Gad, it's hot!....

So damned hot that I had to find something I could do in the shade outside my shed.  I had previously got the primer on the Marblehead and felt that should stay at that level while all the moving home went on.
I noticed a deck stringer, cut ages ago, slopping around on the framed hull of a Greavette gentleman's racer I made from Gary Griswold plans.  My dear friend, Rich Redfern of Forida, he of the much missed Model Boat Wizard website, had sent me a huge pile of plans, all of which I will get round to eventually, but oh dear, Mr. Griswold, you didn't build the Greavette, sir, did you, to check your drawings!

Ye gods!  I'd quickly traced the frames onto 3mm ply and bandsawed them out, glued them to the keel and put a bit of chine stringer on.  Then it got put aside ages ago in preference to some other designs intended for the Vintage Boat Company, but he got busy with re-launching laser cut versions of the old Aerokits range, so my ideas became my hobby boats!  One of those was a Darby One-design hydro, from Oulton Broad, where a need was felt for a 1500 cc inboard stepped hydro class.
I happened to have the design and even a build article for a real one in Motor Boat and Yachting Annual for around 1951, I think. Here's a real one racing in the day:-

Here's the model so far:-

As you can see it's further on than the Greavette.

It has a rare offset rudder as evinced by the slot on the right of the divided transom.

Here we have the Greavette as at today's effort to get a bit of strength into it.

The diagonal is to put some opposite twist in the hull.  My hope being that after the glue sets, the nasty twist will be gone or very nearly so.

And once that's done, I will go round filling the gaps where the notches were also badly drawn and then I'll add some ply to the frame edges to bring the frames out to the correct width and shape.  It all sounds mighty long winded, but it isn't, because you do a bit and then go away and do something else while it sets. And I'm quick anyway, so I can do this kind of thing in a flash.  That and the fact that I am notoriously tight-fisted and waste nothing.  I have almost no 3mm ply left, just scraps, so a re-frame is out of the question.

One day it really will look like this:-

Did you ever see a more elegant ventilator?

Now the dilemma.....

I have a set of four mahogany dining chairs.  They were made by my Grandfather in the 20s or 30s.  They came with a table which my daughter and family still use, but the chairs fell apart years ago because of glue fatigue.  OK, I have a pack of pearl (hide) glue, I have a cast iron glue pot to melt it in, I even have a butcher's thermometer to make sure all is correct, BUT.  I really don't have the time to scrape the joints meticulously clean, for, if you don't, hide glue will never stick a damned thing.  Ask me how I know!  

So...here I have a very nice supply of Cuban mahogany.  Not Philipino, not West African Redwood, but real, solid Cuban.  Red as a cheap whore's lips, dense, beautifully figured, so long seasoned you can measure it in generations, not just years.

Suitably ripped on Bazz's saw, it would supply a good load of materials for the model boats.

Yes, I KNOW I always sing the virtues of steamed pear, but it would be a real nod to old Grandad Field if his (I'm sure he'd admit) knackered chairs had a new life.  And I promise not to use hide glue!

Showtime in Springfield...

Today, as a guest of James Finnister, I went to the Spalding Model Engineering and Hobby Show.
I was thinking the Hobby bit might be a nose curler, but there was nothing of the kind there.

In fact there was a huge selection of model boats and a fair bit of model engineering.  Most of the boats were very good, with model lifeboats VERY good.  I just can't get wound up about model lifeboats!  Surprisingly few warships, fortunately.  Hovercraft, which is very unusual.
The Gauge 1 mob had their usual oval test track with beautifully built model locos, in steam.  But they don't chuff. In fact they make no noise at all, less than an electric, which begs the obvious question......

