Blog

The well deck floor & sides.

The ‘box’ of the prototype I’m building is made of balsa wood, later production models are produced in ply and have the planking lines laser etched on the floor panels, and as balsa doesn’t take stain particularly well I have used separate obeche panels to line the box internally that can be finished with the Teak stain that I’m using. This does, however, mean that I can apply the deck lines using a black indelible marker pen and incorporate some detail lines around the motor housing. I started by cutting and shaping two obeche panels that join along the centre line of the deck and fit neatly around the motor mount and prop-shaft, then I used some tracing paper over the panels to make a test pattern for the planking lines. When I was happy with the layout of the lines I first applied two coat of Teak stain to the panels, and when that was dry I used a .8mm pen to mark the deck lines, the ink takes a while to dry fully and I found it all too easy to smudge some lines 😡 which had to be very quickly taken off with a dampened cotton bud and re-applied. After 24 hours the ink had fully dried and was impervious to smudging and resistant to removal by any means (except a solvent). The floor panels were then glued down to the balsa floor with an even spread of aliphatic glue and weighted down over all of the area as there was a tendency for the panels to curl and lift. Each side panel was made in one piece and then separated into two parts to make the fitting easier, the join will be covered with a vertical detail strip, and they were also stained before being glued and clamped in place. No lining detail was applied to the side panels as I’ll do this with other surface applied pieces later but only in the area outside of the cabin. All the panels were given a couple of coats of to enhance and protect the finish.

5 years ago by robbob

Response

The deck planking.

Hi Mike. I chose to use .8mm black plasticard after doing a test pieces with it and comparing it with another using card and I found the plasticard far easier to cut and fix, and it trims very neatly with a sharp chisel. No special primer required at all, the obeche strip is stained with several coats of teak water based stain and finished with a couple of coats of satin acrylic lacquer. It was great to meet you at Ally Pally on Saturday and compare notes on Crash Tenders, I hope you enjoyed your day out to London. Very Best. Rob.

5 years ago by robbob

Forum

Sadolin

Hi Gardener, Don't know the Sadolin stuff, I use Billing Boats stains meself, BUT whatever you use, esp on balsa, apply a coupla coats of sealer first. Then at least one or two coats of clear satin varnish; e.g. from Lord Nelson range from Holland. THEN AND ONLY then, apply your stain til you get the depth of colour you want. After that seal with matt, satin or gloss varnish / lacquer according to taste😉 That's the way I did my Sea Scout 'Jessica' renovation, see blog on this site for results!!! Coupla sample pics attached. The whole process is described in the Blog. Otherwise the balsa will soak up all your stain and still not look right 🤔 A 'preserver' as such is not normally necessary if the wood is properly treated inside and out; sealer, stain, varnish etc! Or just EzeKote resin inside. Stain no needed inside of course. Good luck and above all have fun with your endeavours. 👍 Keep us 'up to date' ('on the running' as my German friends would say; 'auf den Laufenden'!) 😁 Cheers, Doug 😎 PS I like Danish Blue meself 😁😁 On the other hand; I wouldn't have used balsa for speedboat deck in the first place. I use a close grained marine ply 0,8 or 1.0mm. Takes the stain better and looks more realistic. Balsa is too coarse grained for stain and varnish on scale speedboats. Thick coat of paint ... OK. On the cabin roof and after deck (which I had to renew) I used 1.5mm mahogany veneer. If I had to do it again I would use a close grained 0.8mm marine ply (birch or pear) and cherry stain (also Billing) as I used on 'Jessica's deck.

6 years ago by RNinMunich

Forum

Crash Tender davit info...

Martin. The textured spray I used came from Halfords and was applied in very thin layers to build up the required texture, bear in mind that the finishing colour will 'fill' the texture to some degree. I also applied a to seal the final surface. Sprinkling pixie dust (or crushed chinchillas 😱) onto wet paint sounds a bit hit & miss to me 😁. Whatever you do is acceptable as 'modellers license', and why not be individual with a two-tone grey scheme👍👍. Doug. I think I saw these books and others on Amazon UK when I doing my initial research but concluded that they probably wouldn't have any specific info or 'photos on the flying boat crash rescue tenders which are the subject of the discussion here and I didn't want to shell out on the off-chance that they would, but certainly very useful for the other RAF boats. RAF Hendon museum is very close to me, I could walk there in 20 minutes if I was feeling energetic, and it could be worth asking to see what 'photos and documents they have there. Robbob.

