"Maud": Finished for now

The new pieces I made for the bow and stern of the boat, together with the new Toe Rails have now been stained and fixed in place. 

The curved piece for the stern split as I was nailing it into place so I had to make a new one. This time I've not used nails but glued it in to place. The boat isn't going into water so there's no need to worry about it getting wet. 

The next step is to stain the whole thing and then give it a good waxing and polish. 

I decided to use a medium Oak stain because I didn't want the hull to be too dark.

The first coat of stain I applied with a brush and was a little disappointed in the brush marks that were visible once it had dried. 

After sanding the hull again, I applied a second coat of stain by wiping it on with a cloth. This gave me a smoother and more even finish.

To finish this stage of the project I applied a couple of layers of wax polish, buffing well between coats. I haven't achieve the mirror like finish I would have liked but the boat has a nice sheen to it, and looks good.

This project will be put away for a while now as I have no idea what to do next. Part of me wants to keep "Maud" as a wooden ornament, as she is now, but part of me would like to do some construction work and make her into a proper model boat. For now she sits proudly atop a cabinet in my study while I research my options and ponder my next step.

Model boat - starting the rebuild

I've been working on constructing some pieces for the deck. The originals broke and split irreparably as you can see from the first two photo's. I pieced them together and stuck them with masking tape so that I could draw round them onto a new piece of timber. 

I've cut them out and sanded them to shape and they're now ready for staining. On the original boat they were a dark wood and would have contrasted nicely to the light wood of the hull/deck. I've also made new 'toe rails' which also need staining.

The story of the boat so far ...

1. A toy that's never been played with

2. An intriguing discovery

3. Progress and the need for a stand

4. The stand

The stand for the model boat

I haven't had a lot of time for working on the boat but I have found an hour or two here and there.

Because I have little experience working with wood, especially when it comes to staining and polishing, I decided to work on the stand for the boat first, to get some small experience before tackling the boat proper. It was covered with many layers of thick black paint, as can be seen in the picture on the right. 

Having stripped it down and disassembled it I found many old nail holes, splits and cracks hidden by the paint. I filled the holes with wood filler and glued the cracks as best I could and gave it all a very good sanding. I then reassembled it, stained it and wax polished it. 

Where the uprights fix to the base the nail holes had left horrible scars I couldn't disguise. The only thing I could think of was to cover the bad areas with something decorative. After much thought I decided to use a length of copper pipe. I cut the pipe to size, sawed along it's length, flattened it out and shaped it. After bending two pieces to fit the supports, and filing the edges smooth, I polished them and glued them in place. They look a little odd but much more acceptable than the damaged wood was.

I'm really pleased with the end result but even more pleased that I did this first because I made a lot mistakes along the way .... mistakes I wouldn't want to make on the boat itself. 

The story of the boat so far ...

1. A toy that's never been played with

2. An intriguing discovery

3. Progress and the need for a stand

Making progress with the boat

The boat is finally stripped back to clean wood. I suspect the newest layers of paint were domestic quality  gloss paints and came off quite easily with chemical stripper but the oldest layers proved very stubborn so I think they were probably marine quality. I had to resort to using an electric sander, which I had hoped to avoid. I didn't know what I was going to find beneath the paint but had always hoped it would be a reasonable quality wood with a nice grain that would stain and varnish up nicely. As you can see, I am not disappointed.

I had to remove the dark wood 'trim' around the edge of the hull in order to get all the paint off the deck, and unfortunately it split and broke during the removal, so I'll have to think of how to make some new 'trim'. Another issue is that the electric sander (not me of course  ;)) has left gouges in the surface of the wood, examples of which you can see just below that large knot. I will have to sand those away, probably by hand. Also, the bow is rather battered and uneven, so I think I'll have to fill that out with Wood Filler to restore a smooth and sharp structure.

One big problem going forward is a support for the boat while I'm working on it. Clamping the keel in my workmate is how I've managed so far but the keel has a curved surface so tends to 'wobble' its way loose. 

I decided I needed to fashion some sort of  'jig' to support the boat, possibly along the lines of the real life jigs that we see in the marina's. What I knocked together is certainly not the best bit of woodwork I've ever done but it does the job. 

The story of the boat so far ...

1. A toy that's never been played with

2. An intriguing discovery

Boys and their toys

One thing I'd always fancied owning was a remote control car. Obviously, when I was a boy back in the days before the ark, there were no such things as radio controlled vehicles, and during my working years, there were far too many other priorities for a 'toy car' to figure in my thinking. But now I'm retired, and with little else to think about, my inner child is able to come to the fore.

Looking around on the internet I researched the various types of car from kiddies toys to adult scale models, from really fast racing cars to really slow trucks. It didn't take long to settle on the type of vehicle I wanted. They are called "Rock Crawlers", a name derived from the fact that these vehicles are much slower than regular cars but have the ability to crawl and climb over rocks and other obstacles. Not wanting to be restricted to flat and level surfaces, and not having the reactions for fast action, this type of vehicle ticked my boxes perfectly. 

After months of very enjoyable research reading articles, watching videos and studying reviews, I settled on the HPI Toyota FJ Venture Cruiser. This is a scale model of a Toyota FJ 4x4 and the detail is most impressive, as is it's driving capabilities. I had numerous hard landscaping projects going on in my garden at the time so had plenty of opportunity to drive this beast up and down mountains of earth, and send it clambering over rocks and boulders. It is also extremely weather proof so, as you can see from the photo's, negotiating deep snow drifts is no problem for it.

Yeah! I'm just a big kid at heart .... and proud of it!! LOL.

An intriguing discovery

Here's where I'm at with my model boat.... stripping paint. As you can see there are many layers .... bright blue, dark blue, green and then white. What is exciting is that I have uncovered something I'd never expected, and I'm kicking myself for not taking a photograph before the paint stripper did it's job. 

On the rear of the hull, sorry 'Stern', on what I believe is called the Transom, I uncovered the boats name. It is "Maud", but I can't tell whether it has letters in front of the name (ie SS, MV, SY, HMS, etc). 

In my first post about this project I said this boat had been picked up by my father in poor condition, and renovated by him, but now I'm wondering if that's incorrect. You see, my father was one of 6 siblings (5 boys and a girl) and he was the youngest. His only sister was the eldest of the siblings and looked after her youngest brother as only 'big sisters' can and they were very close. Her name was Maud. Coincidence, or did this boat actually belong to my father? There is no one left of that generation for me to ask, so I'll never know... but it's nice to think maybe it was, and it makes my decision to keep it this long all the more special.

My first post about "Maud"

A toy that's never been played with

A toy that's never been played with

I have a model (toy) boat that was given to me when I was a young boy nearly 70 years ago. I understand it was picked up in poor condition by my father who painted it and fashioned a rough mast, and my mother sewed some material to make a very rough sail. This was back in the days when toys weren't an everyday occurrence as they are now. Though I'm sure we must have tried this out on a local boat pond at the time, I have no recollection of it ever being on water. I doubt it ever worked properly, but the sentiment behind it is immense and I've never been able to part with it.

Recently I have brought it down from it's lifetime in the attic and decided, rightly or wrongly, to re-fashion it and make some sort of display model out of it. I like shiny varnished wood and so that is the direction I'm heading. I am in the process of stripping multiple layers of paint off and sanding the hull ready for staining and varnishing, however, for reasons of space, I think I would like to do away with the tall mast and sail and maybe add some sort of cabin superstructure to try and move it one small step nearer to being 'model' rather than 'toy'. Watch this space!! 

Boat paintings on my web site

Fishing Boat

Barmouth Viking II

Boat In Torbay