Equipment was a bit sparse, but I suppose one mini mill from China looks pretty much the same as another and has just as much backlash in the screws, rendering it useless for serious purposes.
The 3D pushers were there too. One of them had a laser cut wooden framed machine!  That's gonna be accurate, ain't it!?  It sat producing perfectly useless truncated pyramids.  His comment when I said about all the lined, stepped junk it inevitably produces was, "just put a load of filler on it", was so typical of the arrogance that these people have.  When their ghastly machines can do what Modelu's machines can do I'll treat the 3D printers with some respect.

The price of raw materials is frightening.  I bought some copper tube for a central flue and cross tubes for a boiler I want to build.  Damn all really. £4-80!!  I picked up a piece of nickel silver, 1mm, 3"x3"...£2-80. I put it back!  Ye Gods, all this game is just so ridiculously expensive these days.

Once again, model flyers were infinitely friendlier and more pleasant than model boaters.  Inviting me to far flung clubs I shall never see, but warmly encouraging.  I wish they were not so expensive to join.  Actually many model boat clubs are just as pricey, but I can put a model yacht on the river up the road and that's all it costs, nuttn, but to fly costs membership and insurance, as does model engineering.

Absent, from this model-fest, were model yachts, unfortunately as I was hoping to see how they're rigged, and slot racing.  I mention this last as there is a new part of the Springfields complex which has installed a huge King slot track and which is flogging Scalextric and a lot else besides.  Surely they should have been there with a stand.  But what WAS there of a car nature and you won't see these many places, was round the pole cars with diesel, glow and petrol engines.  I realised it was here in Linclonshire because a wee bit up the road is England's one and only tethered car track.  Once upon a time, the land was dotted with them, but we're down to just one and that's in somebody's private garden.  The guy had wanted a car, but couldn't afford the collectors' money asked for them now, so he made a furnace, made some casting boxes, melted some old car parts, made the patterns, made the moulds in foundry sand and cast the aluminium in the sand moulds of major model car parts.  Then sanded and polished them until they looked like those in my copies of Model Car News from the '40s.  A remarkable endeavour.

So, there we are.  A fair attempt at a general model show.  All old farts of course and like so many other hobbies it will all fall by the wayside when the current crop of practitioners die off or become incapable.

Thanks to James for a drive of his 7 1/4" gauge petrol/electric loco and to Issy for the ride to the show and back.

Day rounded off with tea and cake at the Fenland Aero Club nearby.

Full steam ahead, Mr. Bates....

I may have mentioned a while back, that I had acquired a Stuart Turner Double 10 steam engine for, frankly, a song.  It was intended as a "pension pot" item. I would clean it up, add reversing gear, add value generally and flog it when it seemed sensible so to do.

Well, I took it apart very carefully, keeping the front cylinder's bits in a labelled box and the same for the rear.  I cleaned the bits and painted them in a very fetching Rover Teal Blue.  When I went to re-assemble it, I found the crankshaft wouldn't turn and the piston rod wouldn't move.  Now I don't know why that happened.  I have no idea and frankly problems like that don't intrigue me...they infuriate me.  They defy logic, like computers do.  And if machining was needed I couldn't do it as my lathe is too small.  So, being a problem of that kind it became a metaphoric case of "out the window".

I've had a chum for a few years who has grown from a Mamod toy steam fan to being a sometime dealer/restorer of model engineering.  He has gathered by luck and judgement a nice collection of engines and workshop equipment.  I approached him about the D10's problems and he invited me round to see if we couldn't come to some arrangement.
Well, we did!  To both our satisfactions I think, which is always an excellent result.

I have no idea exactly what I have, but both engines run beautifully on a merest whisp of air.
Both are very attractive items.  The vertical was in a GRP tug hull, with a decent boiler.  I have little to no interest in tugs, so I think the engine and boiler (or a newer, bigger one) will be put in a suitable river launch hull.  The problem is, I cannot find out what the engine is.  It's built from several castings, so must have been a published design.

And no, it isn't a Reeves Trojan, despite certain similarities.

Here's the rather elegant 1882 horizontal, which can be much better displayed to show that elegance even better.

This one will run if you blow down the pipe!

