Lots To Blog Today Busy Busy Busy

Well what a busy day.

First I brushed off the roof that was gritted yesterday.  I think the pictures say it all.

 

 Im very pleased with the finish, paint it next

Then I set too with gritting the port gunwale.  I had previously marked the line so this morning it was masking.

The masking and shaping took about 2 hours believe it or not, this was shown live on the new Live Stream at the top of the page.  More on that later.

All then needed to do was to apply the paint and grit.  

This time course carborundum

Later in the afternoon my brother turned up to add some more stone surfaces to the boat.

The first job on this was to make a support to take the cantilever of the breakfast bar.  This was done about a week ago in preperation.

First I drilled 4 x 20mm holes in the work surface and made some hooks from 10mm studding.

 The hooks then passed in to the holes

The hooks were then used to anchor down a length of 4 x 2 which was also glued down.

So all that was left to do was put the stone on.

Cladding

Then a pre-made ply infill was screwed onto the the surface of the cladding.

On to which the top surface and the finished breakfast bar was glued.

Da Dah!

I have to confess to breaking a bit of the thin cladding.  But my brother managed to re-join it and it wont even show. Clever sod!

Then to the bedroom. 

Cimstone (man made stone)
with mother of pearl & tigers eye flecks

There is one of these each side and there will be some upstands to be fitted later.

And so the the Live Streaming.

This is my iPad which Ive made up a holder for it and mounted it on a tripod.

 Camera side

Screen side

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Lets start our new Blog

Permit us to introduce ourselves... We are Model Boats by John Into & Nancy Price.
We may be new to the idea of blogging, but we are not new to making model boats. I have been doing it for 50 years. Nancy for 18. Weve made well over 300 models of all kinds. Weve also written a serious book about how to make models entitled "Fundamentals of Model Boat Building". You can see photos of our models and information about our book at http://intothings.com/

Its an unusual way to make a living and its given us opportunities to meet and work with all sorts of people of a variety of backgrounds. Weve also had opportunities to see and make models of some very interesting boats.

We would like to hear from anyone that is interested in boats, models, things in miniature, or anything else that might come to mind...

You can also find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/model.boats?sk=wall

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The Aim of this Blog

First post on a brand new blog, I guess that I should explain what I plan to do with it.

I have been an amateur boatbuilder most of my life, in one way or another. From building toy boats for myself from plywood tea boxes brought home from work by my mom, or carved from pieces of dead protea bushes scavenged on mountain walks, to canoes shaped from salvaged galvanised sheet steel, wood from peach boxes and pitch melted into the joints and nail holes. This eventually led me through designing and building my own plywood beach catamaran to building a 36ft sailboat designed by Ricus van de Stadt. This led further to me studying yacht design then designing and building a few dinghies, canoes and two more large sailboats of 34 and 38ft (The 38ft boat forms the background to this blog). Along the way I also designed many boats for other amateur or professional boatbuilders for various materials.

My first big boat project. A 36ft boat in my mid-20s.

Despite my status as a professional yacht designer, all of my boatbuilding escapades were as an amateur in the worst sense of the title. I built the big boats in my garden, working through extremes of hot, windy summers and cold, wet winters. I was always on a tight budget, skimping on the family budget to buy what was needed for the boat that was in progress at the time. My wife had to endure losing kitchen utensils that sometimes found their way to a more useful role in the workshop, finding epoxy chilling in the freezer if I needed to slow the cure or discovering welding rods drying in the oven. Even newly painted scale models were sometimes drying in the warm oven. I dont know how she put up with me but that is the much needed and loved tolerance of the wives of most amateur boatbuilders. I am lucky to have the support of my wife in these ventures and hope that you are as lucky too.

My most recent project, a 14ft high performance skiff.

All this has given me a large amount of experience and knowledge that I am always happy to share with anyone who can benefit from the info. It places me in a good position to help others to make the best decisions for whatever boatbuilding project they are considering or have in progress. I expect that most of the posts will be of my choosing but I will be open to readers sending me their boatbuilding questions or problems that are looking for answers.

I anticipate that I will post on it weekly but the frequency may change. Lets just see where it goes, I hope that you will join me in the experience.

Addendum: Due to limits on my own time available to work on this blog, I need to keep it to a basis that allows me to post about once a week. I cant allow it to turn into a forum type of blog, on a question and answer basis because that will become very demanding of my time and rapidly fail. I will endeavour to provide interesting and informative content that will be of value to you, the readers, on this basis. If you have any particular subjects that you would like me to cover, please send me an email and I will add it to my list of subjects. You can do that via the email link on my website at http://dixdesign.com/email.htm . Thanks for understanding.

To see my designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com/

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