Hi y’all. Boat a bit done this weekend. I had ordered 2 liferaft containers and a ships zodiac boat from Harbor Models. Before I go on I have to let y’all know that I do moat have a full size line drawing of this boat. There is a book on the Wulf 8, it’s got some lovely line drawings and TONS of details, but it’s in German. That’s not a huge issue, but it’s 45 dollars plus shipping, and it’s in either Germany or Israel, not anywhere near here. I have a buddy who has a copy who is willing to loan it to me, but I’d hate to return it to him with pages glued together and it changing colors to several shades of primer. So, I’m doing my best with the internet, 65 year old eyes and good helping of TLAR, or close enough for government work.

So, with that being said I built up the liferaft racks. I had to jig them up with tape on my soldering desk, and then I soldered them together, but the lower rung was very close to the container supports I had soldered on. I really thought I was quick enough to solder on without desoldering the support, but I was wrong..(I really want a resistance soldering rig, but they want real folding money for those). So I had to ca that one support and both lower rungs. I had some depth charge racks from a previous project left over, so I glued those to the support wires, glued on the canisters, painted them and installed.
I was going to start the zodiac boat support that same day, but old eyes and allergies dictated I give detail work a rest. So I decided to try to make up a proper greasing fixture for the stuffing box.
Thais tug comes with a clamp on oiler installed. Not my favorite way to do a lube tube, but that’s not the issue. It’s where it’s mounted…several inches aft of the deck opening…and I have big hands. I was able, after a few choice words and some hand acrobatics, to get a silicone tube slipped over the neck so I could get some bees in the box, but the tube invariably slipped and got grease in oron the boat and myself. I had talked about drilling a hole in the deck for a lube line, my buddy JP suggested I use brass tube that would fit inside the neck. Good idea, but I could see the tube coming loose. However, his idea is sound, it just needed a little massaging. I found a brass tube in my stock that was JUST too big to fit. I used a Dremel to taper one end. I located where the top of the tube was located and drilled a hole in the deck. It’s located in the molded in box aft of the house. I then cut a piece of fuel line that was a tight fit on the tube, pushed it over the taper, got the tube pushe thru the deck then seated in the filler neck. I lightly tapped it into place with a small hammer taking care not to split the neck, the slid my silicone coupler down tight and glued the tube to the deck. It works great!! I wa able to use my little Pro Boat grease gun to get grease in to the point it was pushing past the bushings. I now need to make up a deck object, a tool, jack, or chest that can cover the tube and als plug it to keep grease from coming up the neck. But, I can grease her properly now.
That was yesterday. Today I built up the zodiac boat mount. I’ve seen 3 or 4 different models and they all look a little different, so I just winged it. I used brass wire bent to shape, then cut plastic to flesh it out. I have some sticky back sail cloth like the type used for model yacht hatches cut to fit for the tarp, then painted it with a light camouflage green and wiped it off before drying to make it look more “tarpy”. Glued the boat in, stuck the tarp on and crinkled it a bit, glued and painted small screw eyes aft to make tie downs, then tied her down and installed the assembly. Looking closer I need to lightly sand it and touch up, but overall I’m pleased with it.
That’s most of the wheelhouse work for now, the mast is next.
Cash

Hi y’all. Did some railing and the door locks? Wheel? Thingy? The wheel on the door that secures it. Y’all have to understand, I come from an aviation and automotive background, not a nautical one, so there’s some things on a boat that I have no clue what to call it. Anyway, I did the lower wheelhouse side railings,most of them are easy enough, the forward lower railings that wrap around the front of the house took a little bit of finagling, not to mention that the boat came with a glued on life preserver right where the rail wraps around. I took it off, scraped and sanded the glue ring down to the paint, touched it up and sanded gently with 1000 grit sandpaper. The door securing device took a little thought. I found a dowel the right size and wrapped brass wire around it, then cut off what I needed, put it in a vise to lay flat, soldered the brass together and glued that assembly to aluminum tube, painted and installed.
That’s it for now. I’m doing this in stages…the wheel house, that mast and then the rest of the deck.
Cash