6 years ago by robbob

Forum

Bristol pilot cutter mascotte

Back to the main hull Have finally got the hull sprayed today with this heat it has been drying faster than I can spray it on 😄 Firstly the hull was sanded with a 200grit paper to sand of the shiny coating to give the paint something to key too. It has had three coats of undercoat sanded with 2500grít wet and dry paper between each coat.the undercoat used was Halfords rattle can plastic primer. Then the lower hull colour was sprayed on again three coats sanded with 2500grit paper between each coat.colour used was Halfords rattle can ford arctic blue. the top half of the hull was sprayed with two coats only with it being black plus I didn't have enough paint to give it a third coat😋 colour used was Halfords rattle can satin black. Finally the hull was sprayed with Halfords rattle can clear lacquer three coats sanded with 2500grit paper between each coat.

6 years ago by kmbcsecretary

Response

The Lone Ranger Rides Again or Hull Finishing ;-))

Hi Mark, thankyou 😊 The paint is, not surprisingly for me, from a German manufacturer: Peter Kwasny Gruppe. They also make the pro car paints I sometimes use. It's article number 320 078. Königsblau / Royal Blue. The can top is darker than the finish actually turns out! To me it's lighter than Royal Blue but I'm happy with it. I also used - the white primer from the same company; article number 320 411, before that light grey filler primer, # 233 032, and finally clear high gloss protective lacquer # 633 017. The blue and the white primer I found in a local building supplies store under the name 'Hit Color Decospray'! They are specified for indoor and outdoor use; emission class A+. 👍 You might find something similar in your local DIY shop. I think your Puffer would look superb in this colour. if you want a darker shade you might try a thin coat of matt or satin black after the primer? The primer filler and lacquer I bought online some time ago as part of a Pro Scratch Repair kit for my last car. Now what can I do with the rest of the Toyota Navajo Red ??? I sent them the paint code from my car registration and they mixed up an absolute perfect match and delivered in about 10 days 😊 I'll dig in the archive for the web link. Ciao, Doug 😎 PS I think you're right, I'll go for Gold (😉) and hope I don't mess up the hull! Tamiya tape should help.

6 years ago by RNinMunich

Response

The Saga of the Cabin Roof or - Arrrgh!

Evenin' MT, Thanks👍 Yep I know blooming from my car restoration days. Causes a dull satin effect with some whitish fogging 😡 That's not what happened here, suddenly a patch of yellowish spots appeared under the gloss!😭 Only thing I can think of is that with the last flattening with 3000 grit I used a drop of liquid soap to lubricate the sanding sponge, gives that almost glass finish. Maybe some soap residue was still there and the next lacquer coat reacted with it? The soap is a trick I learned during car repairs. Of course then I could wash it all off with a big sponge and chuck a bucket of water over it! Not such a good idea with a model wooden boat🤔 Re 'Your skins' 😲 I used mahogany 'because it was there' and I suddenly had a picture in my mind what it could look like (Riva style😉) if I could do the job right! I'm pretty happy with how it eventually worked out 😊 Not sure that a mahog roof fits the image of an RAF boat? and painting it would be a shame 🤔 But if you do decide to use it you may have more luck with 0.5mm, mine was 1mm+. What are the 'existing skins'? Re clothing: I didn't do that, didn't want to risk obscuring the wood grain on the outside and the inside I had sealed with two coats of EzeKote anyway. Cloth would have been superfluous. But if you're going to paint the roof anyway then - why not? Would give strength and rigidity. Thicker ply? More than 0.5 / 0.6mm and you may have the problem I had with the compound curve!!! Cheers Doug 😎

6 years ago by RNinMunich

Blog

The boat hooks.

I stumbled on the boat hooks whilst scouring eBay for some other bits and bobs, they came as a set of three but the poles were too short to be scale accurate but I bought a set anyway and replaced the supplied poles with some 3mm mahogany dowel of the right scale length. The hooks themselves are made of white metal and are quite delicate so some care was needed in cleaning them up for painting. I etch primed them first and then brush painted them with some silver metallic acrylic before epoxy fixing them to the poles which I had sprayed with a satin finish lacquer. The retaining brackets were made from some 22 gauge brass cut into a 3mm strip and formed into a lipped retainer. These brackets were pierced to take a 1mm brass dome head pin which was soft soldered in place and then etch primed and brush painted with ‘gun metal’ grey acrylic. A 1mm hole was drilled into the cabin sides in the correct positions according to the drawings and the brackets glued in place. The brackets retain the poles quite firmly and I think they give the boat some interesting detail 😁

7 years ago by robbob

Blog

The foam tanks.

