Hey,
the inaccurate hull is the one topic.
First question was, whether the marked strake is correct in general as it is going up from the stem as marked.
From my feeling this looks pretty wrong and I am considering to grind it off.
If somebody has a picture, that proofs it could be, then I can avoid that extra work.
Thanks for hints,
Harald
Harald,
What you must take into account is that this kit is only representative of a Clyde Puffer, there never was a puffer named HIGHLANDER, the rubbing strakes were there to prevent damage to the hull when berthing at stone quarry slipways and along with the rough weather in the West Coast to prevent hull damage.
When off loading on beached sand the derrick was used to off load into horse drawn carts and no damage was encountered by the carts.
In all of my researches when I scratch built my Puffer, which is featured in the steam section ,I have never come across the lower bow strake at the angle of yours,
You can have that strake but it is higher at the bow dropping to the stern more or less opposite to yours.
Having looked at the Mountfleet web site and the picture gallery the funnel should be at 90 deg to the boiler housing, the windows in the wheel house are wrong and should have much thinner window uprights and the toilet was never up on the bow of the boat but was mounted at the rear of the boat just aft of the boiler room door on the starboard side.
I live in the town KIRKINTILLOCH where many Puffers were built on the canal and we have a very good reference library which features many boats built here and no doubt if the Mountfleet model was further studied more inaccuracies would be found.
If you were to grind off the lower strake it may damage the plating pattern but no doubt you could rebuild them up.
Go ahead and build your model but it would never win prizes as a true to scale model as there never was a full size Highlander.
I don't know what you could do to straighten out the keel.
I hope that this will help you to decide on the inaccurate bow strake.
George.