Thursday, 18 August 2011

Arun Queen's vIsit to the Southwater Dabblers

I took Arun Queen to sail at the Southwater Dabblers Model boat club, it had a lot of interest and people kept asking me if they could see inside bcz they had never seen a hand drill used as a paddle wheel drive mechanism before!
Here she is showing off her maneuverability.
.

Sunday, 7 August 2011

Steering and stair cases.

I make the stairs from Costa Coffee shop stirrers! Great for decking too. though a little late for this boat. Despite making up a jig to set the position of the treads they still came out a little wonky! I suppose I ought to make some hand rails though Murray cargo vessels didn't bother. Maybe some benches from the afore mentioned stirrers would look nice and add some interest to the top deck.






Also photos of my unconventional steering system!


Thursday, 4 August 2011

The Arun Queen

The two new photos show a photo from the web of the same type of toy aircraft carrier that the hull came from (I omitted to take one before I started) and the now Arun Queen with her new life belts made from toy car tyres and even a fire bucket! I've since filled in that uneven gap at the base of the wheel house with a skirting strip.
The problem is it all started as a lashed together experiment and now that it works I'm trying to tart it up to make it look like a scale model...well I guess it'll end up somewhere between to two! I have some port holes made the make the super structure look more interesting and I'd really like to add some more detail behind the funnel, maybe add a Murray style vertical towing pole, it makes sense to tow from the middle of the vessel as towing to close to the stern counter acts any rudder action and would prevent it from maneuvering around the bends in the river.
(Link to a photo of a steamer towing a barge)
http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/itemimages/156/995/156995_Large.jpg