Started on a 1m catamaran on the weekend as another design as you go project. It will be modelled roughly on the 18' Ron Given (NZ) designed 'Hustler MK2' 'A class' catamaran I restored in 1979, (pics) and so far it's progressing ok. Hull is from three 25mm strips of polystyrene laminated using foam safe contact spray. Laid the 2 blanks on a flat board with 2 4" nails through each to stop them moving, and weighted them down for a day to set. While waiting, I cut the decks from 5mm ply and shaped the bow sections. When the blanks were dry, I glued the decks on with lots of PVA glue, (which sticks foam well to wood,) and weighted them down with clamps sideways to stop them from moving. Left them for 2 days to set in my warm shed then gave the bows a rough shaping. Next was the fun part, shaping the hulls using a Surform file which creates a major mess with lots of vacuuming needed. The beauty of it is, is that the basic hulls were shaped and tapered (bow to stern) in about an hour. The laminating seams are used as a guide when shaping, plus eyeballing and straightedges. Today, while the deck sides were still parallel, I set the hulls up in the work table and routed out preliminary spaces through the deck for winch, rudder servo and radio. Tomorrow, I'll hopefully be routering a side taper to the decks, (hulls will taper bow to stern on bottom and sides) The hulls will then have to be refiled to the new shape. Shaping is done 90% with the Surform, then longboard sanded and hand sanded to the final shape, later to be completely sealed and glassed. Crossbeams are 12mm ally tube with orange conduit bored to a tight fit and epoxied to the ends, then steel saddles epoxied over them. The whole tube/saddle assemblies will also be drilled and screwed together to prevent any tendency to turn. Center beam will probably be a double like the 100% cat, (yet to be worked out). Would be nice if they could be made like the originals, but welding thin ally tube might not be feasible. JB

When I first posted a thread under ... a dreamproject.. I didn't realize it was the wrong forum category. So here is my built blog. I will spare you the original introduction as I have made progress which and most of you are already familiar with my project. The hull was built merging 2 methods on a simple keel plate from plywood, bow and stern structure bread and butter and hull in between 3mm planks on frame. The entire main deck is intended to be removable with a drainage irrigation system of plastic corner moulding (from a building supplier) along top of hull and flush at poop and back deck structure. The deck is made of 1/4" plywood skeletal structure incorporating midship deckhouse. Hull glassed with lightest cloth available after 2 coats 2-epoxy sealer and paint primer followed by final coat except top (above waterline) grey will be applied once I have finished doing any necessary adjustments. There have been a lot of them since I realized many inaccuracies in dims etc. I wasn't happy with. Here are photos in the progress (some may have already been posted in the original post. More a bit later next week.

I will, most likely, have to rename this Blog, at some point. In the mean time...please do not expect much for a while as she is in her very early stages. First a disclosure: This hull was built for me by another gentleman. It was delivered in a not quite completed state. Therefore I have spent the last two month working on it to get to it's present state. So.. what is it? She is one of four ships in a class that was later enlarged to around eight maybe ten members of the class. Her main armament was eight 5"/38 caliber twin turrets. She and her class namesake sister were both lost during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. This ship is most noted due to the loss of an entire generation of one family, five brothers. This should be enough for identification. She is being built in my preferred scale, 1/48th or 1/4"=1'. This ship was used for numerous camouflage scheme experiments and, sadly, there is little definitive documentation to pinpoint her second to last and last schemes carried. That said, my plan, subject to change without notice or reason, is to present her as she appeared following her New York Navy Yard overhaul, or perhaps as she may have appeared after repainting in Placentia Bay NewFoundland, 1942. She measures out to 11' 3" and her power plant is to be two 24 volt Buehler motors. Pictures of her and the build to follow. Wish me luck please, she will not fit in my van....

Good day to you all. You may recall a number of comments being made and asked about model engineering lathes, I think it was late last year 2024. I said when I get time I will put something together so here it is. I have a Myford Super 7 and I think it was built in 1952. Myford have the information, so if you know the serial number, you can easily trace it. It has been used and has a couple of dongs here and there but is still very accurate and parts off like a dream, using HSS. Due to its size it would struggle with carbide. These lathes have bronze split bearings in the headstock which makes them very rigid which reflect in the machining ability of the lathe. Lathes with roller bearings in the headstock tend to lack the same stability, hence the issues with part off. I machined 4 sets of bevel gears out of ali-bronze for the steering mechanism on the William C Daldy (old steam tug here in Auckland, google daldy.com) with a bore of 1-1/4 inches finished true and parallel. The OD of the gears was close to 3.5 inches. The lathe handled the job well and it took me 40 hours to machine all 8 pieces. I also made myself a fixed steady out of 6061 aluminiun, which you can see from the pictures. The OD was too large to fit over the saddle so I had to use a boring bar to turn and part off, from the ID and OD. I can highly recommend a Myford machine as they are excellent quality, but as anything which is good quality you pay for it. I had to make a 21 tooth gear for a special thread so I turned the blank up and hand cut the teeth. It did the job perfectly. If you have any questions please add to the conversation. Cheers Ian and happy modelling.

