The Southampton Pilot Boats have some distinctive logos and graphics on their cabins and I thought I’d have a go at making my own rather than getting them made in vinyl by a graphics studio.

I have used waterslide ‘decals’ many times in my youth as an avid Airfix and Revell model kit maker so I know how they work and how to use them but I’ve never tried making my own. Fortunately there are quite a few helpful videos on YouTube that illustrate the process and all that is required is a bit of work with a graphics package, I use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, a good inkjet printer and the required clear and white backed transfer paper.
The latter can be bought readily from eBay and while being quite expensive as a single A4 sheet they are available as mixed multipacks at reasonable cost. Inkjet paper is most common but you can also get a Laser Jet version of the paper too.

The process starts with identifying the logos and obtaining a good quality .png of .jpg file of the required logos but our friend Google makes this very easy and once in the graphics software they can be re-sized, re-coloured and manipulated with ease.
The most difficult aspect is gauging the correct proportions of the logos and text by studying the ‘photos of the real boats, which is quite difficult without having something to reliably scale to. The large black ‘PILOTS Southampton’ text is just Arial bold so that’s very easy to generate.

I made a test sheet of the graphics in my Canon ink-jet printer on Best Photo settings, left them to dry and then used some ‘Rust-Oleum’ clear lacquer (in a rattle can that I wanted to finish up) to overspray the decals to ‘fix’ them and protect the ink from dissolving away when placed in water as is recommended in the instructions that come with the paper.
A selection of these graphics were then applied to my ‘test piece’ which is painted in the colours I’m using.
I also used some ‘Micro Sol’ and ‘Micro Set’ fluid to aid application and ensure correct bonding of the decals.

The final part of the testing involved spraying the decals with lacquer as a protective coating….and that’s where the benefits of doing a test piece first comes to the fore.
To my horror the decals had a very bad reaction to the Halfords clear lacquer that I used and started wrinkling up before my eyes, I quickly grabbed my ‘phone and videoed this happening 😲

You can see the wrinkling happening in the video clip.

(EDIT: The clip was uploaded as a .mp4 file but mysteriously gets changed to a .mpg4 file by the site when you download it, rename it a .mp4 if it doesn't play after it's downloaded.)

I believe that the two different brands of lacquer, both supposedly acrylic, reacted with each other and hence the wrinkling. I can’t imagine how furious I would have been if I’d not done this test and applied the decals to the cabin right away and then used the Halfords lacquer over them. The work involved in rectifying that disaster would be extensive 😡

Did I dodge a bullet or what!!! 🤕

I threw away the remnants of the offending ‘Rust-Oleum’ lacquer immediately.

Having learned a valuable lesson I went on to make a fresh set of decals on a new clear sheet and also a second set on a ‘white’ sheet because part of the testing proved that the blue of the ABP and Babcock logos doesn’t resolve very well over the orange paint but worked much better when produced using the ‘white’ background paper which has greater opacity.
The red and white ‘flag’ marking also had to be made using the same paper.
These new sheets were lacquered with a couple of coats the Halfords stuff and left overnight to thoroughly cure.

Applying these home-made decals is no different from the ‘Airfix’ method but I did use some Micro Sol & Micro Set as before and all the decals were applied without any problems. Although I did have to cut out and apply the ABP letters individually.

I also made some ‘bolt head’ decals to put on the engine vent panels that go on the cabin sides as I thought that they might look better than adding protruding bolt heads. The panels look quite effective with the black backing and stainless steel mesh in place. These will be fixed in place in the final detailing.

The complete cabin was then put in the spray booth (no masking required for a change) and given three coats of Halfords clear gloss lacquer without any ill effects (much to my relief) and I only have one very small run in the lacquer to polish out.

Thankfully that’s the only remedial work I need to do.😀

Next up, the life raft container.

