Jan 2006

Robert had   joined   three of the four main sheets so I had a 12 metre length   that   was ready for bracing. I cut the pieces of angle iron to weld across the deck. These I could weld with confidence, knowing that they were inside the boat and that they wouldn't leak. By the time I got 15 of these pieces welded on, I was much more confident and decided to have a go at the last full base-plate join. This went well and I could see a big difference in my welding skills from when I tried this last August. Then I welded on the stern end sheet.   I   also   rough-cut the stern end   'swim' which allows the boat to flow through the water better.(I hope) As you can see from the next photo, my boat has turned into a car park. We'll have find somewhere to put these vehicles soon when the sides are welded to the deck.

  Next was to lay out the sides that had been folded   by Uxbridge boatyard 18 months previously! Once the braces were welded on all the way to the front of the boat, I laid out the folded hull sides. These sheets (5 each side) were welded together to make   two pieces 12.5 m long. Then the Knees (Vertical braces) and Stringers ( Horizontal braces) were welded on. These two   sides were then flipped over to allow welding to be done on the outside of the sheets. This had to be ground smooth as it would be visible on the finished boat. Its ironic that the most important welds i.e. below the water line have to be the most perfect welds and nobody will see them. The welds that are above the water line however have to look the best but only have to be structurally sound   and much more time is spent making them look presentable.

The sides were flipped over using a gantry, that I started to build before we moved to this site and finished once we got here, and a forklift. Andy was also working on a grab loader at the time of flipping so this came in useful too.

Proceedings came to a halt for a few days in early March   after I managed to get a small piece of foreign matter into my eye. I had been wearing safety glasses while working but must have had a piece of dust in my eyebrow and managed to dislodge it later in the evening. I had to have a couple of days off as I couldn't drive after the foreign body had been surgically removed. I know how it feels to stick pins in my eyes now!

After a slower week I started to get back to work. I have now cut the sides to exact length and will now be able to stand them up on the edges of the deck.

You may have noticed a slight confusion with tenses. We are now in the present tense as I have pretty much caught up with myself and will update the site more frequently as the boat progresses.

Finally today I managed to get both sides standing upright. Andy had a grab-loader in to service so we made use of it. I used my gantry at one end and Andy used the grab-loader at the other end and we just lifted the sides into position, tack-welded them and braced them. The whole job was surprisingly quick. I still have to position them at the right angle in relation to the keel but that can be done bit by bit over the next couple of evenings.

Now   all I have to do is fully weld along inside and outside with perfect welds, so that will keep me busy for the next few days. Then I have to tackle the pointy end and the blunt end!

Rain, rain and more bloody rain. Luckily I bought a 6m x 3m car canopy   so that I could continue to work whatever the weather. I spent Wednesday 8th March   tack welding the sides to the keel. They were a bit twisted and bent after lifting them into place. Also the heat generated when welding distorts the metal greatly. By using a combination of trolley jack, hydraulic porta-pack frame straightener and a ratchet cable puller I managed to get the sides welded to the keel in pretty much straight lines so that when looked at from one end or the other, the boat will still look fairly true.

While I was outside, welding the sides to the keel,   my partner, Julie, was beginning to remove rust from the insides and giving it all a generous coat of red oxide paint. All was going   well until the diesel generator welding set I had been using suddenly decided to give me too many Amps, causing holes to blow in the steel. Andy and I had a look inside and we found a wire from the amperage controller had fractured. It has done a lot of duty hours lately so I suppose it was inevitable that it would fail sometime. Luckily it was a simple matter to repair it.  

I've   recently   got   a   Plasma Cutter (bought on eBay) to cut   steel up to 9.5mm thick. I got some new tips and electrodes for it and had a little try-out yesterday. It cuts such a fine line, only about 2mm wide and with minimal distortion. The alternative is to cut with Oxy-acetylene torch which will be much less exact and distorts the metal either side.. There are plenty of pieces to cut out for the bow and the stern sections so I will have to   practise with it until I'm   competent to cut out the precise shapes required.