And another project to work on. I have a scratch built "frigate " which I tried experimenting on with dazzle camouflage. Mainly constructed from balsa for the hull and superstructure made from odds and ends in the world renowned "spares box " . All worked as only a very simple 2 channel set up. I also have a French built model which I'd bought for the grand sum of £5.00. A nice little runner, unfortunately the deck never really fitted that well and continually leaked resulting in it becoming an impromptu submarine after getting swamped at the lake. As soon as it was rescued from the depths of the lake, and dried out, I had tried to reseal but unfortunately it's never been truly resolved. So with this in mind plus needing a bit of shelf space, I decided that I will combine the 2. Going to be a fun project. The aim will be to basically use the hull of the frigate as this is definitely watertight and transfer the superstructure of the "submarine" . The hull being balsa will also be lighter so when completed I should also have a nice turn of speed

I've been into the Hornblower series of books since elementary school, but it was C.S.Forester's The Captain From Connecticut that lead me to Horry. The first story published has Hornblower in command of the 32 gun frigate Lydia. I've always wanted to build a model of Lydia, but, of course, there were no kits or plans to be had. My friend and I have a 16 foot Windsprite daysailer, hull #1 of 16 built, which we named Lydia. In the picture, the 20-something girl in the 40 year old boat is also named Lydia. After starting on Constellation, i was thinking of donating or selling that model, so I wanted to build and RC square-rigger I would keep. Lydia came to mind again, but I what plan to use for a fictional ship? I decided on a British frigate and since the lines for one were in Chapelle's History of the American Sailing Navy, and getting a copy would cost under $10 US, so that's the boat I went for; HMS Macedonian of 38 guns. At 1:36 scale (like my Constellation) she would measure... Beam: 13-1/2" (34.3cm) Length on spar deck: 55" (140cm) Length of the hull: 59" (150cm) Length over the rig: 85-3/4" (218cmcm) Draft: 6.7" (17cm) w/o ballast keel, 10.2" (26cm) w/ballast keel Making her a little smaller than "Stella." Later, after I'd already built the hull, I found out Lydia, of the novels, was based on the Perseverance class of frigates. One of the pics attached shows the profile of the Perseverance in front of that of the Lively class showing how small she would have been by comparison. Actually, if I had built Macedonian at 1:48 scale (which is what the plans were) she would have been very near this size. Anyway, what's done is done, and while I don't have the ship of my fictional hero, I have a ship that was one of 16 ships built to that class. Built at Woolwich Dockyards, England, in 1809, and launched on 2 June 1810. In October of 1812 she encountered, fought, and was captured by the American frigate United States. Captain Decatur of the United States was intent on preserving his battered prize, and after two weeks floating in the Atlantic, she was repaired enough to sail to the US. She was officially taken in to the American Navy in April 1813, though she spent the remainder of the War of 1812 blockaded in the Thames River in Connecticut with United States. She was decommissioned near the end of 1828, and broken up at Gosport (Norfolk Virginia) While not a glorious history, full of battles, the Lively Class did have great histories in battle; Lively, Resistance, Apollo, Hussar, Statira, Horatio, Spartan, Undaunted, Menelaus, Nisus, Crescent, Bacchante, Nymphe, Sirius, and Laurel. Ships that fough at Lissa, Naples, intercepting the Spanish Treasure ships, and more. My model is a representative of a great class of frigates of the Napoleonic Wars, even if it isn't HMS Lydia.

Picked up a nicely laid up glass hull of the Smit NEDERLAND. Spoiler alert; it won’t be the NEDERLAND.