Firstly on with a bit more painting with the deck finish. The textured paint is a Halfords product and conveniently is quite a close match to the colour that I think it should be RAL6001 Emerald Green in a satin finish. I’ve looked into getting a can of Emerald Green custom mixed and at £16 including delivery it’s quite an expensive option just to get the colour I’d prefer…….but I’m tempted.🤔

After carefully masking the hull the deck was cleaned off with panel wipe and two coats were sprayed about 15 minutes apart. I’m quite pleased with the level of texture bearing in mind that after over coating with a satin lacquer will lessen the texture a bit. The forward and rear deck areas of the cabin structure will also need to be painted with this textured green paint but I won’t do that until the cabin graphics are applied and lacquered.

My model is based on the ‘Hamstead Southampton’ Pilot boat and so I had a 6mm high white vinyl name graphics made for a few pounds and applied them centrally on the stern. On the real boat the name and home port are actually at the same level but either side of a rear ladder structure which I won’t be detailing on my boat so I think the central position looks better than splitting it with a big gap in between.

There are two areas within the rubber side buffers which are painted in a very conspicuous yellow, presumably for some identification or visibility reason. Rather than try to paint them I thought I’d try using some self-adhesive film that sign makers use. Sourced from eBay as a ‘sample size’ they proved very inexpensive and after making card templates for sizing they were also ‘hinged’ into place using masking tape after peeling off the backing paper. They went on surprisingly easy and are a much better fit and finish than I could achieve with paint. Also masking off for paint would be a nightmare too!

Now that the white self-adhesive vinyl tape has arrived I can’t really put off doing the dreaded waterline any longer. 😰

I have decided to use the 5mm wide tape as it looks to be the correct proportion. Because I’ve always had problems with the waterlines on my models I try lots of things to mitigate against the tape lifting and that includes removing any raised edge where the red and black paints meet by masking either side and flatting the join with some very fine abrasive and making sure that the area is perfectly flat and clean.

Starting from the stern the tape was applied over the paint join, and where it crosses the chine I chose to make a cut at an inconspicuous place under the chine and continue with a second piece to the bow. This worked well and was repeated on the other side and then the stern was tackled last. The tape was thoroughly rubbed down onto the hull with a soft cloth and seemed to have stuck quite well.
I left it overnight and returned to find it was quite OK over the long flat areas but had very slightly lifted at the edges where it crosses the chine, to be honest, much as I expected! 😠 The solution I have found in the past is to gently lift the tape edges and apply ‘micro dots’ of cyano applied with a pin (sharp end) and pressing the tape back with firm pressure with a smooth rounded tool. Done correctly the cyano doesn’t ooze out and affect the paint outside of the tape edge. I also use a dot of cyano to secure the tape ends where they join and overlap at the chine and at the joins at the bow tip and the stern corners. I left it for a few days….. and to my relief there were no more signs of lifting so I’m happy that it’s finally done. 😊

The last hull graphic are the ‘3’ numerals at the bow, and again these are white vinyl and 20mm in height. Applying them symmetrically involved making a template, which is common to both sides of the bow, with a square cut-out at the required position. The numerals were applied by ‘hinging’ the self-adhesive number into place.

The black area of the hull will later be sprayed with a gloss lacquer to seal the waterline and the bow numbers and stern graphics in place but in the meantime I’m making the ‘waterslide’ graphics for the cabin detailing. 😁

The complete hull has had a coat of grey primer which revealed some minor imperfections and these were fixed before a second coat was sprayed and then flatted. After roughly masking off the hull sides the first of two coats of Halfords red oxide primer was sprayed and after removing the masking this was also flatted down with a 1000 grit W&D paper used wet.

The next process was to establish the position of the waterline in the ‘test tank’ (bath) and to get as true an indication of its position. After plugging the prop tube and water connections I thought it best to load up the hull with all the hardware and fittings that will go into and onto the boat, this included all the electrics and running gear and also all of the rubber that will be used for the fenders.
Once in the water it settled just about where I expected it to and with some difficulty I managed to put some pencil marks on the bow and stern. After I’d finished all that I remembered that I perhaps could have tried the old ‘talcum powder on the water’ trick to mark the line…does it actually work?
Anyway I don’t think we have any talc!

