Hi Mike.
The skins were too large to fit into my steaming tube which is great for the stringers but not the skins. I found the most effective method was to gently heat the skins with my Black & Decker electric paint stripper 'heat gun' in the area where you want to bend.
This causes the glue holding the plys of the skins to relax and you can then bend the skins by hand and as the skin cools it holds the shape of the bend.
There's absolutely no chance that the ply will de-laminate😀
I hope that's helpful.
Rob.

Hi Mike.
Thanks for the kind words 😁👍.
I'm very pleased with the final look of the model particularly when I compare it with the 'standard' cabin and features.
There's only the anchor to add to the blog and it's ready for the final reveal.
I might get some flags made and definitely make a proper display stand as there's a reasonable chance that I can show it at the club exhibition in September if conditions allow it 🤞.
Rob.

Hi Stephen.
Very true, making a one-off piece is relatively easy but multiple identical pieces of this nature 'ain't so easy 🤔.
Rob.

Hi Graham.
A beautifully made brass anchor. 👍👍
By a pure spooky coincidence I've just written a blog update on the making of an almost identical plough anchor for my Pilot Boat.
Mine is only styrene but it is articulated just like yours.
Fortunately I don't need to make a chain for it.😀.
Rob.

Thank you Sy.
I'm quite chuffed too....😁
Rob.

Hi Graham.
Fortunately my fingers largely survived the ordeal and as mentioned it took the best part of a day to produce sufficient usable pieces.
At one point I did consider making a corresponding female pattern so that I could mould the required shape in one heating cycle but the idea died in my realisation that it was not really a practical solution.
But perseverance and patience paid off ...eventually 😋
Rob.

Hi JB.
Yes they were a bit of a challenge, that's why I'd put off doing them for some time until I'd found the best way to make them.
Rob.

Following Skydive130’s tutorial on the making of the roof vents for his Pilot Boat I had several attempts to make the roof ventilators using his method, none of which I was entirely satisfied with and so I decided to adopt a slightly different approach.

I did some research into the actual size, shape and workings of these things and found sufficient information on the web about them 🤓.

Known as ‘Dorade Box Ventilators’ they are designed to admit air flow and funnel it through the device to the cabin interior and at the same time to block the ingress of water by using a clever valve mechanism with the water draining away through slots on the base.
Not that much of that was relevant to making them but identifying the type, and then the manufacturer, and finding drawings was a great deal more help than the grainy low resolution photographs that I was looking at previously.

With a much clearer idea of what they should look like from the info I found I started by laminating some square section styrene for the bases and cutting them into blocks of an approximate length.
There’s a raised circular section at each end of the ventilators and I simulated those with some 8mm and 6mm styrene rod and then trimmed the blocks to a rough tapered shape with a knife using the circular pieces as a guide.
Further shaping was done using a sanding plate, file and abrasive to shape the bases with a taper in length and in height. I also filed some bevels on the underside of these bases to simulate the water drainage slots.

The bases for the two ventilators on the forward engine room roof are circular in shape and were easily made from some 10mm diameter rod that I was able to ‘turn’ to a tapered shape in the chuck of my makeshift Black and Decker ‘lathe’.

A distinctive feature of these ventilators is the air intake funnel that has a particular shape which I wanted to look as realistic as possible and involved multiple experiments to get a repeatable method.
These parts were made from 8mm styrene tube and being a thermoplastic it can be readily heated and formed and to form the distinctive mouth shape of the intakes I made a wooden former suitably carved and shaped that could be pushed into the end of the styrene tube during the heating stage and using finger pressure mould the walls of the styrene tube around the wooden former.
The end of the former has a rounded end that will stretch and distort the plastic so that the tubing can be bent to 90 degrees while maintaining the curved shape.
The styrene cools and hardens very rapidly and so it took many attempts to form the desired shape successfully and I must have used almost a complete 300mm length of 8mm styrene tube perfecting a technique to form the piece in a repeatable way.
Probably a dozen or more such pieces went into the bin until I was happy with a repeatable process 😥.
As I need six of these ventilators I was very careful to perfect this without running out of material 😮.

Each piece needed to be trimmed at each side of the bend and the ‘mouth’ heated and refined on the wooden former. The base end of the piece was re-heated and reformed into a roughly circular shape so that it mounts neatly on the 8mm raised disc at the large end of the tapered base.
This was not a particularly easy process at all and a few ended up in the bin after the repeated heating and forming rendered them irretrievably miss-shaped as can be seen in one of the pictures ☹️.

I probably spent a whole day making eight usable pieces (six to use and two for spares) but I was determined to see it through despite aching and burnt fingers 😢.

After a final trim and clean-up with file and abrasives they were glued to the ventilator bases and left to set.

