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[Neil]

I recently bought what I can descripe as THE most complete Atlantic 21 I have ever bought or owned, and is the 10th of its kind that i have owned.
If it hadn't been for the fact that one half of the upper sponson hull had been cut out it would be classed as virginal or totally untouched, and i have never seen one as totally complete as it is, including motor, mechanical speed controller which itself is a museum piece and still in its wrapping. RNLI literature is in abandon and there is even a letter from the senior helmsman of Minehead's 21 with a plan he drew [nts] of the trailor for the boat added that he drew and posted to the original owner in 1980.
I am stunned by its completeness and just so lucky that i only paid £140 plus costs and postage for it.
So, with the one that i got as a wreck for more than i paid for this beauty, I am going to build them along side each other but with a difference between them both eventually.

[Neil]

more pics of this gem

[KitS]

Lovely stuff. 


I've got one just like that too, but minus the extra drawings etc. 

[Martin-S]

Marvelous but where on earth did you find that for £140??

[Neil]

i would never have seen it as it was in an on line auction but a friend saw it and sent me the details.
might call it gready on my part but the starting price was just £30 with no bids until i put a bid on to win, and eventually got it plus commissions and posting............just lucky that a friend saw it.
The one sat on the box partly built is one i bought a couple of months before my opp 15 months ago, and in a sorry state, and that cost me £225.
Had thae latest one made it ebay with all the other parts, i could have seen it going for £400 because of its completeness.

[Neil]

A friend was desperately looking for an Atlantic 21 and had asked me if I would build the "new" kit for him,and finally I relented and said reluctantly that I would at Christmas time if he hadn't found another ready built one.
Just a couple of days ago I saw one for sale and pointed it to him, and that is now a done deal.
So, I decided tonight to just do a little on the one that I have been restoring and to change it a little now that I will be building the untouched 21 as a production boat, and called Spix's McCaw.
So the one I started to develope tonight I am going to build as the pre production B300 with the experimental seating pod where the 3 crew sat one behind the other, with no antena or self righting airbag on a quad  mast arrangement.
Should be something different down the pond.

[Neil]

this afternoon I cleaned up tyhe crew seating pod, and added sopme of the detailing to that specific boat.
I made a mould for one of the front seats some years ago and cast a few seats........tomorrow i'll try finding those or the mould and fit two more to the pod

[Neil]

the small replacement platform for the hand throttles has now been fabricated and glued in possition with the throttle consol attached to it.

All going well.

[Neil]

And the final addition to the 21  were a few more parts on the pod, the engine gontrol wires  feed tubes on the starboart side of the pod, and the bow and stern tow ropeholders.

[Neil]

well!!!, I've been verbally "bullied" this evening by my friend Martin in Rotterdam to do some more on my Atlantic 21 [ only joking, but just jee'd me up to do a bit more] which I should be doing now that the nights are getting colder and darker very quickly and so decided to make the paper template for the wooden deck for my rib B500,

The deck of the original prototype was wooden, and I will be putting a thin veneer of mahogony over the plasticard deck.....no planking as it was just a sheet timber covering on the original in workable pieces of ply timber laquered.

These will be done similarly.
pictures are of present boat, and as Blue Peter John Nokes would say..........here's two I made earlier, lol.

[Neil]

AND SO!!....... it had to come, the Plus 1  as in the introduction has finally come out of the box, and as a full kit, if anyone is lucky enough to get hold of one in decent condition and not started and cocked up in the cutting out of the hull and sponson halves, then they can make with reasonable ease a very nice model that fits together well.
 But sadly these days, those kits are few and far between and usually fetch a much inflated  price.

I make no excuse, as they can be tricky in the initial stages to cut out from the plastic  vac formed halves, but IF YOU USE a scalpal with new very sharp blades and start off cutting in short lengths continually scoring the same line with MULTIPLE scores 5, 6 even up to 8 draws of the scalpal and finally bending the plastic to break the cut before going on to the next section of the long cut, you will get a good line with a minimal of sanding the edge, as the fit between the parts of the hull has been well thought out and mastered.And that was what I did and cut tonight.  I have to confess though that this brings me in to double figures how many I have built 10 and 2 more that I never got round to building before soneone offered me good money for the 2 together, so I have had quite a bit of practice building them and getting them right.


Tomorrow after my eye test for new glasses, i will go on to the next stage, after sanding the edges down

[Circlip]

Another way that may help Neil is to scribe the junction line of the vac form. Problem with using a knife is the sharp edge can do its own thing and deviate from the intended line. Again, with successive strokes, the waste can be easily be broken away.


  Regards  Ian.

[Neil]

thanks for the tip Ian, not thought of that one.......have some scribes somewhere........will try on the other parts, but this morning i hadn't seen your input, and finished the trimming with a knife.........not ignoring that info though.


This morning I  trimmed off the 1.2 millimetre of plastic rim left on the hull of the rib with a sharp scalpal blade in a craft knife, and then sanded the edge smooth with 60 grade abrasive paper.


Now this is where I deviate from the instructions in the kit. instead of cutting out the round bulkhead supports that go inside the two halves of the sponsons and then gluing the sponson halves together before gluing the assembly on to the hull, I have glued the bottom half of the sponson to the hull first......

WHY , Might you ask!?

Well, when I built my first kit of these models I did as the instructions stated.........after doing so, and ending up with a nice strong construction, I went to glue it the the hull, and in the curing process that I had not checked the night before, the two halves had twisted overnight by about 3 mm out of scue, which wasn't noticed until trying to glue to the hull, and the boat ended up twisted permanently.