Back in the workshop I put the boat on the bench and set about converting the pencil marks into a waterline using my self-levelling laser and even at this stage I can sense that it will be difficult to apply a waterline where it crosses the lower chine whether I use vinyl tape or by masking and painting.
I do so hate that aspect of boat modelling as I’ve always had trouble with it….and I believe I’m not alone in that!!😠

Despite my reservations I continued by masking off the red oxide coat up to the waterline as accurately as possible using a low tack tape and masking paper. The first coat of Halfords black gloss went on well and didn’t require much flatting after it dried properly but when I sprayed the second coat I think there was too much humidity after a rainy night so despite warming the workshop and hull the second black coat dried with a pronounced ‘blush’ on the surface☹️
Disappointing but not a disaster because I’d always intended to spray a third and final coat anyway and even that will be lacquered over after the hull graphics are applied.
So out with the 2500 grit paper and ‘elbow grease’ and very quickly the surface was prepared for the third coat which was sprayed on a very warm and dry day and resulted in a perfect finish.

Meanwhile I have ordered some 4mm and 5mm vinyl pin-striping tape from my usual source and I’ll decide which looks the best ‘scale’ when it arrives.😁

Thinking ahead about a practical storage solution for this boat I found some very large plastic storage boxes with lids in which this Pilot Boat can be safely stored.
They are a perfect fit for length and beam but if I install a fixed mast on the boat it will either have to made smaller than scale to fit within the internal height of the box or alternatively I could make it foldable which might be difficult with the navigation light wiring….hmmm 🤔.

Perhaps very slim supporting foam blocks in the bottom of the box instead of the supplied stand?......a problem for solving later 😀!

I made the engine compartment air intake grilles from some 1.5mm ply with thin strips on the back so that I could rebate a fine stainless steel mesh with a black Plasticard backing piece. When painted silver and assembled they look quite good, I may try to replicate the fixing screws/bolts around the perimeter somehow. These will not be fixed onto the cabin until the final stages.

The colour scheme I’ve chosen is ‘Lifeboat’ Orange for the cabin, textured green for all the deck area and a red and black hull. Fortunately these colours are all available ‘off the shelf’ from Halfords.

I masked up the cabin and gave it two light coats of Halfords white primer, left it to dry overnight and then flatted ready for the first coat of the VW Brilliant Orange gloss. As always I wiped over the entire part with panel wipe to remove any residual dust and skin oils. The first orange coat was sprayed and left to thoroughly dry off and even at this stage the surface finish looks very smooth so all of the thorough paint prep is already proving its worth.

In the meantime I made the small vents? that can be seen on either side of the cabin with the fourth one on the engine compartment roof. These are just small pieces of shaped Obeche sealed, primed and sprayed orange. One of them is a double piece and to make placing them easier I cyano glued them to some .5mm Plasticard as a pair. The other single pieces were also backed with Plasticard.

I made up the engine room roof dummy window from ply and Plasticard and temporarily placed it on the cabin roof to gauge the position of the little roof vent.

The other large protrusions on the cabin sides are some other kind of intake/vent/outlet? not quite sure what, but they were made up from laminated ply with all of the sides bevelled as in the real part. These were also backed with .5mm Plasticard trimmed to a narrow border then sealed, primed and painted orange before being cyano glued to the cabin sides.

The cabin was then flatted with 1200 grit used wet to give a key, cleaned off with panel wipe and then given a second coat of orange gloss.
Later it will get a third coat and then a gloss lacquer over that to seal the graphics that I’m producing and to provide the final high gloss finish I want 😎.

The hull is primed and ready for paint so I’ll be doing that next.😁

The LED’s I have used for the floodlights are SMD type (Surface Mount Device) and are incredibly small and difficult to work with but one of the advantages is that they can be easily built into small light fittings such as this 🤓

The chosen type are high intensity (1000mcd) 😎 with a daylight white colour and cost less than £1 for ten. They aren’t designed to have wires soldered to them which is another challenge but I have some .25mm (30AWG) solid core prototyping wire that is suitable and with a fine tipped iron can be soldered successfully, I did need to use my jeweller loupe to identify the anode (+ve) side though, and I made up ten wired LED assemblies with about 500mm of twisted wire each.