I used a ‘ScotchBrite’ type abrasive pad to clean the completed parts and to provide a key for the white gloss paint.
One good thing about styrene is that it’s not always necessary to spray a primer coat if the surfaces are well keyed.

The mouths of the vents were painted inside with satin matt black as a finishing touch and a 1.5mm brass rod superglued into the base as a fixing pin.
After careful measurement and positioning the roof was drilled to take the brass fixing pins and a dab of canopy glue used to secure them in place.
The forward vents on the engine room roof are fixed in the same way but I had to add a reinforcing piece of ply on the inside as the roof there is only a 1.5mm ply panel.

I had been putting off making these vents for a while and now that they are made and fitted they do look quite good and I’m very satisfied with the end results 😊.

Well done Pete, you snapped up the last one just in the nick of time 👍😀.
Rob.

Hi Graham.
It does look right 😀👍
Rob.

Ahh...OK, thanks for the explanation, I've never airbrushed anything so the process is very much a mystery to me.
Rob.

Hi easy.
Very nice finish👍.
Are you decanting the paint from the rattle can to do the airbrushing?. What's the process?
Rob.

Hi Mike.
That's the place I get my tape from too.
I think it was me that put you on to them 😁

Hi Sy.
As you know, I now use an alternative to Trimline which I have much more success with, I'm not sure what Mike's used in this boat.
Rob

Looks really good Mike.
Lovely shade of blue on the hull too 😉.
Is the Trimline tape sticking over the Chine Ok?
I always have a problem with that 😔.
Rob.

Hi Graham.
I don't mind revealing my failed attempts and disasters because frankly you learn more from your mistakes than your successes and it's good to share both.
And your little quote is very apt too!
In the making of the roof vents for my Pilot Boat I had multiple failures to make one small part until I hit on a successful method.
Perseverance does pay off in the end 😁.
Rob.

Don't be disheartened Graham, I have often been in the same situation and several 'development prototypes' have ended up in the bin before I was happy 😔.

Be pragmatic....at least you have the tools for the job now (indexer) so MkII windlass should be easier 😀
Rob.

I'd like to echo all of the sentiments expressed to Martin.
We will all miss his knowledge and expertise, and of course his ready wit and banter.
I am certain that we will all welcome his return to this site when he is able.
Robbob.

Hi Sy.
Well...if the door is anything to go by the rest of it is going to be fantastic.
The amount of detail 'moulded-in' to all of the parts is amazing😮
PS. Luv the stormtrooper testing if the paint is dry 😂!!
Rob.

Wow....you did have a busy day!
The end result is really excellent, I had to scroll back through your blog to remind myself what it started from.
You should post a few 'before and after' photos to show the transformation. 😁👍
Rob.

Excellent work Mike.😀👍
The mast has an almost 'art deco' look to it.
Rob.

You're very welcome Bill.
We all look out for each other here 🤓.
Rob.

Bill.
The discs are quite hardwearing so you should be OK for a while with the ones they include.
I just remembered that there's a 'captive' nut inside that can easily fall out (not so captive!) when you remove the adjustable platform to change discs.
A blob from a hot glue gun easily fixes that 😁
Rob.

Glad to hear you bagged one Bill 😀👍.
Were they selling the spare discs too?
Rob.

I've just had to re-upload all the 'photos of this 'Foghorn & Loudhailer' update 'cos they had mysteriously disappeared.......very odd 🤔.

Hi Doug.
"Cos your updates are never boring (What never? Well, hardly ever!"
Very diplomatic...😉
Yes, RB Model do a really nice range of small fittings but their stock levels aren't always great, some of their items are available from UK outlets but at about four times the price!
Delivery from Poland is usually no more than a week and postage charges are very reasonable too.
As you say....highly recommendable 😀👍
Rob.

Hi Missouri.
You're quite right, the threads are quite long but the roof has been 'thickened' in areas where these fittings were planned to go so there's actually very little protrusion inside the cabin apart from the engine roof lifting eyes which were trimmed back.
The brass was actually quite brittle when cut, the work hardening from being machined and the 'rolled-on' thread would account for that.
Rob.

But What's Behind the Green Door?
Sorry..........insomnia.😌

Got me bang to rights Doug....guilty as charged 😔.
On a serious note though, having the luxury of no deadline to hit and time to experiment with detailing does stretch my modelling ability and now I find I'm able to scratch build some quite difficult pieces (for me that is) as you might see in the next (boring) update.😁
Rob.

Hi Doug.
Ah.....I see what Geoff was getting at...sorry, my bad !
Thinking about it a zener diode will sort of do the job too, albeit very crude and not too stable.
As for the switched radar motor....my choice, and I'm happy with it 😉
Rob.