And so on the next model that I built, and in fact when I designed 3 years ago a D Class vac formed rib that I sold to Mountfleet models in 2022, I did the same, gluing the bottom half of the sponson to the hull first.............never had a problem with twisting since.

[Circlip]

No need to dig deep (bad pun) Neil, when the edge has become blunt on the knife blade, break the tip off and use the back edge of the blade as the scribe. Another cost saving Yorkshire trait.   


 Regards Ian.

[Neil]

i'll remember that one Ian..............even at 73 I learn something new every day., cheers.

[Neil]

IT was amazing just how ridgid the structure had become after I had mated the two together.
This morning I cut out the main deck and the  transom support plate that glued on to the inside of the transom and hull. Removinmg the inner deck access plate to the hull I glued these two items in place, making the boat super ridgid
Once they had set I cut out the removeable deck plate support plate for the access deck to sit on, and glued that also in place. At this point I also cut out the inner access for the servo for steering that is eventually covered by the crew seating pod and steering possition.

[Neil]

Finally for this afternoon and leaving all to set hard, I glued in to the bottom half of the sponsons the round pieces of plastic supports for the top half of the sponsons.

There are 4 supplied in the kit for each side of the boat, but at an early age in my build experience of these boats I decided to add 3 more per side to give better support to the top half of the sponson. I cut the circles with a compass cutter.

[Neil]

The top half of the sponson has now been glued and taped in place to the bottom half and taped with stromg parcel tape together, where it will be left now until tomorrow to make sure it has "welded" perfectly and strongly together!

[Neil]

I MUST say that I have enjoyed my modelling today more than i have done for some months.

It has been a pure pleasure to  start putting together another untouched and "virgin" Atlantic 21 rib, and once finished and running under power, it will be lovely to take to the pond two ribs that show the developement of a history made in the 1st and one of the last 21's to be made,..........my winter project has gotten off to a great start,

[Neil]

After leaving the boat to set over night i removed the tape off the hull, filled any small pock marks caused byu glue seeping under the tape and then spent a couple of hoursd sanding it all smooth and filling any small marks with Dolphin Glaze filler before sanding again.

then it was a case of cutting out and fitting the transom, hanging brackets for the outboards and other small items needed. Later i shall sand those areas smooth as well.

[Neil]

Over the past 18 hours, I have cut from the vac formed plastic a number of deck fittings for the boat whilst waiting for the filler to cure and be sanded down on the hull, and have also constructed the raised part of the aft transom plate to house the  outboard motors.

These are the anchor rope bucket, anchor deck housing, helmsmans seat, and the aft crew seat

[Neil]

Second job was to cut out the well between the helmsmans and the cross ways crew seat for the other two crew to sit on!???

Granted, that the crew given, and on the early boats manufactured by the original designer you could have a choice of 1, 2 or even 3 crew all thee wouldn't sit on the seats because 2 of them wouldn't fit on the transverse seat, there was a "well" in front of the seat between that and the healmsmans seat for the crew to put one leg in to, and the other leg going in to a strop on the outside of the seating pod!


However, although there is a cut line vac formed in to the plastic clearly made when moulding, very few builders ever  cut this out and used the scrap to make a well as per real boat. But being a bit of a stickler, I always have, and this i made from scrap plasticard last night, whether the crew are too big or not!

[Neil]

And finally for last night and this mornings work it was a case of fitting the "hidden" apperatus for turning under RC, the outboard motors  from inside the boat.

Sadly over the past 25 or so years I have seen 3 model Atlantic 21's dive to the deap six and never recovered, and it must be heartbreaking to loose a model and not recover it. Not too bad if you can recover a boat, and know from experience myself after loosing 4 in my life, all at Fleetwood lake, one lost totally when I was 10year old, and 3 intervening, of which all were recovered after going in fully clothed to get them, including one being a Ron Perrott submarine [ironic really lol] so know how it would feel to loose one of these little gems.

The problem with these 21's is that  the aft transom, although built to scale is low. Fine on the real lifeboat as it will wash out. BUT, and this is a BIG BUT we are not dealing in scale when it comes to real water.....it is heavy and takes no time at all to find gaps. And the biggest gap is where the fead tube for the radio control lines for the outboards feeds square on from the transome into the aft end of the seating pod.

These little boats tear around at breakneck speed, vastly over scale on a lake and usually stop on a sixpence and then shoved in to reverse.............and that is the problem. Real water DOESN'T STOP with the boat. The backwash just keeps on flowing, over the low transom and up through the tube for the outboard motor wires  and gradually fills the hull without the owner knowing untill they take the dive.

I am not a perfectionist or rivet counter, and as the wires in a tube shouldnt really be there i dont find it implausible to modify that arrangement and so have made a hood at the pod end to lesten this problem but also will use a nylon cord instead of wire to steer my outboards  when i get to that point and just grease the nylon to avoid as much possibility of water ingress as possible.

[Neil]

These models are minature kits within a kit, almost all from different thicknesses of plasticard easily glued and fixed with liquid polli or plastic weld from EMA. PLASTICS.
These 3 little objects are the 2 lamp holders and the radar deflecter ann made from printed parts and scrap pieces of different thicknesses of plasticard, glued together with mecpac liquid pollie or my favourite, EMA Plastiweld.

These took me about 90 minutes to cut, fabricate and sand ready for mounting on the mast later.it needs nimble fingers, or years of practice to work this small at my age, lol.

[Neil]

Had a mass attack on fittings tor the boat last night, cutting out parts from the vack formed parts and gluing to the hull and other parts, and toog a good few hours cutting sanding and gluing in possition on the hull and other parts, but in no particular order.


ALL glued with plastweld from EMA Plastics.