The floodlight casing was made from 1.5mm Plasticard strips to form an open box section 12mm x 8mm and about 200mm long which will be more than enough for the 10 lights I need (actually nine and a spare).

The box section bar was bevelled at one end by about 15 degrees and then cut off the bar to a length of 12mm. I then used some .7mm black Plasticard to line the inside of the box and then flatted both ends to make the black card flush at both ends. A 15mm length of 3mm square Plasticard tube was glued inside the back of the piece on all four internal faces and then some 1mm card used to close off the back of the box that is formed.

The LED wires were then passed through from the front so that the LED sits firmly and deep within the box and then the part set in a holding jig while some clear epoxy resin is fed into the front of the box until it’s full and producing a raised bump. I did de-gas the resin mix with a quick blast from my heat gun to remove as many small bubbles as possible that might cause problems when the epoxy is ground flat.

The epoxy is just the 30 minute Z-Poxy stuff that I generally use, although I could use a special ‘water clear’ casting resin but the Z-Poxy is more than adequate.

After allowing the resin to cure over night I could then flat down the epoxy to be flush with the angled front of the box. Although I could polish the epoxy to be mirror smooth and completely clear I actually want a slightly rough surface that will obscure the LED and also diffuse the light to an even spread.

The finished light fittings now have a white outer frame with an inner black frame and frosted lens and look very similar to the ones on the actual boat. I might try to simulate the six fixing around the light somehow.

All eight of these deck lights along with a roof level floodlight above the rear cabin door will be wired to a circuit board with a dropper resistor for each and connected to one of the two R/C controlled switches that I’m using for this deck lighting with a second one for the mast lighting circuit and all of this lighting will be supplied from a separate battery supply.

Before finally attaching the new cabin structure to the inner deck assembly I need to make the cut-outs for the ‘LED floodlight’ fittings that I’m making.
First I bored a hole through the cabin side and then enlarged this using files to the size and shape that I have previously marked out. These rectangular holes are 12mm x 8mm and they are angled down so that the LED’s cast their light onto the deck which made opening them out much more difficult as I needed them to be a consistent ‘bore’ through the timber for the light fittings to be set into them correctly.
To aid this I made up a Plasticard box section as a guide for the correct hole sizing and angles, this was particularly important for the two forward facing holes through the front of the cabin.

With all of the floodlight holes completed the next thing on my list was to mark out the final size a shapes of all of the cabin front and roof windows and then cut them all out of the 1.5mm ply with a small craft knife and needle files (with extreme care!) 😰 as I won’t be able to do this very easily when the cabin is fixed down to the inner deck. To my relief I managed all of the cuts-outs without damage to the cabin or myself ☺️

The inside of the cabin was then given several coats of sanding sealer and when dry all the windows were masked off from the outside and given two coats of matt black spray paint. The radar motor assembly that I’m fitting has a black 3D printed reduction gearbox which will be fixed to the reinforcement blocks that I put in the roof and that will be invisible against the black. There will be no detailing inside the cabin and I hope to be able to use clear acrylic for the windows with a darkening film that is often applied to car windows (if my experiments applying the film works OK).

Finally I could fix the new cabin down to the ‘old’ inner deck using epoxy, I’d previously fitted some guide blocks to the deck to properly locate the cabin while clamped down as the epoxy sets. Any gaps along the join line were filled and rubbed down and then I gave the entire cabin and deck multiple coats of Eze-Kote, flatted down between all coats, until the finish was super smooth and ready for priming.

I will describe the making of the LED floodlight fittings in a separate part 😎

The front of the new cabin was tackled next and it incorporates a recess for the life raft canister so the construction is not as straightforward as a flat plane would be.

Much like the cabin front windows it was a case of piecing it together without a framework because at this stage the cabin is not fixed down to the inner deck structure, however it came together quite well and with all of the panels in place it looks quite good.