27th March 2006.   We have just had a wonderful week on a rented narrowboat on the Kennet & Avon canal near Bath. Julie   and I   spent a very relaxing week doing almost no miles (About 30 I think) and eating lots of good food. We did see a bit of Bath and Bradford-on-Avon but we mostly spent the week planning the interior of our boat. It was very hard to come back to work and I am truly envious of the many "water gypsies" we saw. They seem to have an idyllic life. The lock is Bath deep lock and Julie is standing next to it for scale.

2nd April. Julie and I have just spent a busy weekend working on the boat shell. Saturday.   I used an angle grinder with a wire brush fitted to strip off the layer of rust that had built up on the steel after it had been lying in the open for so long. I used the wire brush and Julie followed on behind with the red oxide paint to prevent further rust developing. On Sunday I continued with welding the inside of the sides to the base while Julie used the angle grinder brush and made a start on cleaning rust from the outside of the shell and managed to get 2/3 of one side cleaned and primed before she had to leave.   Julie did really well considering she doesn't normally do such heavy manual work and did about 8 hours hard labour on Saturday and about 4 more on Sunday. I hope she doesn't ache too much at work this week!   I worked on with the welding until I had finished all one side (Inside) Just the inside of the other side to do and then start on the next stage. I will have to make templates so that I can get the two sides of the boat as mirror images when I cut out the stern sections.

6th April. I spent last night drawing out a template for the shape of the rear counter (Lower deck) on to 3 pieces of hardboard. It took about 3 hours to do. Just to draw an ellipse! I think I'll just turn it over to draw the other side! Tonight, after a late start, I finally got back to welding the other side (Inside) I got about a     third done but then felt very weary. Probably because I was up till 2am last night! I finally finished all the welding of the sides on the 9th April.

11th April. Last night   I spent 4 hrs getting the next few sheets of steel out. First I had to drive the lorry out of the yard and then jump start the forklift. The 6mm steel sheets   I wanted happened to be under all the long pieces and some other sheets of 5mm steel. The long pieces all had to be lifted off by hand. So I ended up with all the different thicknesses of steel in separate piles all over the yard, until I got down to what I needed. I placed these sheets on the front of the boat deck. Then had to put all the other steel back in the lorry. I finished at about 11.30. So it was too late then to start anything else. Quick shower and off to bed.

12th April. Tonight I got out the Plasma cutter. I carefully marked out one side of the bow section and cut a long strip off. Then I cut a template of plywood to use for the curve at the very front of the boat so that the two sides will have exactly the same curve. When this side piece is welded to the sides that are already up it will be gradually teased round in a gentle curve and welded, bit by bit, to the deck. The front of the deck will have to be raised up by about 8" to meet the shaped side. (I'm not exactly sure how I will achieve this yet, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

14^th April. Bank holiday weekend and ready to work……. huh, woke up and it’s pouring. Not to worry as I’d decided to take the afternoon off and go to the London Canal Museum with Julie and my daughter Eleanor. By the time we got there the sun was out and the temperature was up. We had a good look around the small, but interesting, museum then went outside to look at the boats moored in Ice House and Battlebridge basins. It’s a great mooring there and its hard to believe its only a stones throw from King’s Cross Station. We dropped Eleanor off at her home and were back by 6.30 pm after a very lazy day. But tomorrow we work!

16^th April. Well yesterday was one of those days where nothing went to plan, the idea was an early start and lots of   work.   I'm   not quite sure what went wrong but very little got done, so today we go to plan B! We got an early start and Julie got on with grinding and painting while I carried on cutting the   second bow section out (I had cut the first piece on     Thursday). Then I welded two lugs to each side   and used a long, heavy threaded rod to pull the two sides in, bit by bit, welding them as I went.   There was   a bit of a hiccup when one of the lugs broke away, but I'd left the cable winch on the inside so it only opened up so far.   Finally I managed to get both sides tack-welded inside and out, almost all the way to the base.   The last few inches will have to be forced on by welding some lugs on the inside - but that’s for another   day.   Bending up the front of the keel turned out to be very easy, I just put a car jack under it and pumped!   I jacked up the keel just to see how it looked and took a picture, then cleaned up for the night.

18th April   I got home late from work today so didn't get much done.     I did manage to cut out the hardboard templates that I drew last week for the rear counter.   I also drew the patterns for the bow return plates for the front.   My plans advised     making these to test them for fit before cutting them out of metal.