Following the build of my BYMS and the restoration of my Zambezi River Gunboat sternwheeler I was looking for a new build. Obviously have been aware of the PS Medway Queen so the next project had to combine paddle wheels with minesweeping so HMS Medway Queen is now in build. I bought a 3D printer in the summer and have had lots of fun printing various trimarans, an air boat and a pontoon boat along with a rock crawler, trailers and a range of model boat fittings. The plan is to scratch build the hull and print the paddle wheels and as many fittings as possible. I bought a set of modellers plans from the Medway Queen Preservation Society a few months ago and found that some of the dimensions were getting to be unreadable as the plans have been copied many times, this was a major issue with the paddle wheel plans as I couldn't read the dimensions for the wheel diameter and eccentric diameter. After emailing the society to see if they had a better copy they mentioned they had all the original plans in their archive and I was welcome to inspect and photograph anything I needed. We were on holiday in Kent in September so added to trip to the Medway Queen and had a great day on board and examining the plans, highly recommend a trip to see her - details at https://www.medwayqueen.co.uk/ Back home I decided that 1:48 would be an ideal scale, giving me a model that will 1.18m (3' 10.5") long and big enough to 3D print most of the fittings. The plans do give enough detail when scaled to 1:48 so I produced a set of 20 body sections that were scaled and printed on orange card, transferred to 3.5mm ply and the full set of sections mounted to the build board. Currently about half the hull is planked and as I've run out of timber I've used the time to sort the feathering paddle wheels. Had to make a decision to lose some historical accuracy as the Medway Queen has 7 floats on each paddle wheel whereas mine have 8. It's so much easier to work in segments of 45 degrees than the 51.4286 degrees required for authenticity. I'll make the paddle fascias removable so I can change to a 7 float version at a later date. The paddle wheels have been tested on the bench and do feather when under load after a bit of tweaking to remove friction in the floats and eccentric rods and hub. Just waiting for more timber to arrive this week so I'll finish the planking, fair the hull and cover with epoxy and cloth. Should keep me busy for a few months!

The parts have arrived, let the build commence

As promised, attached are a series of photos showing the build of Thunderbolt. Its about a 1/10 scale size taken off the original plans used to build the full size which we did back in the sixties. I have included some photos of the full size version, but sadly over time, they have deteriorated slightly so the clarity is not 100%. I have a few issues getting the balance right so it will get up on the plane. Reluctantly I have removed the V drive with the electric motor now driving directly onto the shaft but as yet I haven't tested it. The dummy engine is close to the scale size of the boat so I was lucky to find it. If you go the Glen L's website and search under Gallery (I think it is) Thunderboat, you will find more photos I uploaded of the build etc. Anyway I hope you enjoy the photos as I got quite a kick out of building it. I notice the photos haven't come out in the order I wanted but they are all titled so I am sure you will follow OK. Cheers and keep modelling. Ian

This is going to be a long project, never attempted anything smaller than 1:30, so a 1:48 project is going to be fun. It all started with me finding a copy of Eric Minett's book 'The Coast is Clear: The Story of the BYMS' in a local charity shop. I'd never heard of the British Yard Minesweeper (BYMS) but on reading the book found it very interesting, especially the mine sweeping ahead of the D-Day landings. I posted about the book on here and nickthesteam very kindly offered me a Sirmar hull, all the plans and some fittings. I've just finished my last large build, the RAF Crash Tender (just waiting for the last few fittings to arrive then I'll get some pics and video of her afloat), so the BYMS came to the top of the project list. I'd contacted Barry at Sirmar and bought some more fittings and spent a while collecting props, shafts, motors, rudders etc. I've also been doing a fair bit of research into the BYMS and decided I want to build one that has some sort of local connection. As I'm originally from the East Coast of the UK with family links to the Lowestoft area I found that Minesweeping Flotilla 163 was based at Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth in 1943 and the ships of this flotilla were BYMS 2036, 2040, 2057, 2079, 2080, 2161, 2167, 2194. Additionally 2079 was one of the first ships in the D-Day Landings and has a very interesting history, so the decision was made to build a model of 2079. The first stage of model building is complete, knowing what will be built! My purchases included a set of three plans 1 x 1:48 detailed drawing of BYMS 2172 (previously designated as J972 and YMS 172)/BYMS 2253 (previously designated as known YMS 253) 2 x non-scale drawings of the YMS 419. These are very detailed and heavily annotated. In theory there should be little difference between the American YMS and the BYMS as they were all made in the same shipyards, however I have discovered an issue in both the drawings and the hull moulding. All the drawings show the topsides end some distance before the transom and that the topsides for BYMS 2253 finish further forward than for other vessels. The hull moulding has the top sides ending before the transom, however various photographs of the majesty of BYMS show the topsides continuing to the transom (including those of BYMS 2079). I suspect the America BYS had the topsides stopping before the transom, BYMS 2253 has them set further forward but the majority of BYMS had the topsides continue to the transom. The Simar moulding would be fine I was to build a model of BYMS 2172 or BYMS 2253, but as this will be 2079 some additional material will be required. So, a little bit of topside lengthening is required before the first major job of cutting the scuppers. I'll fit the rudders, shafts and motors first. Can't seeing this being a quick build but I'll update as and when progress is made.

This model was part of the yard sale find .There was a lot of parts missing but kit box had diagrams & missing parts still had cut out's so I could trace & cut parts needed.