The rear of the cabin has windows and a door and the cut-outs for these were made at an earlier stage, the frames for both will be made from Plasticard as will the door. On the real boat this rear recess is framed at roof level and on both sides and I was careful to follow the angular roof line with the top piece, which extends above the roof line, using three separate pieces of Obeche strip.
The side pieces which are flush the cabin sides but overlap the inside were made with in several sections too follow the angular profile of the back of the boat.

There are two, presumably storage lockers, on either side of the rear door and these were made from an Obeche strip framework and 1.5mm ply panels.
At this point I made some holes through the rear panel into the ‘storage lockers’ to allow for some wiring to go through for the low level deck floodlights that I’ll be fitting, and in addition to this I fitted a 6mm block of ply in all of the places that these floodlights will be. These are not only for fixing the lights into but also to allow me to recess and angle the lights slightly as I have noted that they do on the real boats.
There will be three floodlights on each side of the cabin and two in the steeply angled front of the engine compartment. A further floodlight will be fitted above the door on the back too.

Another detail that is fairly easy to incorporate at this stage are the recesses on the cabin sides in which some boat hooks are stored.
I presume that on the real boat they are recessed in a similar manner to the side bollards to prevent the crew from getting snagged on them as they move about the deck.

I marked out the recess positions as accurately as possible with reference to the ‘photos, cut through the 3mm ply sides with a Stanley knife and shaped them with files to incorporate the sloping points where the boat hook fixings are located. The recesses were then closed off from inside the cabin with some ply strips.

The last two ‘photos illustrate the differences between the old and new cabin.

In the next part I’ll describe the LED Flood Lights that I have made using high intensity SMD led’s and fixing the new cabin to the inner deck.

All of this additional detailing is quite time consuming, but I feel worthwhile, and as a relatively slow builder at this rate it will take quite a while to finish to my satisfaction. 🐌😁

Before I could build the front windows I needed to fit the front cabin roof and like the others it is angled so I made some angled fillets to go across the roof bearers and then cut and shaped the roof panel. I used the scoring and bending technique described earlier to ensure that the roof angles were well defined.

There are some 6mm ply support pieces on the cabin sides into which the railing will be fixed, these also add rigidity to the cabin sides.
When the roof panel was glued in place I could then make a temporary support framework around which I could build the separate window facets that form the cabin windscreens. The large centre section of the roof was to a separate element that would be fixed in place once the windows were built around it.

This process was a bit of a ‘make it up as you go along’ effort made more difficult by the need to keep the separating pillars between all the windows as narrow as possible so I couldn’t really make a structural frame for the panels to fix to. Instead they are joined internally along their edges and then reinforced with a fillet behind each join. I decided that I would cut out the window apertures later on after the rest of the cabin was built just to retain the strength of the windows while building the rest of the roof structures.

This process worked quite well and the result is reasonably geometrically accurate, but moreover looks quite faithful to the real boats front windows.

After the centre section of the roof was fixed in place I was able to cut and fit the rear roof panel, again angled, and then a triangular fillet to replicate the angled step in the roof at that point. I also fitted some 4mm ply reinforcing pieces under the roofs in various places to make strong fixing points for the searchlights, radar unit and the rear mast assembly.

The front engine room roof has a centre panel and this was cut from 1.5mm ply and fitted in place and there are also two slightly raised areas either side of that which were made from some .5mm ply.
The last ‘photo shows a comparison of the new cabin against the old design.

In the next part I’ll finish the front of the engine room roof and the rear of the cabin, cut out the boat hook recesses and make provision for the eight low level LED flood lights that I’ve decided to fit.

I continued building the new cabin by adding bracing pieces between the cabin sides until it was a strong rigid structure. Reinforcement strips were glued to the insides of the cabin walls to strengthen the area where the sides have been bent for the secondary angle of the sides. These strips of 4mm ply are also quite wide because they will be where the brass cabin handrail stanchions will be supported so I need them to be quite strong and thick at that point.

A new bulkhead was added below the front window area which was also lightened with some large holes that will also allow me to run wiring to the forward deck floodlights. More on the lighting later.

