New work chair

[V8Druid]

" Ok. Now we get down to the hard parts (the hull's a piece of p*ss compared to the fiddly bits).

Last two shots in the previous post are; the cooling panel getting assembled in the rear swim. The matrix makes the cooling water 'run' its length to cool it. Pressure tested to 5 PSI for leaks. Doesn't sound a lot, but they start to 'change shape' at that!!

The bow area was usually used for water or sh1t tanks or both (separately of course) and again had to be completely watertight.

Pic two's the cooling panel with its lid on ready for test and three is the weed hatch with its top flange fitted and the 'tiller tube' fitted down through the stern.

Four's the water tank fully assembled and the start of the sh1t tank behind it.

Next the tish tank coming together, followed by assembled and mid 'weld up', again to a watertight (or should I say 'sh1t-tight') standard !! Then job done.

No 8 is the start of the rear deck assembly. Tank in the corner is for the gas bottle locker and has to be again water/gas tight from the rest of the boat's hull. propane's heavier than air, so it can't be allowed to accumulate in the bilge of the boat and the locker has to be vented 'overboard'!

9 and 10 show the channel for the self draining deck support structure, which again drains overboard, as you can see in 9. 10 also shows the start of the deck plates being fitted and welded watertight to the hull, to stop the rain water filling the bilges "

this one had a s**t tank AND separate water tank in the bow

note the two outlets - one piped through to the forward most tank

 

[V8Druid]

" No 1 is the 'drop on' lid made and fitted for the gas locker.
2 is second deck plate fitted and cut out in first for main gas locker done.

Next is the main gas locker prefabbed and ready to get dropped into its aperture in the 'port' deck plate.
No 4 shows the locker installed and fitted lid fabbed. Superstructure bulkhead in place too.
the 'castellated' top in 5 allows it to vent and it drained overboard via a fixed tube from the locker out the side of the hull..

6 is the weed hatch cover plate and clamp.

7 the 'loose' fuel tank with fittings and 'dip tube', before getting sealed up.

Always preferred 'loose' tanks as they didn't condensate as badly as an integral, constantly in contact with all that cold canal water, surrounding the hull.
8's all ready to weld up.

Last two are the front bulkhead assembled and fitted. "

weed hatch lid and clamp in position

fuel tank in process

 

[V8Druid]

" no1 general overall view, side deck plates in aft, b/heads attached and fuel tank sealed, waiting to be fitted below stbd. deck plate, aft.

no 2 general view of the stern.

no 3 stern deck plates fixed and engine bearers fitted to swim in engine bay.

no 4 fuel tank filler port and breather pipe. note the spillage bund, designed to stop any fuel going over gunwale into the bilge - no problem with it going in the canal - very green - just don't tip it in the boat (this is regulations)

5 & 6 first of the 4 superstructure side plates fitted in position

7 - yer comes the next one!!

8, 9 & 10. Bet they don't teach this sort of materials handling at yer average FLT training school !
Fair play to my guys they were all really good FLT operators, once they'd been shown how

Factory inspector walked in one day when I had 6 tons and 45' of boat sat on the 6' forks of the 7 tonner. He very sensibly strolled back out to his car, rang me and asked if it would be convenient if he called in, in about 15 minutes !!
He had a cup of coffee and a plate of choccy biccies waiting for him.
To be fair to them and me, they almost never found much more than a cracked plug top, or something equally silly.
Never asked the guys to do anything I wouldn't do, or hadn't done myself. "

 

[V8Druid]

" both stbd. panels on and braced, first port side panel in position.

no 6, 7 & 8 all super structure panels on & braced. Roof ribs/bearers coming along.
That damned fuel tank still hasn't been tucked in under the aft deck!!

Probably arguing about who's squeezing in to weld the brackets on. No argument really.
You'd have to shoe-horn Big Dai in there with a toe jack "

 

[V8Druid]

" Ribs on and consolidated.
Centre vertical bracing in, all ready for the roof panels to go on -and here they come.
Gently does it.
I did say they were good on the FLTs

Side panels are 5mm and roof all in 4mm.
Sides de-coiled to order, in 1/2 cabin lengths.
Roof in 1830 mm widths (can't get wider in 4mm) and de-coiled to fit width of cabin.

You'll appreciate that these weren't just 'nailed together' as we went along. De-coil has to be ordered 10-14 days in advance.
All materials came in JIT, as we were ready.