I think I've done well here.  Two engines (and a very good GRP 30" tug hull!) which I can put to use straight away and, when cleaned up, are worth about the same as the D10 with far less work.  If I hadn't have done this deal, a D10 will have sat on a shelf gathering dust and 2 very sweet engines will have been unused and unloved.

Result!

Elementary, my dear Watson...

Said the Great Detective, but I've just gone one better than his large magnifying glass.  I rarely buy something as a pure self-indulgence, but I couldn't resist this when I realised I'd missed it for a while and it was being "bumped" on a forum.

So I told Chris about it and she admitted she'd always wanted, but never got, a microscope as a kid. And I was just the same.
But this one is special. It is a product of S.E.L.....Signalling Equipment Limited.

Something special I did get as a kid was a steam engine.  It was also an S.E.L.  I had it until we moved afloat in 2003, which pissed me off BIG time.  A colleague sent me the two cylinder version recently which was really nice of him and I have found an S.E.L. electric motor, mint and boxed and a marine steam engine in similar condition, but the single cylinder machine has eluded me since my original went missing in the move.  I will find one some time, I'm sure, but meantime, this will do very nicely.
The strange thing is that those oddly shaped tweezers were already a part of my childhood and I don't know where they came from or when they disappeared, but a pair just like those oddly shaped things accompanied my slot car and model railways days and the oddness of the shape used to fascinate people and here we are with them in a mint, unused S.E.L. microscope set!

Life is strange.

Recommended...

Today, I needed some Emery cloth.  To clean the rust off my old Champion No. 2 high speed drill which I gave my No. 1 son, but he never bothered with it and it rusted in his large damp shed.  He brought it back and left it with me and I can't just leave it.
Having a clear up in my shed last week I found a tin with canal stuff in it from 2003 when we first moved afloat.  Amongst all the stuff was a leaflet for a company locally, called ESP Marketing. When Chris checked the address on the 'net she found it still exists and is in fact, in the same building as Ketts Autopaints, of whom I am a regular customer and have been for years.
So, in to Ketts to get Emery cloth and I'm told that they don't do it (!!), but "the old geezer next door does" at which they bellow for Dave.
A decidedly ambulatory unstable old fella came in the connecting door twixt units, but immediately struck me as a man who knew finishes.  Not, alas, the nitrocellulose wood finishes on his old leaflet, but paint generally and all things painty.  Resisting his constant adverts for acrylic muck and water based anything, I asked for the Emery cloth.  Now, most places charge 50p a sheet for ordinary old wet 'n'dry by the sheet and heaven knows what for Emery, but Dave sold me four sheets at 50p each....for Emery!  Then happened to mention tiny brushes.  0 and double 0 AND pure sable.  He had cards of them......a quid a pop.  Come on!  These are at least 3-50 in art shops!
By a very spooky chance, today was the last day ESP Marketing officially exists.  Tomorrow all that stuff will be Ketts.
If you want Emery or tiny sable brushes in the Fenland area, hie thee over to Ketts in Algores Way, Wisbech and have a word with Dave.  Soon, Ketts will find the supplier's invoice and you will NOT be able to get Emery for 50p a sheet or a sable 00 brush for a quid!!

Dave will be there for another 6 months for advice, than he understandably retires.  I wish him well.

Odd's afternoon off...

Thinking that maybe nicely made steam engines might be a hobby and liking stationary engines, I dragged Chris off to Stretham Old Engine, in the wilds of the Fens this afternoon.  It has been a gorgeous Spring day today (make the most of it!!)

So, finding no brown signs, but a single hand made one on a fence at the end of the High Street we just about found our way to the engine house.  An old pumping station in fact.  I believe I was last there in about 1977 when I visited it by boat with friends.
I suppose things must have changed since then, but it would be difficult to be specific.  The little leaflet that I still have somewhere is the same, but on different coloured card.  They have opened up a couple more buildings in which is the engine I actually went to measure, an 1829 Guinness vertical engine with architectural features.  Very pretty.  I might have a bash at that.