25th April.   I spent the next few nights trying to get the bow pushed into shape and welded to the keel.   The port side somehow managed to get a bad twist into it when I joined the two sides together.   I managed to get the starboard side welded to the keel   okay and then used the solid base to push the twist out using a hydraulic press.     This took a few hours to do but finally I managed to get it into a respectable shape and tack welded it   to the keel. I also cut out a piece of 6mm steel to use as the bottom of the gas bottle locker then tack welded that into place as well to ensure the bow kept it's "gentle curve".   While I was working on this Julie made a start on cleaning up some reclaimed oak parquet flooring.   I'd been saving this for   a while after an unfortunate incident I had when a cylinder coil leaked and lifted some of the blocks. There   are about 50 square meters of it     and it's covered in adhesive and self leveling cement so I think this may take some time!   In fact the only method   we found to remove it was to use an angle grinder with a stone disk on.    

I'm now beginning to make templates up for the stainless steel     water tank, which has to be in place before the   front well-deck is welded down onto the hull sides.   The capacity is about 225 gallons so should mean fewer trips to the stand pipe to refill.  

27th April.     I'm continuing to weld around the front sections, inside and out.   Tonight I cut off the front base plate to the profile of the newly welded hull sides with the Oxy-acetylene.     I'll have to clean it up a bit with the grinder but I think that will have to be done in daylight.   Thank goodness there's another long weekend coming up, mind you we are planning to go to Little Venice to the canal cavalcade on the Monday.

29th April.       We spent another long day working on the boat, Julie continued to clean off the oak flooring with the angle grinder and I completed the welding inside and out of the bow section. I also tidied up a few of the little welding jobs that weren't worth getting everything out to do individually.   Last job of the day was to lift another sheet of 6mm steel onto the trestles and mark out the shapes for cutting the stern swim.   Hopefully I'll get that cut and tacked into place this weekend, ready for welding during the week. Julie went off home earlier this afternoon as she was babysitting for her granddaughter tonight so it means I worked later than I would have if she'd been here.

30th April. I woke at 6.30 this morning to the sound of light rain falling. I had a piece of steel, on trestles, out in the open, marked and ready to cut so I quickly pulled on some clothes and went over to the boat. I pushed the gantry to the end of the boat and moved my canopy along to cover the sheet and keep it dry. In doing so I exposed the wood Julie had been cleaning off, so I rigged up another tarpaulin to cover that. By this time I was wide-awake so figured I may as well stay up and get to work. I got all the tools and equipment out, set up the plasma cutter and spent the rest of the morning cutting two pieces of steel for the stern swim. I then got these tack welded into place and pulled in together. I will not weld them to the keel plate until I have fixed the counter to them, just in case the counter is not exactly the right shape. At least I have some leeway on the keel plate to accommodate any twists or buckles in the steel of the swim.

1st May. It rained during the night from about 11 pm till mid-morning. Now the sides are becoming welded all around the boat, the rain cannot drain away. There was about 60ltrs of water in the shell, (I know because I scooped it up with a plastic dustpan, into an old paint tin - 12 times!). Julie and I had planned to go to Little Venice for the Cavalcade on the Honda but decided to go in the car as it looked so unsettled. By the time we were ready to go it had brightened up a lot so we went on the bike after all. My son-in-law, Robert, has taken to coming over now and then to help out on the boat, so before we left I set him to work cleaning off the rust with a wire brush on a grinder and then putting on some red oxide while we were off enjoying ourselves. We were on a fact-finding mission, I was eyeing up how other people have done some of the finer parts of the pointy end.

Slowly but surely the pile of steel is beginning to look like a narrow boat. On the 2nd of May I cut and tack welded the starboard bow return plate. Tonight, the 4th of May (Star wars day - May the fourth be with you!) I cut and tacked the port side. I will spend the next few nights fully welding these two pieces, inside and out. I have still to cut templates for the stainless steel water tank but couldn't do this until the bow return plates were in place.

9th May.   I had finished tack welding the starboard return plate on Saturday.    

Sunday 7th.     I had a   team here at West Drayton boat builders, Julie was hard at work still cleaning off the oak flooring, while Son-in-law Robert was on his knees painting some of the floor sections.   I was welding the return plates on the bow; I also started to give some thought to the engine.   I retrieved it from under the trailer, where it's been for the last 18 months since I finished rebuilding it.   More details on the engine page.