I need to make the foam tanks as two separately removable items to allow the deck to be removed for access to the rudder servo etc. The most intricate part of the foam tanks is undoubtedly the gratings that go over the top of them, fortunately there is a ready-made grating available that makes their construction unnecessary 👍👍. I bought this from modellingtimbers.co.uk, the grating ’WG7’ that they supply is dimensionally perfect for the job and can be easily assembled into the shape required. The casing for the foam tanks was made from a combination of materials, the base is 4mm ply, the back is 2mm ply, the front and sides are 2mm plasticard and the top is 1.5mm plasticard. The grating panel was assembled to the correct length and width for the scale and bordered with some 3mm x 4mm mahogany strip, the grating does not run the full length of the foam tanks and there is a plain section to the rear which will be a plasticard infill. The wood and plastic panels were all cut by knife and only needed the edges trued up with a small plane. All the joints were fixed with superglue with a reinforcing piece on the inside of the joint for strength. At all stages the assembly was checked for square and size and dry fitted in the deck well to check for fit. The grating panel was sanded to a smooth finish and a light mahogany stain applied to just the outer mahogany frame as I quite liked the contrast between the light and the dark woods, they were then sprayed with several coats of and set aside to dry. Before glueing the tank tops in place some short bracing pieces were fitted for rigidity. The tanks were given a rub down with fine abrasive paper as a key and sprayed with two light coats of grey primer and then a final paint finish of BS631 RAF Light Grey, the same as the rest of the superstructure. The two infill panels were painted the same and then epoxied into the grating panels. Before fixing the gratings to the top of the tanks some mahogany trim was applied to the tank sides. I need to devise a method of holding the tanks in place on the deck, probably with some of those small but tenacious little magnets that can be let into the bases of the tanks and concealed on the underside of the deck panel. I’ll need to make the suction hoses soon and that will involve a bit a brass turning by ’you know who’ so I’d better get busy with some engineering drawing for the man with the lathe 😉

7 years ago by robbob

Blog

The cockpit steps.

A little bit more cockpit detailing....there's quite a lot to do in there and I want it to look as good as some of the inspiring examples that I have seen on other boats...sorry if I have stolen your ideas 😜 The cockpit steps were made from some 12mm x 3mm mahogany strip that I made up from some 10mm strip glued together and then cut down to the required width. The supplied drawing was to the correct scale so I was able to use this as a template, but one of the legs of each ladder needs to be slightly longer on one side because of the curvature of the tow-hook deck onto which the ladders are fixed. The treads were cut to the correct width and length and the forward edge rounded slightly. After marking the correct height of the treads on the sides I drilled some small holes through the sides into the treads for some 1mm brass rod to reinforce the glued joint. The steps were assembled using superglue and the brass rod helped to keep the piece square and true as the glue set. The protruding brass rod was then cut and filled flush with the sides. After a light sanding a mahogany stain was applied to enhance the colour and then few coats of sprayed to give the final finish. The steps will be fixed through the deck with some hex head wood screws from the underside so that they meet the bulkhead at the upper end without any fixing. I think they have come out quite well 😁. I'm making the foam tanks just at the moment....and I thought the steps were fiddly !! 😲

7 years ago by robbob

Blog

Cockpit deck brass features.

The aft cockpit deck has two drain holes on the real boat that discharge through a pair of outlets on the transom if the boat takes on any water in the cockpit well. On my model the drains are not connected to the outlets, that’s taking the scale accuracy a bit too far 😜, nevertheless I don’t want a couple of holes in my deck letting in water so I need to fill them in with some drain gratings. I made these from some 10mm thick wall brass tubing and some 2mm brass rod. First I filed three narrow slots into the end of the brass tube about half the thickness of the brass rod and soft soldered them into the slots. The rod was then filed flush to the top of the tube to flatten the profile and form the grating slots, and the overhang filed flush with the tube sides. I used a pipe cutter to separate the finished piece from the brass tube and then repeated the process for the second fitting. The grating needs to be blocked so that it doesn’t let water through and I did this by forming a disc out of black plasticard the same diameter as the tube bore as a stopper and filling the base with epoxy to form the seal, the finished drains were then glued into the deck panel flush with the planking. I used some 1.5mm brass rod bent and fashioned to form the handles for the hatches and these were fixed with epoxy through holes in the panel. Another brass feature on the deck are the rivets around the battery hatch, these are actually some domed rivets with a 2mm head and 1mm shaft that I bought online from RB Models (Poland) along with some other excellent items from their range of ships fittings. www.rbmodel.com Finally the deck panel and main hatch cover were sprayed with several coats of . The panel will need some further work to incorporate the towing hook stays and I’ll cover that in another posting.

7 years ago by robbob

Blog

Planking…part 2

After a successful first attempt at planking the tow-hook deck I then did the same to the mid deck. I placed a 5mm border of maple with mitred corners, but I stepped it out around the forward cabin access door so that the completed deck panel can be dropped and slid into place beneath the door threshold. The planking was placed working out from the centre line to keep the spacing even, and when the CA had fully set the black plasticard ‘caulking’ was trimmed flush with a sharp chisel and the whole surface sanded smooth. There is a small detail on this deck which is identified on the Vosper drawing as a ‘fuel tank sounding’, a sort of dipstick access point I suppose. This part is not supplied in the metal fittings kit so and I fabricated this from a piece of 10mm brass tube with a plasticard insert to replicate the detail. This was then painted metallic silver and let into the deck after cutting a 10mm diameter hole through the planking. To cut this hole I used a short piece of 10mm thin wall brass tube with a sharp edge filed on its internal bore so that it acted as a sort of ‘cookie cutter’ and it produced a neat and accurately sized hole in the deck planking. The ‘step’ formed by the door and frame was painted to match the door and then the complete deck panel sprayed with several coats of for the final finish. I'm getting the hang of this planking lark so confidence is high as I move on to tackle the far more challenging cockpit deck 🤔

7 years ago by robbob

Blog

Planking...part 1.

