This will be an occasional posting of my attempt to build a 32 ft Surf class lifeboat fitted with working Hotchkiss cone drives instead of propellors.
A few years ago whilst on holiday in Poole, Dorset and visiting the RNLI Headquarters I went to the Old Lifeboat House where there was preserved the RNLB THomas Kirk Wright a 32 ft Surf Class with Hotchkiss cone drives. The simple way to describe this type of propulsion is to think of small paddle wheels, not on the outside of the hull but on each side of the keel with each pair of paddles driven by a separate engine. Thus water is pushed back to drive the boat forward. The paddle wheels were level with the outside of the hull so nothing to get fouled in shallow water or a debris field. This 'different' method of propulsion matches my love of building 'odd-ball' lifeboats so the visit and photgraphs were filed in my brain as 'an interesting build to do at some time'.
Last year I bought a copy of an old engineering periodical from 1936 on ebay.
Why buy this?? The answer was an article inside describing the Surf Class.
Also included in the magazine was a double spread drawing of the boat and the cone drives!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now the Arun wheelhouse has been completed my itchy fingers needed some exercise so the drawings were scanned, printed at 1/12th scale, and so this build was born.
The short building board was dug out fom under the bench and the keel laminated and set up.
The frames were cut from 4mm birch ply and erected on the keel.
To produce a rigid structure the end boxes were decked as well as the maindeck.
Next job will be to add a few stringers to stiffen up the hull even more then it will be a case of sorting out the cone drives to see which bits of the hull will need modifiation/removal before planknig is done, as it is easier to look through the skeleton of the boat rather than a fully planked one.
Next installment will be as and when I solve the problems as they occur.
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Topic: Surf Class lifeboat with Hotchkiss cone drives (Read 3564 times)