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Only just found this thread.  Nick, well done for getting it all out to your friends here.  I hope 2026 is kinder to you and yours than 2025 was, and to all the other Mayhemers who are struggling with health issues, theirs or their loved ones. 

I have recently become, almost without realising it, a full time carer for my wife who has a rapidly advancing dementia condition (not fully diagnosed yet as she had a CT scan only last Monday).  My model building has stopped entirely (although the chilly workshop isn't exactly enticing this time of the year!), but I still get to the club sessions and have a small group of other friends who are being very supportive.  The advice to talk through the situation is good, although I, like many of us I suspect, feel it's imposing on others to burden them with our troubles.  I have to make an effort to let it out.  Luckily, my own health is holding up OK (frantically touches wood!).  So here's to a compassionate and supportive future for all of us struggling a bit.  Getting old is no fun, but it is, as they say, better than the aternative.

Greg

I have been approached (via Model Boats Magazine) by a company who wish to commission a scale model of the cruiser HMS Ajax as she would have appeared at the Battle of the River Plate. Scale woulf probanly be 1:192.

I have given them some information regarding the availability of plans and at John Elsey's suggestion, referred them to John Haynes but  it doesn'y look like John really wants to take the project on and understandably so now that he has effectively retired.

The Norman Ough plans held by the Brunel Institute show the ship immediately pre war but are still apparently only available for viewing and not reproduction. The ship is also featured by Taubman plans in the USA (Sambrook Collection I believe) but I don't know what period they depict.

Any suggestions welcome.

Colin

I have (I think) finished the boat, it’s been a bit of a journey to get a degree of accuracy but I am happy with the end result .. sort of.. !
Despite my original reservations it is at the end of the day a model of the Gwen Eagle, but with a lot of licence it seems on the part of the models builder.
In researching it there were two versions of this boat, one built in1938 at 40 feet and lost at Dunkirk, and a second at 41 feet being built in 1946 by the same people that built the first one. The thing is I can find no evidence of a version with the long front cabin as it is on the model, and in bringing it back to a usable and sailable condition then I have relied on a few things for reference purposes, one is the original builders take on his view of the model, another is a picture of the actual Gwen Eagle on sea trials, two others are pictures of slightly different models of the boat, and finally a shipwrights design for a model of the boat, a little bit of detail from each contributing to my final version which I hope is acceptable as a model of Gwen Eagle ?

One thing that still puzzles me is the question or scale, at 40 and 41 feet long respectively, and the model being 42 inches long, in round figures that comes out at approximately 1/12 as has been suggested, my take of 1/18 scale based on the 1/18 figure would make the originals at around 60 foot long and of course they weren’t, all in all then something of a hybrid perhaps on the part of the models builder ?

Thanks for everyone’s help, advice and input about it, I need to add more ballast as she still sits a little high on a float test after adding some weights after an initial one and I am looking forward to actually sailing her .. weather permitting of course, the park pond was frozen last Sunday !!

For some reason I cant attach images... lets try this...  no, doesn't work...

hi there, of course you can post it on your website, I also built the fire float as well from your website - but sadly I dont have pictures of that model on the water. 

Ah, sorry about the plan amendments - I keep meaning to clean those up but other jobs keep getting in the way...

May I make a suggestion     - I think an easy build Vosper perkasa boat would be an excellent easy build - any chances of you doing one of those.

All suggestions gratefully received and considered, of course. I have thought about the Perkasa, but it has some compound curves which are hard to do in sheet balsa, I was also rather tempted by the Mercury of Stavros Niarchos, but that is even more curvy. And I do like to have a wide spread of boat types in the range - there are lots of planing hulls and fewer displacement ones...


I also have a fair number of boats on the slipway. I shall put some pictures on a later post. The ones in the recent queue are:


The Lark - this was a request from one of our American cousins, who sent me some photos of a New England Lobster boat converted into a water taxi, and asked for some plans. I did these, and then thought it might be useful to make up and got most of the way there before other jobs took over...


A modern corvette - this was the result of a conversation with someone who had made up a 'fantasy' boat as a display item. I thought it would be a good testbed for water jet propulsion, and started on a (huge) 38" EeZebilt frame...


I was asked what I thought were the hardest things for a first boat modeller, and replied "mounting the motor and joining the skins at the bow". Then I thought I could design a boat where these jobs were easy. When I looked at what I had done, it looked rather like the Surfury, of Cowes-Torquay racing fame from the 1960s. I built up the hull, but put a sloping stern on it, which I think was a mistake, and I want to correct this before trying it out. I hope it will prop-ride like the originals...


And finally, I asked an eight-year-old at a party what sort of boat he might like to make, and he said "a paddle one". Indeed, I don't have one in the range, so I am doing a 30" Waverley with independent paddles, though the original doesn't have them...


So a Perkasa will have to join a bit of a queue...

You have to applaud the miniaturisation of the systems and the power available from motors today allowing everything from Jets to Helicopters to fly. Amazing.

730 days later!


With stuff happening over the last few years and then unhappening again and having to squeeze a quart into a pint pot (huge unit full of business stock and gubbins into a wee workshop via many trips to the tip and anew owner carrying away loads of moulds and wargames model stuff) I had a damn good tidy up of the wee workshop so I can at least get some work started on this Monitor as it will fit easily in my car and wee workshop!


The plan is to make the lower hull including bulges from a solid piece of Beech or Oak to provide some ballast and then build the hull up from that using ply etc. If I can get a piece quarter sawn then so much the better as it will be less likely to dish or warp. A better option might be to make my own hardwood ply with layers of the timber joined together with lashings of epoxy glue.
The hull will be just over a metre long and 335mm wide, with 40mm deep bulges.


I am going to build a turret that just revolves at the moment so I can get back into things without going too complicating and being put off. I probably could do it but 'firing' guns are something I can go back to in the future.


As the Monitors were quite simple, the upper works are basic, and I already have kits of the 2 and 3pounder AA weapons so do not need to make them.


Once I have started I will put some pictures up, be patient 

I've watched his progress videos - what an amazing model! 


He also built a WW2 Battleship Yamato and a USS Enterprise.


Massive projects!

You can see the improvements in each hull! Brilliant.