A few weeks ago I made up some material for the deck doubling, this is from Huon pine the width being exactly to scale with the thickness a little thicker than scale, this was following Ted Frosts description which says 7”x 1” boards were used.

After machining to size I “weathered” the planking individually in the same way I did the deck planks in an attempt to have a more random effect.

I decided to glue the Deck doubling together before gluing them to the deck, I did this so I could cut the holes for the Coal Bunker Rings later as there was a bit of fitting to do along with a recess in the deck planks to take the thickness of my Coal Bunker Rings, basically I wasn’t confidant I could do it all in one hit. To make sure I was gluing the doublers in the right spot I put some Tamiya tape on the deck and marked it then marked out the positions of things on a piece of waxed baking paper and then glued the doublers together on the waxed paper.

After the glue mix had set a bit I trimmed of the excess the same way I did the deck.

Then before completely drying I clamped them to conform to the deck shape and left it overnight.

Next day I was pretty happy with how they looked and proceeded to tape the doublers down and start cutting a circle with my new circle cutter, with a modified cutting blade (area that I removed marked in Blue), this all went pretty smoothly taking my time to cut the holes.
I set up a small Carbide burr in the Proxxon rotary tool held in the router jig and preceded to machine a recess in the deck to allow my Bunker Rings to sit flush with the Deck Doublers.

Next step was to Chemically blacken the Coal Bunker Rings and Lids, I followed the instructions I had found and after de-canting a small amount into a cup then applied the chemical directly with a brush. This proved to be a slow process with extensive cleaning and repeated applications to achieve the desired colour. Once I had the colour I cleaned the chemical off with water and without disturbing the surface left it to dry in the sun once completely dry I sprayed some clear lacquer that is formulated for Brass and Copper to seal it up.

One thing that was bothering me even although I had pushed ahead was that the doublers looked too big when sitting on the deck, eventually this got to me and I measured what the plan says and compared it to what I had made. There was a 2 mm difference in width at this point I decided it was best to go inside as I was feeling a bit unhappy with myself for not paying more attention to the plans instead of rigidly sticking to Ted’s description.

Seeing I only needed to remove 2 mm I decided to divide it by 4 and remove .5 mm from 4 planks and set about removing the outer planks which came away without damage this enabled me to trim down the 4 faces. Thankfully this made all the difference.

On the 2 removable Coal Bunker Lids I have added a small eyelet to attach a lanyard too, I did this because I could see myself easily loosing them at the pond.

On the Coal Bunker Rings and cap head screw I have engraved a line and painted it so I can easily tell if the removable deck section is locked in place.

Thanks for the having a look, more to come.

Again I welcome constructive comments.

Cheers,
Stephen.

The Fish Hatches and Lids have progressed fairly quickly I am happy to say. Construction is basically the same as the Coal Bunker Rings and Lids.

When I was looking at how deep to make the Fish Hatches and Lids I turned to Ted Frosts book Tree to Sea once again.

Now I am more a visual sort of guy, a simple drawing would have been much easier for me. Anyway my interpretation of Teds description on page 131, is that overall the grating and bearer height is 2 inches with the Bearers being 1 ¼” and the Splines being ¾” as I have written on the post-it note.

If I am wrong with my interpretation please let me know. I have done a rough sketch of what I think is being described.

I ended up making the Fish Hatches and Lids about 2.4mm deep which is a little deeper than needed but it should be alright. Note that .041” is 1” at 1/24th scale which is around 1mm or .039”.

I made the handles from .8mm Brass rod that was annealed then squashed in the machine vice until it was around .5mm between flats. I have found this is a lot easier and safer than trying to make fine strips on the saw.

After cutting the handles to length they were soft soldered in then cleaned up with some wet and dry sandpaper.

The wooden blocks that the Fish Hatches and Lids sit in were drilled then cut to size.
Before I started making the Fish Hatches and Lids I found a drill that would be suitable for drilling out the Huon Pine without destroying it, this drill determined the outside diameter of the Fish Hatches.

I made the wooden blocks a little bit bigger than the plans indicate mainly because I didn’t want a very thin section that may snap on assembly also I think it looks a bit more like the ones on Lydia Eva as shown in the previous post.

