I have had a few enquiries regarding different parts of my boat, so thought it might be interesting to feature the blog here, seeing as this is the spiritual home of Fireboats!
I'm certainly no expert, most of the idea's were "borrowed", and I had considerable help from HS93 Peter Henshaw, who sadly did not see the end result.
I would like this to become a conversation, whilst the boat is now finished, it will be interestring to see if anybody has any other ideas to share. The build was originally on another forum, so if you read it there, this will be pretty much the same, sorry! if you have not seen it before, there maybe some parts of this blog that will help you save time, or money!, so thanks to Peter H for his inspiration, and Peter D for starting me off all those years ago!
Here we go........

The boat was rescued summer 2010 from ebay, soundly made, true and square, never run or put in the water, circa late sixties, and sat in a loft ever since. it lived in the south Wales area, difficult to get to, and no postage offered, so for £75 I think it was a steal for this very original old girl

On bringing it home, I stripped out all the junk, and sold the motor on ebay, it had never been run, I didnt know what the motor was, but it fetched £60, so the boat now owed me £15 , it gets better and better though, where do you store a big four foot boat???, well I also dabble with RC helis, and found on a helI website a "damaged parts" sale, I was real lucky to find an ally box, just the right size, reduced from £125 to £15, wanted a couple of repairs to it, but what a steal!!
So I now need a boat that looks the part, as I am turning up with what looks like a custom made box!, real show off! 😯

After 12 months in the loft, summer 2011 its time to make a start, so off with the paint!, what a terrible job, don't know what it was painted with but it WOULD NOT come off, then when things seems to be at their darkest, my mentor (a very patient fellow HS93) suggested fairy power spray, yes you read it correctly, Fairy power spray,

At this point I would have tried anything, used sanders, scrapers, thinners, nitromors, next was a flame thrower, so sprayed it on, left it for a bit, and gentle scraping, it all fell off , no caustic smell, of chemicals that render the boat unpaintable, flippin great!

Next bit is horrible, preparing for the paint. With my smaller 36" Fireboat, it suffered after time with delamination, so I decided to fibreglass this boat, I had only done this once before, so was dreading this job.

The photo is the fibreglass used for the hull, and a better brand for the deck, which is thinner and easier to apply, I wont need as good a finish on the deck as that will be painted with a none slip finish, as per real boat. The superstructure cabin sides will not need to be fibreglassed, more on that later, a bit of a trick coming up there 😉

Before glassing starts, I needed to change from single screw to twin screw, never had a twin screw boat before, so this is new territory for me, time to enlist some help! so ity was over to HS93'S workshop!
We set on the hull where I wanted the props to be, leaving room for water cooling pickup, and the rudder. I have seen quite a few people make the mistake of having the rudder too close to the end of the hull. What happens then, is the boat almost "pendulums" on the rudder, making a pretty poor handling hull very bad. A circular template was make same diameter as the intended prop, plus a bit extra, then a flat was put on the template, and put on the hull, now we know where the props will be.

Cut a hole for the shafts, and a strengthening plate inside the hull for each shaft. Sounds easy but it took a while to ensure the shafts are equal, straight, and same place on the hull. (I watched during most of this!! 😯 )

Rudders are shop bought, but the rudder tubes are home made from brass, with a o ring to seal, epoxy resined into the hull. Again, a strengthening plate inside the hull to protect the flimsy skin.

as you can see I was very lucky with this buy, its in excellent condition, so a lot of the work is already done. I dont do full builds, I seem to specialise with refurbs and rescuing unfinished projects!

I am using a digital servo for rudder control, as these tend to operate faster, and have more torque, it also has metal gears so should be more resilient. I intend to test a gyro after construction, got one ready from a rc helicopter.

For those that are unfamiliar with these, on a heli, a gyro in simple terms keeps the tail in the direction the operator wants, so compensates for any wind that may cause a deviation, the theory is, if wind is affecting the course of the boat, or some water undulations, the gyro will keep it straight on course. These can be turned on and off with the transmitter whilst the boat is in use, so on a windy day, I will easily be able to see if it is doing any good it may be useless, but I like dabbling with things, and these hulls handle bad at the best of times so anything will help!

Fibre glassing......the secret is, go to a friends house, use his workshop, then all the resin drips on his floor!

In all seriousness, on a big boat like this, its a two man job, as the resin goes off quite quick, and the cloth shrinks, pulls, and moves, its a horrible job, but worth doing as the wood is sealed once and for all, but there is a lot of work involved afterwards, sanding finishing etc, this is the cloth that was used.

I need to slow down, or it will get boring, and I will take over the forum 😰

As mentioned previously, we decided that we need to glass the hull, this will make sure the wood does not rot in the future, as we dont know how old the boat actually is.

The hull was a bit of a job, getting the cloth and resin around the shafts and rudder positions, resin applied to the wood, then the cloth over this, then another coat of resin, next is the labourious job of sanding down, couple of pics of the rear of the hull shows the process. its only the second time I have done this, its really horrible to do, but worth it when you come to paint, as the finish is great, but you have to be soooooo patient 😉

pictures tell a story 😉