Hi y’all. I maidened the Harbor Tug 2 weekends ago, and she performed well above my expectations. Ran dry, power looked good, everything worked as advertised and looked good on the water. So I’ve spent a few days changing her livery to the Taucher O.Wulf 8. This is the first step to her conversion to a stand off sport scale model.
Now, a heads up. The lettering isn’t perfect, but it looks good. My first try was to use 1/4 inch die cut Chartpak lettering that I had to paint black. I’ll post a pic of that. It looked good, but the font on the real boat is much thinner. A new member of the NTMS, Richard Johnston, has a vinyl cutter, and he produced a much nicer font that’s much closer to the font on the O Wulf, and I looks really good! Only problem we had is the lettering is so small and thin, it did not want to release from the backing paper. So, I just used a piece of 6mm Tamiya masking tape over the letters, carefully peeled and prodded a bit with the very tip of an Xacto knife and once they released, it was a simple job to burnish in place.
The “W” on the funnel is standard Chartpak in black. The font isn’t as thick as the real thing, but looks the part so I’m satisfied. Only issue I had was getting the adhesive off the funnel, as the remover I had just wasn’t cutting it, so I carefully used lacquer thinner. I rubbed a bit too hard on the starboard side and rubbed thru the paint!! So, I had to clean that up, masked it, painted with Tamiya base white, sanded then semigloss over that. Unless you look really close you can’t tell what happened. Dodged a bullet there yall.
The real boat has the Cuxhaven crest on the front of the superstructure, and the port of Rostock is on the aft bulwarks both sides. I used the stick on letters for that, lining them up on wax paper then using a thin piece of tape to lift off and then apply to the boat like a decal.
The rails on this boat are all painted white. On the real boat, and some models I’ve seen, the hand rails either side of both companionways are painted black, the abruptly change to white at the top of the lower superstructure. I don’t know why but that’s the way it is. I carefully painted them with a small brush and acrylic paint, as I knew I was going to make a mistake and acrylic is easier to clean up than lacquer or enamel. Also, the rails on this boat are on forever, so I had to paint in situ. So much fun!! Anyway, first coat is on but I need to get a better brush to touch up.
Next up is the fun stuff. The real boat has several railings this model doesn’t have, a zodiac boat on a mount aft of the superstructure, some life raft containers, and quite a few other details. I’m not doing them all, but enough to make her recognizable as the O Wulf 8. That’s my goal.
Next couple of posts will be what details I’m doing and how I’m accomplishing them.
Cash

Hi y’all. I turned 65 last month, and in preparation for celebrating making it this far without getting myself seriously injured or spending time in jail I sold a few boats and cashed out some excess pto so I could do something I normally don’t do…spend more than usual for my birthday.
So, I had a budget, and my goal was to use as much as possible from my savings from boat sales without disturbing the family Kitty much if at all. I was successful, came in under budget, my wife got me two kits and I picked up this-the Horizon Harbor Tug.
Now, I’m not usually a RTR or RTF kind of person. The few times I’ve purchased a hobby grade ready to run or fly model I’m usually disappointed. But…this boat has been praised by modelers of all stripes, and Horizon has kept it in production for 4 years, which I think is some sort of record, as usually Horizons scale offerings last maybe a year, 2 years tops. Also, we have 2 members who are dedicated builders of tugs and submarines that love them to death. So here goes…
I was not allowed to touch my birthday presents until my birthday, so I had time to figure out what I wanted to do with the Harbor. Once I got her on the bench, I gutted her like a fish.🤣
The Harbor Tug comes with a barely hobby grade pistol grip radio capable of 4 channels, a combo brushed esc/receiver, an esc for the fire monitor pump, and a radio controlled electronic on off switch for the led lights. Power is a 700 size motor, this is all supposed to be powered by 3 cells. It does NOT come with the water pump, that’s 60 dollars more, and from what I’ve seen it’s not as strong as I like.
So, I had to make a mount for my preferred motor, the Zippkits 650 brushless outrunner, that’s coupled to the shaft with a good solid coupler. Esc is a HobbyWing 16BL30 30 amp unit. I had to do some modifications to mount my preferred Amazon sourced pump, which included drilling out the molded in water pickup and epoxying in a brass pickup, and changing the mounting location of the pump. Pump is powered by a 10 amp brushed aircraft esc-the original that came with the boat works well, but is set up for 3 cells, and doesn’t give me enough voltage at the pump. Originally I was going to use a FrSky 7 channel receiver, but I wanted to try my hand at telemetry. So I used a FrSky X8R so I could run the FrSky FAS40 module, which gives my real Tim battery voltage and current draw. I also added ballast to bring her up to 12 pounds, as the stock weight of 9.5 or so is seriously under ballasted.
Now, the first production runs of this boat had some issues, leaks near the stern and along the bulwarks were common. It seems to me that Horizon did what Joysway did with the DF65, and listened to feedback, as my boat ran dry. There was a bit of water in the hull before the maiden as I was checking ballast and leaks the day before, and there was no appreciable water in the hull after. All systems worked well, and the boat exceeded my expectations.
Now, y’all know me. You’ve seen my build logs. Probably wondering why I’m loving a boat that I don’t have much time at the bench with. You see, the story doesn’t stop here, oh no, I have more work to do. The real boat this was modeled after is the Taucher O Wulf 8. Horizon put just enough detail to please the average boat modeler, and decaled it with an H on the funnel. My goal is to get her recognizable as the Taucher. I have to do some detail work, add some things that’s missing, do some lettering, etc. The end game is a stand off scale model of the Taucher. So stay tuned, we’re going for a ride!
Cash

https://youtu.be/DIf4v8KvfSk?si=9Ya4HaEL1Sq_q__J