Hello everyone!
My names rich, im a guitar maker from london. I got back into making model boats recently after making some pond yachts for me nephews. My dad was a captain in the merchant navy, so ive always been around boats, and making models for the small people has reawakened my love of the sea!
I am lucky enough to be this generations custodian of a collection of rather smashing marine steam engines, and i have an ambition of getting all of them in a boat, running under steam, at least once. Rather than sitting on a shelf, getting dusty. No shelf queens!
Ive recently designed and built a flash steam plant for cruisers and straight runners, it runs on meths, cost me less than £20 to build and happily drives a stuart 10 engine. Its detailed over in the E T Westbury flash boiler thread in the steam R and d subforum. Im a big fan of the pioneering work that some of this forums members have done in the world of flash steam and monotube boilers and associated stuff.
Im in various states of completion on three steam boat builds. A displacement hull straight-runner and two hydros built along 1890s to 1920s lines.
My other love is gaff rigged racing cutters.
I am at the 'making the sails' stage in a build of a 1 metre keelboat. Shes 1.3 metres loa including bowsprit, carries nearly 14 square feet of sail, and a scary amount of lead, shes made of double diagonally planked walnut with boxwood and rosewood trim.
I like to make boats out of the offcuts left over from my guitar building commissions and projects, and i love making guitars from walnut...
So most of my boats are brown!
Ive also got a 2 foot free sailing model of a skerry racing cruiser, that was built in the fifties and i restored last year. shes a pretty boat but sails like a toy, so i built the above cutter to get some proper sailing in.. ;c)
Theres also a 5foot long model of the 1890s americas cup defender 'Mayflower' waiting to be finished, but shes too long to fit in the bath for trim tests, so is awaiting construction of a test tank facility in the back garden...
All of my boats except mayflower and the skerry have been built to my own designs, without plans, to my own methods. This is cos i have no idea what im doing, but im willing to make a guess and give it a go... 'measure twice, cut once. Do a lot of research, and then get stuck in!'
There are actually a lot of similarities between building guitars and model boats, they are both lightweight, often hollow, stressed wooden structures, normally with some electronics and often some string involved!
Most of my boats end up a wee bit heavy, but shiny and made of nice wood... ;c)
Anyways, ill mostly be hanging out in the steam section, seeya!
Cheers,
Rich