Didn't want or need to have damned great piles of plate sat about, as there were 'other things' in process as well, usually in whatever space we could find to use

See that tanks's still sat there!! "

 

[V8Druid]

" Suddenly gets a whole lot darker in the cabin with the lid on it !!

No 4 starting to shape up the 'fancy bits' fore and aft.

no. 5 Katey mog, one of the five 'Highly intelligent, fast moving, night vision equipped, furry quadruped, vermin control operatives', who kept a very tidy house, inspecting the day's progress.

No 6 - definitely in need of some 'night vision' in here now.

Note the window apertures marked up in 8 ready to get the plasma treatment.

That bloody tank's still there!!.

roof hatch in stern companion way starting to 'take shape'. "

 

[V8Druid]

" Starting to get a bit lighter again 'indoors' and the next few show you why

see that damned tank is still looking for a home

Slide hatch at stern completed and the window apertures are starting to go in

Big Dai's favorite 'weapon' - 130 amps of plasma cutter!! .... (the one I recently re-acquired, from James, who I sold it to in 2014)
Watch yer toes - here it goes. "

 

[Mogman]

I take it they are built to order?
Did you sell direct to the customer or through a broker
How long on average to build one

 

[V8Druid]

OK ----- on the home straight ---

" Well that's the one side done (we won't mention the tank !!)

fairies have been in the night, either that or the cats were 'moonlighting'

rear 'pushpit rail' (not one of my better shots) and the airless spray's out ready for action.

Wish I could've painted 'em 'that quick'. "

handrails on the roof and all fiddlies done

 

[V8Druid]

" Several coats of HBZP primer and a couple of coats of best bituminous paint by Firwood Paints.
(Remember that name guys, they make some seriously good paint and deliver next day in 5/20/25/205 drums. Not the cheapest, but not dear either and really good stuff.)
She's up on her wheels, ready to roll out into the yard. "

Atlasrob / @Hydremaduck was responsible for getting me to post this originally ..... so blame him if you didn't like it and Aiden for asking to see it again

 

[V8Druid]

" ..... used to love what I did and was lucky enough to manage to find enough good guys who shared my enthusiasm for making things properly.

Most of my guys were kids I'd had from schools on work experience, liked their enthusiasm and taken 'em on and trained up afterwards.

Rico and another youngster called Duncan were two of the best, most patient youngsters I ever had. They were as 'fussy' as I was about how our work went out the door.

......... as I always say, "each to his own". Can't beat watching a good operator on a nice machine either - makes it look alive "

" PS
The tub alongside in these, ain't one of ours.
A play boat off a kiddy's playground, in for a bit of repair !! "

" I've enjoyed looking at some of these again and sharing with interested people " and again .... been real interesting looking back at these ... can recall some/most of this as if it were yesterday ........ but don't ask me what I was doing last week

 

[Gez_lewis]

Enjoyed reading through this, very interesting.
Looks a good setup there aswell

 

[V8Druid]

the day it went to its new owner's .... " the last three are a few of our others on the water "

an end apiece was the quickest and easiest way of handling/loading onto transport - H80C on the bum and the Fairy Sapphire 7 on the pointy bit ...

.... way quicker than setting up summat bigger and getting it slung centre, for a single point lift

35'x 100" wide beam and full semi-circular stern (cut swims) .... did several of these ... a good live on size

this un had a rolled front/bow ..... was a pig to helm - customer had 'em all 'cut prow' afterwards .. was a hire fleet boat .. 'swhat he wanted

45' x 6' 10" std narrow boat ..... with a cut bow/stern

 

[Exmayor]

Brilliant Graham that was a very interesting set of pictures and description

 

[V8Druid]

" Without interruptions about 6 weeks, [was the build time] but that never happened.
Never built to a dead line.
Couldn't - there were always 'regulars' to service too.
Always took on a commission on the basis that "when it was finished we'd let 'em know".

Most customers were in at least twice a week to see their 'babies' grow!!
Never had a complaint about waiting for it to be finished.
All knew from the start and were prepared to 'wait' for one of our hulls !

....... hulls only - never wanted to get involved in the fit - not our game, at all, although I'm a reasonable chippy too.

Supplied one or two engines and also installed a few for customers who didn't have the facility to get 'em in't hole where they lived in their new boats!! .....

