Now back up to £420 (Epoxy, paint, timber, plasticard and putty.
I’ll come on to the “putty” in a minute.
But now I’m back to the age old problem of making cowl ventilators. Fortunately the ones I made for the Tyne Ferry Northumbrian are perfect for the barge…although will be much shorter. So using the wooden plug I’d already made for the ferry came in handy. My small, home-made vac forming machine is useless for things of this size, so I passed the plug halves on to Jim Lane (Display Models of Blyth) to use on his high powered machine. I only wanted 4 halves (to make up into 2 vents) but he’s given me enough halves to make 6 of the things….on the grounds that as I was paying for the sheet of 60thou (about 1.5mm) plasticard he may as well use it.
In the past I’ve always had trouble disguising the 2 vertical seams joining the 2 halves together. This time around I wondered if a “mild” sort of body filler might work…but on visiting my favourite model shop I was introduced to “modellers putty”. Probably “old hat” to some of you but new to me. Comes in 2 colours – White and Green – but are the same stuff. Made by a Texas outfit called “Squadron Products” and cost me £4.60 for a tube about the size of a smallish toothpaste tube. The label boasts “fast drying”….a misnomer. For “rapid” read “almost instantaneous”. Takes to plasticard like a duck to water and rubs down very nicely. Pongs a bit though.
The pic simply shows the evolution of the halves from plug to raw fitting of the halves.
The next stage is the filling and rubbing down, fitting the semi-circular (cross section) cowl boundary strip, cutting out the cowl opening and taking about 3” off the shaft length.
The vents on this type of boat were of polished brass, and “brass metallic paint” just isn’t good enough. But I’ve been told of a fairly local company that plates “plastic” items in either gold, silver or brass (or chrome). So that’s the intended way forward at the moment. Apparently the method used is to spray coat the plastic with nickel and then apply the brass layer. The same company (or so I’m told) chrome plates the surrounds for many car headlamps and so on….and brass plating for some domestic lamp standards.
In for a penny,..in for a pound.