Thank you all, for your kind comments, as you may know ime quite new to model boat building, I have made a couple of boat from kits, (Robbe Antje 11 and a Billings Krabbenkutter Cux 87, see profile photo) but not done any scratch building before now. So I will try and answer questions and help if I can.
I do like this place as there is some very quick and knowledgeable people here.
Yes the Tug was built from plans by Richard Webb 12” Thomas Tug, from Model Boat Mag I bought second hand from Weymouth show last year. It’s a really nice basic plan with no scale, but it did not have any lights, mast, or all the little things I think make a model.
Well to be honest I sort of built it for the wife to sail, its small enough for her to use and get used to. I now spend quite a lot of time modelling (Six heart attacks had something to do with that) so I have learnt that if I can get her involved a BIT, I can spend more time at my hobbies. A quick word of warning, I enjoy all types of fishing, sea, (beach and boat) coarse, and bit of fly. Thing is she can also fish now and beats me, and I taught her.
Anyway I started with the plan and it went from there, the usual tracing paper, styrene, glue etc. As I continued building, the brain kicks in, (Yes it does work thank you, well sometimes) change this, add that, I was reading my monthly Marine Model Mag, then I remembered someone built some barges for there tug, looking through I found it, Feb MMI Barges by Jim Clark. That’s where the fun begin, I know very little about scale and how to put it into practice, that’s where the scribbling came in and I came up with what I have now. Still got bits to do as always.
The hole tug is scratched built, the tug is built out of different thicknesses of styrene and the barges were built from thin ply and balsa wood for the frames, then covered in styrene. I used the usual glues, cyanoacrylate, araldite and plastic weld, one bottle of weld had thin styrene leftovers put in to make it thicker, as you can go over the joints with thicker weld to strengthen and fill little gaps after you glued the joint normally.
The lights and mast, fire hose, railings and anchor are made out of brass, so are the bollards and tow hooks, I do have a small lathe, so turning is a bit easier but still learning to use it. The tyres and oil drums are all made from styrene, the bow fender was made by the wife, (love her) and the side fenders are fishing beads, and in the box at the back are more beads in two sizes. The motor is a 280 run off a 6 volt battery
(5 AA pack rechargeable) with a 10 amp Mtroniks speed controller. All the lights are 3 volt and run off 3 AA rechargeable batteries. One ordinary acoms servo for the rudder and a acoms 2ch receiver. Plus three acoms switches one for the tug and the other two for the barge lights. I used enamel paints most through an airbrush. The barge coal was got from e-bay (good old e-bay) and laid and glued over bubble warp then varnished to keep in place. The other barge has got wood in it from a cherry tree we planted and died. Poor tree but good for me, us modellers use anything we can get our hands on.(recycling at its best) still got to finish this off.
I will try and put some more photos and better ones (after a chat to Martin as this computer thing is new too) think I have covered most of it and its ok. Sonic.