Then they have got the diesel that replaced the beam engine on display.  I'm not sure if it runs, but looks like it might.  It's a huge 4 cylinder Mirrlees, which drives, or drove, a centrifugal pump.  Each valve rocker is bigger than a Mini's cylinder head!

The old beam engine....well, that is just so huge that you can't take it in, much less consider it for modelmaking.  You can't see it all at a glance.  In fact you can't see it all in maybe 6 glances.  It is difficult to even see how it works as you must revolve your head, eyes, your whole being through more degrees than you can count to take it all in.  The valve rod has an eccentric sheeve that would quite easilly pass over my ample figure and goes off about 20 feet, out of sight, to a valve somewhere.  The "rod" is actually a girder-like structure that would support that cylinder head-less Mini.  To see the top of the cylinder requires that you climb TWO flights of stairs.  Then to see the beam another long flight takes you to the Beam Loft, in which are displayed some original wooden patterns for the engine's castings, but only the tiny bits.  Frankly, I could find nothing that tiny.  I'm talking at least a square foot of old wood, full of worm and nothing that small could be found on the engine itself.  Maybe they were for some other engine, but no mud-caked Fenny had bothered to ask.
Despite the enormous 24 foot diameter of the flywheel, it seemed strangely lightweight construction, having just 1 inch rods as spokes, cast into the rim.  The crank, by contrast, is vast.  5 feet long, by over 2 foot diameter and fully 12 inches thick!

All this vast, but strangely airey construction drives not a pump as such, but a massive scoop wheel.  39 feet in diameter and able to lift 30 tons of water per revolution, it does 4 revs a minute.  It is made half of iron, half of wood. It was installed last in 1830 and can still be used if necessary.

I realise that it has all been done by volunteers, but it was a bit down at heel and very poorly lit.  I suppose there isn't the trade to warrant a tea shop, though that would have been nice on such a day.

An entrance fee of £3 wasn't too bad, but then there ain't that much to see to be honest and there was no easy place to park!  But it was a pleasant hour or so on what has been effectively the first day of Spring proper.

Deafening silence...

As a friend said, this morning.
Well, yes, but why say anything when you can't think of anything TO say?

My 7 year old grandson apparently told his Mum yesterday that he felt "hungry, bored and empty inside"!
Well I know what he means.

Since losing my old cars because the Landlady insisted I get rid of the old caravans in which I stored stuff, I have, effectively, lost my hobby.  I have always had an absorbing hobby of some sort, but no more.  Modelmaking, I now realise, is too much like work, indeed mainly IS work, but now I am retired and pensioned and am not allowed to work because of said pension, I have no idea what to do with myself.  I used to maintain an interest in models as a hobby by sneaking odd hours in on some NON work based project that I had going round the old brain box, but now, there is nothing in the old ain box.  Tomorrow I shall take back all the model aircraft that my old friend, Pete has given me.  This is becauseI can't justify the cost of model aircraft club membership, insurance, fuel, etc.  And it's always blowing a wind round here, so I can't try anything out on the farmer's field.
I can't take his models and do nothing with them or worse still, sell them, so they must go back to him.  Engines must be sold as they're no damned good sitting on a shelf.

I have the Marblehead yacht for better weather, once it's done, but it's too big for my car, so will need son or son-in-law to cart it about.  I have smaller power boat models, but that kind of model boat bores me in 5 minutes!

I have slot cars, but that's pretty much all I've done for work in the last 3 years.

I have model railway dioramas.  I have toy steam.  I have inshore model fishing boats in 1/48th scale.
Do any blow my frock right up currently?  No.

So, that's where we are at the moment.  If the blog kind of dies out, you'll know why.  I guess....it happens.  As does the inability of this bloody machine to allow me to type and correct normally when it feels like it, so apologies for the typos.