Having built several springers I thought it was about time I had something to push / pull (should be ok for the tug when I've built it as well)
So while I was exhibiting at the Midlands ME, I was opposite Mobile Marine Models, and after several agonising seconds, there new vac formed barge hull was purchased (amongst other things) Ok first problem, I have never worked with this material before only ever building in wood, but what better place to have a master class than the ME exhibition. So after a quick chat with Bryan from MMM, off to SHG for glue, spare sheet and another lesson, back to my stand and a chat with Ron from the Daventry club and I was armed with enough info and potential to really get myself in a mess / stuck to plastic / melt the whole thing into a blob of ABS gue.
So to the workshop, hummm take knife in hand and attack !!! Ok now I have several (big) bits of plastic----hummmm. So a quick call to Stavros who points me in the direction of what to next and I'm off again. All is going well, and its almost all together when I discover (the hard way) that cyno really will not work at 9pm at night in a cold workshop, the only thing it would stick was of course me to me.
So finally this morning (in a warm workshop )I managed to put on the wooden "bump" rail around the hull. Not sure if barges have them, but a least I got some wood into the build. I chose not to use the "cargo forms" that you get with the kit at the moment and decided to go for a sand barge. So cut out template, sandwich the styrene sheet, warm with a heat gun, make like sand piles, leave to cool, trim cover with glue (uhu) then sprinkle silver sand (which had been dried in the oven--Mrs Steamboat was out )over the top. I turned up the 6 bollards, which are bolted through the deck which has an additional bit of 3mm styrene under each bollard for strength. So here are a few pics of the build and the finished hull. I just need to ballast it with some lead sheet, but no one is having a bath at the moment.
