V8Druid
do it as well as you can,but learn to do it better
OK ..... seem to have wet a few appetites yesterday ?
T'ain't plant, but it's a blog so WTF
this one, although small was a 'bit special'and worthy of its own commentary ..... chapter and verse ........ so pull up a chair and get the pop corn out
Guy came to me one day with the usual ... " my boats got a bit of a leak - a big one - if I arrange for it to be pumped out, can you get it off the water when it's afloat again "
Bitch of a location, but fortunately not a very big, or heavy boat, so the lil' Rapier'd do the job ... sod all else was going to get to where it was.
brought it into the yard and left it drain out fully, for a day or two, before getting it into the shop.
Was a bit flexible when we picked it out the water, but having had a good look at it, we'd decided that, at best, this thing was maybe 2-ish+ mm thick ... or should I say THIN ... plates/sheets .... never seen one less than 3mm plate and trying to handle this thing was like jelly juggling
Anyway ..... we got it in and onto some trestles .... carefully (all these things, no matter how much of a dog they were, were 'someone's babies' ) and we treated them with care .... we usually had enough to repair, anyway, without any more 'issues' arising ...... and this one needed kid gloves
We'd normally start by finding material good enough to attach the repair plates to and this one was gonna be a real challenge
we took our hats off to whoever had built it originally ... like origami in sheet steel ... also realised, on examination that this'd been through several 'past lives' and'd been altered/extended before , which was going to make for some interesting 'details'
so, as said ... find summat to weld to ..... the overplate had been agreed at 4mm .... any more and'd have been too heavy going back in, so we were effectively doubling up on the hull thickness ... anyone who's tried welding 2mm to 4mm will know where I'm coming from with regard to 'issues'
the stern was the easiest, straightest and probably the most solid part to start with......
after cleaning off the hull of anything extraneous..... like welded on patches, rubbing strakes, lumps of weld, fibre-glass patches, pitch plugs, whatever and cleaned a stripe around the hull at a suitable height, above the water line, we'd cut and shape suitable plates ready for stitching in position .... this one was a particular PITA as we also had to put a fold line into some of the panels to follow the original lines, under them ... can just about see it in 4th pic, but'll be more visible shortly / further on.
moving forward to the prow, it'd appear that the only thing keeping the bugger afloat, had been the build up of crud in it ... Malcolm, the owner, had given it a bit of a knock apparently, shortly before it'd started shipping water and presumably disturbed whatever was passing for caulking and keeping the water out ...... that was aside from all the other holes in the bilge plates, that were equally well caulked, by the pustules of rust and tish that, we'd found from experience, kept most of these 'past their sell buy date' tubs, afloat
you can see the 'pustules' covering the bilge plates .. and these are little uns .... some were right through ... others were craters with paper thin bottoms !!
your average canal boat is covered in these ...... if they ain't maintained properly ... i.e. lifted out every 12-18months, allowed to dry, scraped and wire brushed off and re-blacked with a couple of coats of best bitumenous ..... owning one of these is not a cheap hobby ... done right
T'ain't plant, but it's a blog so WTF
this one, although small was a 'bit special'
and worthy of its own commentary ..... chapter and verse ........ so pull up a chair and get the pop corn out Guy came to me one day with the usual ... " my boats got a bit of a leak - a big one - if I arrange for it to be pumped out, can you get it off the water when it's afloat again "
Bitch of a location, but fortunately not a very big, or heavy boat, so the lil' Rapier'd do the job ... sod all else was going to get to where it was.
brought it into the yard and left it drain out fully, for a day or two, before getting it into the shop.
Was a bit flexible when we picked it out the water, but having had a good look at it, we'd decided that, at best, this thing was maybe 2-ish+ mm thick
... or should I say THIN ... plates/sheets .... never seen one less than 3mm plate and trying to handle this thing was like jelly juggling Anyway ..... we got it in and onto some trestles .... carefully
(all these things, no matter how much of a dog they were, were 'someone's babies' ) and we treated them with care .... we usually had enough to repair, anyway, without any more 'issues' arising ...... and this one needed kid glovesWe'd normally start by finding material good enough to attach the repair plates to and this one was gonna be a real challenge
we took our hats off to whoever had built it originally
... like origami in sheet steel ... also realised, on examination that this'd been through several 'past lives' and'd been altered/extended before , which was going to make for some interesting 'details' so, as said ... find summat to weld to ..... the overplate had been agreed at 4mm .... any more and'd have been too heavy going back in, so we were effectively doubling up on the hull thickness
... anyone who's tried welding 2mm to 4mm will know where I'm coming from with regard to 'issues' the stern was the easiest, straightest and probably the most solid part to start with......
after cleaning off the hull of anything extraneous
..... like welded on patches, rubbing strakes, lumps of weld, fibre-glass patches, pitch plugs, whatever and cleaned a stripe around the hull at a suitable height, above the water line, we'd cut and shape suitable plates ready for stitching in position .... this one was a particular PITA as we also had to put a fold line into some of the panels to follow the original lines, under them ... can just about see it in 4th pic, but'll be more visible shortly / further on. moving forward to the prow, it'd appear that the only thing keeping the bugger afloat, had been the build up of crud in it
... Malcolm, the owner, had given it a bit of a knock apparently, shortly before it'd started shipping water and presumably disturbed whatever was passing for caulking and keeping the water out ...... that was aside from all the other holes in the bilge plates, that were equally well caulked, by the pustules of rust and tish that, we'd found from experience, kept most of these 'past their sell buy date' tubs, afloat you can see the 'pustules' covering the bilge plates .. and these are little uns
.... some were right through ... others were craters with paper thin bottoms !!your average canal boat is covered in these ...... if they ain't maintained properly ... i.e. lifted out every 12-18months, allowed to dry, scraped and wire brushed off and re-blacked with a couple of coats of best bitumenous
..... owning one of these is not a cheap hobby ... done right
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