This is one of those toy boats that I used to look at through the Basset-lowke window in Holborn. Not an original Bowman Sea Jay but a copy I made from the Basil Harley plans of Celia May 1988.

I suppose I started in 1989 almost certainly a Sunday as I had to hunt round to find some 3/8ths" thickness wood. The only stuff I could find was some 9 ply which is quite tough.
So I made a steam cylinder from plastic guttering tubing. I boiled an old fashioned kettle into it and about 5 minutes of this softened the ply for bending. I made a crude former, mainly big nails, and whipped it out and bent the ply to shape. Then the other one followed and the hard bit had been done.

The rest of the hull was straight forward. The superstructure was made of aluminium, not easy to bend but a friend showed me how.

The boat was meant to have a steam plant but the one I had built by an excellent engineer for me was in the end too heavy. So I left the boat for a few months and then decided to go electric.
If you look at the plans the 3 parts of the s/s are individual and have another bend also to form the deck, great for steam not so for electric. I cut the flanges off and made a wood deck and planked it to look pretty, well it is a toy after all, and fitted the s/s parts into the deck.

Those ex-Meccano gents will spot the rudder parts a 2 inch pulley which I carefully sawed to make the 2 parts. These have a wrap round chain and a small spring to tension the chain. The rudder servo has a small extension and the whole has worked with a little oil ever since.

The motor is a Bassett-lowke Marine bought when I was in my teens but not really used.
The yellow U/J is I think from SHG it has a loose "bone" as the connection between the 2 ends. It allows for a lot of positioning of the motor as I had planned to use the boat as a test vessel.

Notes The cat is Suzie my little helper and is 13 now.

I really like the funnel, it is rolled aluminium with a half inch piece of dowel on about 6 thicknesses of blanket.

The aerial is a working one connected to the receiver which is 27Mhtz 2 channel.

Apologise for the prop I originally made my own it is somewhere in the shed!

Roy.