I have taken careful measurements of the water tank position.   I am now trying to learn a CAD package so that I can produce some drawings for ZEUS Fabrications of Uxbridge (01895 810252) to make me a stainless steel tank.   It will   be quite an odd shape to be able to fit right into the bow of the boat, behind and below the gas locker and to utilize the space to its maximum advantage.   There's no room for dead space on a narrowboat!

15th May.     Another   busy weekend, Saturday I cut out the rudder and for a bit of fun, changed the   circle design from the plans into a three leaf clover then Julie gave it a good coat of red oxide.     Sunday Julie had to leave early and I cut out the pieces for the stem   on the front. This is the bit that would have a figurehead on if it was   that kind of a ship -hmmm- now   there's an idea!        

19th May.   Today Julie and I are off   for our weekend away, we'll let you know   how it was when we get back.   Time has run out for now.    

22nd May. We're back from the Peak District (Derbyshire) and what a weekend!   We arrived on   Friday, met up with a few people in the pub then went off to pitch our tent, yes tent - do you remember what the weather was like?   We put the tent up in   gale force winds, and then it started raining.   It did this for about 24 hours, then the temperature dropped and then it rained again.   Hey and we're planning our next trip.   We went up   to Derbyshire for the Kelvin Register and Vintage Marine Engine Rally 2006, held at Bugbrooke Basins, near Whaley Bridge.   I've been a member for some years but it's the first time I've made it to a rally.   I was quite proud of my Petter engine until I saw some of   the Kelvin,   Lister and Gardner engines.   I realize now that mine only just about scrapes in as a vintage engine. I spent a few months doing a top end rebuild, some of these engines have been lovingly restored for over 5 years and they dwarf mine.   Imagine a single cylinder - 4.5 litres!    

Then follows a   week that just didn't seem to go to plan, I was either working, it was raining or I was just plan shattered.

27th May.     Julie and I   went off to Crick Narrowboat Show for the day.   We had a couple of hours drive   up the M1 to   Crick, drove across a field so wet and muddy they'd had to put down rolling roads on as much of   it as they could.   Although it was dry and sunny on the way up it started to rain while we were   waiting to go   in and it didn't stop till we were on our way home.   We had mud up to our knees and the car was covered but it was a good day with lots to see.

3rd June.   Well the sun's been shining for two days now, at last.   I spent Saturday tinkering with   the engine and Julie painted some more of the base plates while they were dry.     The steel was so hot that even though she had thick trousers on   she had to kneel on a folded cloth to protect her knees.   As well as the knees burning   Julie also got a bit sun burnt   so Sunday I worked alone while Julie went for some retail therapy.  

6th June. There's been a problem with this website. Some days went missing and although I had a backup, it wasn't a full backup. Julie and I have been adding the days that disappeared and we still have to add all the pictures. Not much has been done on the boat since we got back from Peak District. I have been spending some more time on the engine and gearbox. Julie stripped all the blue paint from the gearbox and the oil cooler and I polished up any brass bits on the wire mop. I have now painted it all in a dark green colour and it sets the brass off beautifully. I am going to strip the engine down to bare metal and paint that also. I will have to put plenty of copper pipework between the engine and gearbox oil cooler so that I can polish it up and it may resemble some of those prizewinning engines I saw in Bugbrooke Basin.

7th June.   Well we've caught up - just the pictures to do now.   Soon I hope.

11th June It’s been so very hot for the last few days. Much too hot to weld. Too hot even to work, but some things can't be avoided. So I go to work in the morning, come home and drink tea and think about how hot it is. I have been tinkering with the engine for the last few days so it’s not all wasted time, painting some bits and polishing others. I am still trying to make the joining plate between engine and gearbox. I will still have to   get a part machined up from the engine output shaft to gearbox input shaft. And I will have to get a   prop shaft made to reach the stern gear.     At some point the boat will be at the stage where the engine will have to be fitted so it should be ready to go straight in at that point.

Julie and I are taking my daughter away for a holiday at the end of this week, so there probably won't be too many updates till   we   get back.