier with stick on wood grain vynil, but as most of the cabins have curves within curves (best way of describing them) the vynil would not stretch and curve to follow the pattern of the cockpits and so I reverted to the easier method of using glued printed paper, as with the old Anne letita Russell boat...............the paper will "stretch" when wet with glue and is much easier to apply and cover the complex shapes of the cabins.
Also all but two of the cabins are sectional in that they have trimming strips and the planking is in specific sections and easier to lay.
On only two of the cockpits..the fore cockpits of the Mary Stanford and the Field Marshal and Mrs Smuts, are the two halves of the cockpit ( port and starboard sides) laid around a "king" plank whilst on all the other cockpits the planks ate laid across the top and then down the sides of the cockpits, which makes it much easier to lay.

Unlike the old ALR kit where I advocated the cutting of the planks with steel rule and craft knife.......which was a real laborious and very time and craft knife blade consuming project ( there is nothing on this earth that blunts a sharp knife blade quicker than cutting paper.........honestly). I have found a new and certainly much quicker way of cutting my paper planks accurately in a fraction of the time..................whilst packing up cushioning backs to transport my Flying Christine model to Guernsey the other day I hit on the idea..............and today I cut  about 100 planks in just 60 seconds...............I fed my printed wood grain paper through my shredder........brilliant....and if I say so myself............a bl**** stroke of genious, lol.........

so below are a few shots of the process of planking the cockpits and some of the finished cabin tops...........just need to varnish them now with Ronseal water based outdoor clear varnish..............BEWARE   if anyone intendes to plank their boats in a similar method........the printed paper WILL NOT  withstand the onslaught of pre sealing with cellulose dope..........It has been tried and the cellulose laquer brings off the printing ink of the paper land leaves it all smeered and colourless..........from experience

[Rottweiler]

  you are certainly making it look easy Neil! A great idea shredding the paper,I cant do that though,as I have a cross cut shredder! The "king"plank seems to be simple doing it that way too. I used coffee stirring sticks,and ice lolly sticks ,which were steamed and glued to do my Liverpool cabin with,and lots of coats of Marine varnish.
Mick

[Neil]

the whole idea of designing a kit, Mick is to make it as easy as possible for the buyer/builder to construct.

When I first made the Anne Letitia Russell prototype, I started and tried "planking" the cabin cuddies with real timber..firstly with 1/64th ply and then very thin veneers of timbers.....both were ripped off after very poor quality finish...spent hours and hours on that part alone, in the end opting for the printed paper method.

Many modelers have, since the kit was released in 1995,tried and failed trying to plank their cabins with timber, and only a few have succeeded................those that want to take the time and say at the end of the process....i have done it as the real boat should be..........well..........erh yes to a point............but the real boats never had GRP cuddies under their wooden cabins anyway.......so purity is.............just in the eye of the builder,.............. and if paper planking makes the job easier for the majority of the kit builders then I have done my job, and using a shredder to produce those planks is even better still.

[furball]

It can be done - the problem is that the plank edges aren't parallel, as you're skinning a convex surface. It took a bit longer than you've done it in Neil.

This was a pack of veneer I picked up at a car boot sale, years ago - I've no idea what the wood is. Some is stained and some not, with about 9 coats of varnish over it.

Lance

[Neil]

Oh I know it can be done, Lance.................but you have to have a lot of patience, good knowledge of timbercraft and plenty of time, and I must admit........it does look pleasing to the eyes..........however the (and I'm not being patronising or condecending to anyone) but the idea of a kit is to make things easier for the modeller than throwing them in at the deep end.

As for the cladding............I varnished my cabins this morning with a first coat of Ronseal varnish..........it's opaque white in the tin but in 20 minutes dries to a rock hard clear ( no yellowing) finish.you can get it in gloss, satin or matt finish .

And that finish is just after one coat of the stuff......has comeup quite nicely...................It also sets rock hard and really stiffens up the paper cladding..
neil.