Below is Dragonfly.
A 'tripper' we cut the bow off, stretched from 48 to 60 feet and installed a full width rise and fall deck section in the gangway, for wheel chair access. That was a bit of a head scratch-er!!

Watch this space for some more, when I can find some pic.s of 'em "

" the biggest .... was a restaurant at 60' x 11' 6" ( might have been 12' 6"- can't remember - have to look it up). That's a tale all to itself!!

Currently at the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland (Google that for piece of engineering).
The Queen had a ride on her when she opened the 'wheel'.

As there's been so much interest, I might do a sequel - "How to make a colander float" !!

We've had some 'leaky tubs' in, in our time

Used to get a phone call, something along the lines of:-
"I've got a little leak in my boat. I'm told you're the people to talk to about repairing it"!!

first Q in response was;
"who made it, if it's a springer, we'll arrange to have it off the water A.S.A.P."
and there in lies another (Druid's) tale, assuming anyone's interested? "

" they are expensive toys, if properly maintained, which few people do. Hence the loads of repairs we've also done, over the years.

When the polskis started shipping 'em over here for 1/2 the price we could do 'em for, the a*se fell out the home produced market.
Plus, they were very nice boats too!!

So I turned our attentions to repairing the 'nails' that nobody had spent anything on for years, until they saw their 'expensive toys' shipping water and going down.

We did a lot of 'em!! "

" ..... Further to my previous reply and after spending quite some time searching 4 hard drives for these, see below the Lord William De Braose. Originally built as a floating restaurant, run by several different 'outfits' (unsuccessfully),it got converted to a bit of a tripper and went north.

Built in '90 it pre-dates digi-images, but I should have some 'real' photos of its build if anyone's interested?? I can always scan 'em in

Fill yer boots Mog'.
(The wheel is also very interesting and the other 'arf has had a conducted tour around it - she's ex-BWW - all the local team flew up, expenses paid, for a look when it opened. Poor old show when she couldn't blag me a place, especially with the amount of work I used to do for the local team!!)

Now this is " one hell of a boat " "

"
Hi Paul,
Found you some more pics of the restaurant boat, whilst searching for something else tonight.

Not my images, but scanned from old photos from BWW's works foreman's collection on the Mon & Brec "

turning in a 'winding hole' .... only three big enough for this on the whole canal, so 'navigation' was limited .... when underway -'under navigation', the licensing laws didn't apply to it so was popular for party venues

was a big old thing underway

twin engine-ed ... one for propulsion and one for leccy and an electric 12" bow thruster

finally ....... my profoundest apologies to the OP @fred for hijacking his thread ...... got into it a bit and thought - damn .. should've started a new thread for this, when I realised how much of it there was ....... perhaps Ross [ @Regy53 ], or the techy gang [ @Rivmedia ], might like to move it, lock stock and barrel --- I'll create somewhere for it to hop off to .... and if he don't/can't, I'll link that to here
G'night all

 

[V8Druid]

Brilliant Graham that was a very interesting set of pictures and description

cheers Daz .... did you never see it in CEF ?

 

[V8Druid]

Enjoyed reading through this, very interesting.
Looks a good setup there aswell

thanks Gez all sadly gone now mate .... had to quit, after the body let me down

 

[Exmayor]

Interesting you mentioning the Falkirk Wheel there Gra as I took an awful lot of that up there for Allelys, it was actually manufactured by Butterly engineering from ironically Butterly the top side of Derby. They are long closed down but they were regarded as one of the best.

 

[V8Druid]

I take it they are built to order?
Did you sell direct to the customer or through a broker
How long on average to build one

aye Mog every one on a commission, direct to the buyer/owners .....as said a bit further on (in a reply to your Q last time ) about six weeks ... if we ever had the time to just get on with one .... realistically it could be anything, subject to our regular workload ... customers knew it from the outset and were 99% of the time prepared to wait for one of our hulls

 

[V8Druid]

Interesting you mentioning the Falkirk Wheel there Gra as I took an awful lot of that up there for Allelys, it was actually manufactured by Butterly engineering from ironically Butterly the top side of Derby. They are long closed down but they were regarded as one of the best.

aye ..... think I said Pam and her team, from down here, went for a jolly up there and didn't blag me a ride up for a conducted shufty ..... was well miffed - the guy in charge of the Mon. & Brec.s maintenance crews had his own mug in our tea room .... saw that much of him and did a huge amount for them
would've loved a good look around that