As all of the new cabin is very angular in appearance, including all of the roofs, I was careful to preserve this distinctive feature. The rear roof initially appears to be curved but this too is angled over its width. Several roof bracing pieces were fitted between the cabin sides and then three angled roof supports made to fix to them. These pieces, which set the height of this part of the roof, were cut and slotted to receive three ‘stringers’ that will add strength and support the roof skins.

The rear roof section which also houses the navigation lights in was built up using an angled cross piece that sets the roof height and the navigation light areas made using off-cuts.
The bollard cut-outs on the sides were cut down with a razor saw and then carefully bevelled with a file. The inner back pieces were then glued in place to form the deep recess where the bollards will be fitted.

The front and roof windows are going to be quite tricky to build, particularly because I don’t want to use any roof braces which would be seen through the roof windows and because I want to make all of the roof dividing pillars as slim as possible to replicate what I see in the ‘photos of the real boat.

I had actually completed constructing the original cabin some weeks ago, it’s not a particularly attractive item but it is true to the original Veron design even though it is lacking in any real detail. It was only when Skydive130 announced that for his Harbour Pilots Boat he was going to re-model the cabin along the lines of a range of Pilot Boats that operate on Southampton Water in the UK that I looked at the already finished ‘kit’ version and considered a similar approach.

These pilot boats, made by a division of Vosper Thornycroft, have a much more modern appearance and because they have been widely photographed there is a greater opportunity to use them as a reference to add scale detail to the re-designed cabin. Of the four very similar boats that operate in Southampton I chose ‘Hamstead’ as my point of reference mostly because it has a distinctive green deck which makes it different to the other three which are all photographed with black decks.
You can see what this particular boat is doing at this very moment by looking at the VesselTracker website.

Skydive130 had already started constructing his version, and on seeing his excellent progress and the viability of the re-design I made the decision, after some deliberation, to abandon finishing the ‘Veron’ cabin on my boat and effectively start again. And so following my request he very kindly sent me some rough dimensions of his version for me to use as a starting point for my own.

By using his sketch and examining many of the photographs of the ‘Hamstead’ Pilot boat in great detail from all angles I drew up a side and rear view of the new cabin using ‘Mk 1 eyeball’ and a great deal of guesswork to get the angles and proportions looking about right. The new cabin has to be the same width and length as the old one and have the same bottom curvature to fit correctly onto the existing inner deck part but other than that the design can be whatever you choose to make.

When I was confident of the practicality of the new design I ordered some new ply and Obeche strip from SLEC which was delivered just two days later, excellent service in view of the current (Covid 19) situation 👍

The first thing to do was remove the old cabin structure from the inner deck piece that could still be utilised on the new design, and happily I was able to separate the two quite cleanly without much damage and only requiring a little filler to make good in a couple of places.
And so I started by transferring the drawing to the new 3mm ply sheet for the cabin sides using the time honoured method of making pin holes through the drawing into the wood and then joining up all the dots.

Fortunately 3mm birch ply is easily cut with a ‘Stanley Knife’ (always with a new blade!) and very quickly both cabin sides and the rear cabin wall pieces were cut and trimmed to be identical, including all of the window cut-outs.

From here on the construction is very much a case of ‘making it up as you go along’ but the most crucial aspect was to get the cabin sides angled correctly. There are actually two angles on the cabin sides, one to just below the window line which then changes to a different angle to the roof above that.

This change in angle of the cabin sides was achieved by scoring the inner face of the cabin sides through two of the three wood plies and then carefully making a bend along that line without snapping the remaining ply.
This worked very well and so I was then able to assemble the two cabin sides to the rear cabin wall and add some bracing pieces to form the basic structure, making sure that everything was ‘square’. The angled bend in the ply will be reinforced later in the build.

I made some cut-outs on the side pieces where the side bollards are recessed and glued some overlapping ply over them, these will be later filed and bevelled and an extra back piece glued over the opening to form the deep recess for the bollards.

The last photograph is the standard 'kit' cabin just as a reference for later comparison with the new cabin.

On with the build in the next part. 😁

https://www.vesseltracker.com/en/Ships/Pilot-Boat-Hamstead-I1784894.html

🔗