Thanks for the having a look.
Again I welcome constructive opinions.

Cheers,
Stephen.

Whilst I haven’t had a lot of time lately to do much work on the Drifter I have been chipping away at it when I can.

Next step for the Bunker Lids was to open up the hand recesses a bit, although in hindsight I don’t think I improved them at all.

Then came soft soldering the handles on. Firstly I cleaned then carefully applying a small amount of flux to the areas to be soldered, assembled the parts and placed very small pieces of solder, applied some heat until the solder ran.

There was a bit of solder that needed to be cleaned out of the grooves after that was done the lids were cleaned up with wet and dry sandpaper until flat.
I made up a tool to remove the lids from some Stainless Steel MiG welder wire, beaten flat on each end then bent to shape.

Another job was to open up the holes in the deck, to ensure the hole was centered around the screw top I made up a simple jig and scribed around it. A small carbide burr proved to be the best tool for the job.

Next job is to make some Fish Hatches and Lids, I have done a simple sketch to help with building them. I might increase the hand recess up to 5mm.

Looking for photos of Fish Hatches and Lids on the without much success. Until I found an old video of the Lydia Eva luckily near the end of the video is a brief glance of the Fish Hatch and Lid that I took a photo of, sorry about the poor photo quality. It’s not very clear but shows there is only one handle in the center, which was to be expected considering the Lid is only 10” in diameter according to the plan.

Again I welcome constructive opinions.

Cheers,
Stephen.

I have had another try at chemically blackening brass. I had tried this a very long time ago without much success. I dug out a bottle of Krick Blackening agent and after reading some information online I thought maybe I hadn’t cleaned the Brass properly.

After cleaning a small sample piece as instructed and immersing it into a mixture of at a ratio of 1 part Krick Blackening agent to 1 part distilled water, after reading that other brands of Blackening agent worked within 15 or so minutes, well this certainly didn’t 12 hours later and things were happening 24 hours later and there was a good blackness to the strip of brass.

I then reduced the amount of water I added and added some soft solder to see if that would blacken as well, as expected the soft solder didn’t blacken at all.
This is a problem for me as I like to solder parts together when needed, this led to a search for something that would blacken a range of metals.

The product I ended up choosing is JAX Pewter Black, after looking for some online I found some at a Jeweler's supply shop that is located in Melbourne, so off to the big smoke for a day out with my wife and daughter, this turned out to be a bit on the expensive side, after having Yum Cha for lunch not that I am really complaining as it had been several years since the 3 of us had been for lunch in the city.

The JAX Pewter Black is a completely different beast, as it does seem to Blacken the Brass within 15 minutes to a deep black, haven’t tried it with soft solder yet, that will be next.

Back to the Bunker Lids and with photographic evidence that there was a ring pattern on the Lids, I had another try at some rings. On my first try I had the spacing too close winding up looking too busy.
I found that I could put 6 rings into the Lids without it looking too busy.
After I had done a couple of rings I altered the depth as I felt there wasn’t enough depth.

I would like to add that I am very grateful for all the input that people have made with regard to the Coal Lids and even though I did intend to seek more input I decided to just get on with the job, so that is what I did.

Again I welcome constructive opinions.

Cheers,
Stephen.

I put some paint on the experimental lids to see how they looked and pressed my 1/24th scale person into service to highlight the sizes of things.

I also made up a disk with a locating pin to enable easy centering of the bunker ring hole around the cap head screw and scribed into the deck.

Again I welcome opinions on which surface to go with on the Lids.

Cheers,
Stephen.

I got some hobby time today and had a go at two different stiles of lid one having circular grooves cut into it the other having a cross hatch pattern cut in using an engraving tool.

At present I don’t mind the look of the cross hatch or the textured finish.
In reality they are only about 22 mm in diameter.

Again I welcome opinions on which surface to go with on the Lids.

Cheers,
Stephen.

Now that the deck is basically done it is time to look at the Coal Bunker Rings & Lids.

I am making the Rings & Lids from brass, 2 of them will be removable to gain access to the Cap Head screws that actuate the deck locking mechanism.

I have included a photo of the Coal Bunker Rings & Lids as drawn on the drawing and in the book on page 112 of Tree to Sea these don’t give any indication of some sort of pattern on the lids to provide an anti slip surface.