As a novice boat builder I have never done any planking before but after seeing some fine examples on other crash tender decks and read other blog descriptions of the process I thought I’d give it a try as it would be more pleasing to the eye than a plain painted surface. I’m not sure how true to the prototype the planking is on a RAF Crash Tender as it’s not described in the Vosper documentation but I think some ‘modelling licence’ is justified for the visual effect. The choice of materials, planking sizing and the method of ‘caulking’ were all studied in detail in the blogs and discussions and I finally decided on 7mm x 1.5mm maple for the planking and some .7mm black plasticard cut into fine strips for the caulking. All the required materials were ordered from Cornwall Model Boats and all arrived remarkably quickly packed in a long cardboard tube two days later… very good service and quality materials! I made a practice piece to test the process and materials before committing it to the boat, I used a teak stain on the wood as a test as well but decided I preferred the natural colour of the maple after it was lacquered with a few coats of satin finish. When I felt I was sufficiently proficient to start for real I elected to do the relatively small area of the tow hook deck first. This was marked out to get the correct centering of the planks and I commenced with the application of a 5mm border with mitred corners and the plasticard caulking strips on the inside edges. The maple planking is very easy to cut and trim and is also reasonably consistent in width and thickness. I’m using a medium cyano glue for all of this as it grabs very quickly so that I can work at a reasonable pace but my finger-tips unavoidably end up getting stuck occasionally too 😡 Working from the centre line outwards the maple strips and caulking were fixed down, the final outer pieces on each side needed to be slightly wider to fill the space but the difference is barely noticeable. The ‘caulking ‘ was carefully trimmed flush with the deck with a very sharp half inch chisel and the whole surface sanded smooth. Several coats of acrylic were then applied by brush as I decided it would be easier than masking up the surrounding areas. Buoyed by the success of this I think I'll do the mid-deck and the cockpit too 😁

7 years ago by robbob

Blog

Lacquering the hull.

Now that the self-adhesive vinyl lettering and hull markings are now applied and correctly positioned…😉 I can now spray the lacquer finish on the hull. The gloss black areas will have a number of coats of Halfords clear gloss lacquer and the red ‘anti-fouling’ areas finished in Halfords clear . I started with the gloss lacquer first, so the all the deck area and the red ‘anti-fouling’ areas were masked. As I wanted the white waterline to be sealed with the gloss finish I masked below the line. After a thorough wipe over with some panel wipe the first coat of gloss was sprayed followed by a further two coats at 30 minute intervals. Fortunately it all went on without any runs or blemishes so I left it for a week to thoroughly harden after removing the masking. The black area was then masked from the bottom of the waterline, the area cleaned with panel wipe and sprayed with three coats of Halfords clear . With all the masking removed the boat was them put aside and left for a week for everything to dry thoroughly and then I polished the black area with some ‘T-cut’ polish to remove any surface blemishes and bring it to a full shine. All the hull marking and lettering are now firmly fixed and sealed and I’m very pleased with the final results. The next job will be to spray the deck and superstructure with the BS631 RAF Light Grey and then the majority of the paint process will be complete 😁

7 years ago by robbob

Response

Priming the hull.

Hi Paul. Yes I will be spraying a textured finish on the deck, another Halfords product, and then the custom colour BS 381C ' Light Grey 631 over that. The deck and cabin sides etc. will then get a final coat of . I have done a test sample of this on some scrap and the effect is quite pleasing. 😊 I'll keep all the roofs as gloss white. Right now I'm looking for some wood strip to plank the tow hook deck and rear cockpit. I think 6mm should be the right size but I want quite a light colour to contrast with dark caulking, any recommendations on that? Rob.

7 years ago by robbob

Forum

Paint for RAF Crash Tender.

Hi Onetenor. Thanks for the follow up suggestions but I have already found a supplier in Manchester who were able to mix the required colour and deliver 2 x 400ml rattle cans by next day courier for £18 all in, which is a real bargain compared to the prices I found elsewhere. The only snag I that they can only mix gloss and not matt or satin, but I will overspray with a anyway. I have tested it for compatibility with the acrylics that I am using (Halfords) and it's perfectly OK. Robbob.

8 years ago by robbob