Before going much further I wanted to work out machining the hand recesses in the lids and machining the recess for a handle.

“O” rings have been fitted to create a water tight seal. As a side note personal experience with making components with “O” rings in them has taught me that you don’t need a lot of “squash” on the “O” ring for it to seal, in fact too much squash will only cause problems with “pinching” the “O” ring and damaging it, in this application there is less than .1 mm or .004 inch of squash on a 12.5mm diameter.

There is not a lot of information that I could find about these parts, I found a lot of photos of land based cast iron covers with a staggering array of different patterns on the lid face.

In a bit of a thought bubble I thought the surface may have been left purposefully rough, not hard to do with a casting so I did an experiment at creating a non slip surface.
Using some beads that you mix with paint to create a non slip painted surface, I brushed some Titebond onto the brass and dipped it into the beads, next day I painted half of it black to get a better idea of how it would look.

Or may have had something like a friend of mines Danny Boys covers, when I get time I will have a go at milling some grooves into my trial piece.

I realize OH&S was not exactly a thing back in 1919, but having a very slippery surface in the middle of the deck I tend to think would not have been done, so some sort of non slip surface would have been present I think.

With things returning to a more normal state, my hobby time has reduced significantly back to the few hours a week at most, therefore progress will return to a snails pace.

I welcome opinions/suggestions on which surface to go with on the Lids.

Thanks for looking in and reading my ramblings or just looking at the photo’s and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen.

Decisions were made, for better or worse on the center planks forward and aft, now that it is done I wonder why I was so worried about how it was going to look with my interpretation of Teds description.

Making the forward and aft center planks was a very time consuming job.

Starting with some old school tracing paper to make a template. The paper was taped down to make sure it was flat then I used a sharp scalpel to cut the outline and wind up with a shape that is pretty close to being right.

Once cut out the template was stuck down on the board using a glue stick, then traced around with a pencil this ensured the plank would be bigger than needed (easier to remove material than put it on) then roughly cut out with a scroll saw.

Next came the slow part of carefully trimming down to fit inside the required space without gaps, then removing the required amount for caulking would be easier or at least that’s what I thought, didn’t quite work out that way on the first one, as I removed too much material, winding up with too much clearance I had a look at trying to save the plank by moving it forward to close the gap but in the end there was nothing I could do except make another one. Apart from the wasted time the most upsetting part was the waste of material.

Once the fore and aft center planks were done I pinned them in place temporally before removing them to enable gluing in place, when gluing I only caulked on one side to ovoid getting my glue and paint mix everywhere.

Once glued and half caulked I pushed glue mix into the remaining gap.

Each of the other center planks needed to be custom made either slightly wider or with a slight taper, these were quite quick to make and install.

Unfortunately gluing the aft cabin skylight in place before planking turned out to be a bad idea, I managed to damage the paint work several times with the drill chuck, you would have thought I would have learnt my lesson the first time, when the drill chuck hit the paint.

There is some cleaning up to do and I have been reducing the severity of some of the weathering to give a more unified look, this is more because when looking at the model I couldn’t help but think I had gone a bit far and it just looked poorly made.

Next time I start on Coal hatches.

Thanks for looking in and reading my ramblings or just looking at the photo’s and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen.

Progress is fairly slow but steady.

I glued some pieces of thin ply as a gluing guide for the forward hoodway.

I have now got to the point where decisions about the center or king plank need to be made.

In Ted’s book on page 77, he says the center plank was tapered although there is no indication of this in his sketch's.

If I made a single tapered plank it would end up looking absurd in my opinion, I made up a card template to visualize it at it’s widest point the plank would be the equivalent of 2.5 feet wide.

After a bit of a search on the internet I found some deck planking photos that indicate a method of letting planks into the king plank and I think I will go for this approach although not as stylishly.

Here is a photo of my proposed method, letting 2 planks into each side of the tapered king plank to thin it down to an acceptable amount.

Lastly a few progress photos.

Constructive criticism is welcomed...

More to come…

Thanks for looking in and reading my ramblings or just looking at the photo’s and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen. 

Some more Rudder pics as requested.

Cheers,
Stephen.