Bloomsberry

If by 'Blacking' you are refereing to bichumen based products then I completely agree that they are a money making con, I've had my hull blacked by this 3 times and each time there has been rust at the waterline within the year. A boat near me has had it's blacking stripped at the waterline but underneath is red oxide and although it looks a bit odd there is no rust at the waterline whatsoever. Judging by it's condition it's been like this a while too.

My mate's dad got part of his face sliced through when a grinding disk burst he was using, losts loads of blood. I always use a face mask rather than just goggles and also wear gloves and a long sleeve shirt / top. A wire cup in a drill is another option, easier than a wire brush without the worries of using a grinder.

My only concern is that if someone takes up the mooring and finds someone plugged into 'their' socket, then they may not be too happy about this and could create some ill feeling which isn't what you want if you've just occupied a new mooring.

I've moved moorings but as I'd recently topped up my original berth's electricity, left a healthy reading on the electricity meter. A neighbour by my old mooring was running low on his meter so I suggested using my meter as the mooring was still vacant and would keep him going until he could top his own meter up. However, a few weeks have passed and he is still hooked up to my old vacant mooring's electricity. I've personnally got no objection to this as I accept that the outstanding tarrif would be surrendered when I left the mooring. I was going to point out that this maybe contravening some marina rule but looking at the terms and conditions all I can find about electricity is that it is not refundable on the event of leaving a mooring. So the question is , who does the surplus electricity belong to 1) Me, being the person who paid for it in the first place 2) The marina, as the berth is now unoccupied. 3) The person who is next going to take up the berth 4) Anyone who can stretch their electricity cable long enough to reach the socket ?

I used a couple of the super absorbant car sponges from Halfords, they remove a fair bit of water and can be reused again and agan and take up every last drop. Other than that if you're stuck then newspaper is very absorbant but if you've got a lot of water then this may not be practical (unless you've got loads of newspaper of course)

But how does radweld work though ? I assume it doesn't solidify when in water but when it gets exposed to air ? Trouble is in this case the leak is below the waterline so the radweld will not get exposed to air , just another liquid so will not solidify ?

I'm hearing some good things about Jotamastic 87 so am keen to use this for my next blacking. Unfortunatly the nearest place that does gritblasting from me is quite a distance so I need an alternative method of removing the existing blacking. A boat yard a couple of days cruising from me removes blacking by needle gun but I'm not too keen on that method. I've had a terco blaster for the last year and am quite impressed with the results so am planning using this to remove the blacking. To do the whole boat would be impossible (40ft) so I'm planning on just concentrating on the vunerable areas ie. across the waterline , areas of galvanic activity (?) and possibly welding seams. I don't know of anybody whose tried this method so have no idea if it's even going to successful or not but I'm willing to give it a go. Even if it fails it can't be any worse than my previous experiances of using bitumen products.

The Cromford canal is navigable but is isolated from the canal network, not sure if this is what's meant by 'partially navigable'. So the nearest place accessible from the canal network south of Bakewell would be Langley Mill on the Erewash. Unless the restoration group has made significant progress since my last visit there a few years ago.

If the stern tube is eliptical then surely this must mean that there is a greater chance of leakage into the bilge. So what is the stern gland leakage like when the boat is in the water ?

My BMC 1.5 puts out some white smoke after startup, the colder the weather , the worse it is. It clears once the engine warms up though. If it doesn't clear after running a while here are some possible causes. http://www.cruisingworld.com/how/read-those-smoke-signals My worst experiance of a diesel engine blowing white smoke was at Corfe Castle a few years ago.

It was the boat I really wanted but the location of the vender was a good distance from where I live so it seemed very convenient that I didn't have to go through the hastle of arranging docking, surveyor etc. plus the expense of paying for it all. Oh well, lesson learned and hopefully will be food for thought for future Narrowboat purchasers. TBH the rest of the hull checked out ok so it could have been a lot worse.

I relied on a vendors survey to save some money when I bought my boat that had been overplated, survey mentioned nothing of the quality of the overplating welding. Had to have it re-surveyed for insurance purposes last year, surveyor identified that the overplating welding was poor and showed me the relevant areas (lots of 'undercut'). Cost me over £1600 to get a boatyard to redo all the welds. With a full survey costing over £700 these days I would have thought quality of the welding would be one of the fundamental things to check on.

I was always told that people don't own cats, cats own people. A friend of mine had a cat for a few years, introduced a new cat to the fold, the cats didn't get on and so the original cat just upped sticks and moved on. They never saw it again, it obviously found a better home ! Moral of the story : Look after your cat

http://www.burtonmail.co.uk/Reports-body-Burton-investigated-police/story-27948499-detail/story.html

I had some work done at Streethay last year and the work on my boat got delayed slightly because of a pontoon at the yard that sank and refloating that got priority !

As long as the welder doesn't consume the beer during the welding process, it could effect the quality of the end result.

The nearest boatyard to me that does shotblasting is a fair cruise away so I'm going to have a crack at diy epoxy. As the area compromised is the waterline, I'm going to clear the area with a terco blaster (which is supposed to be as good as shotblasting apparently) then expoxy over. If there are any suspect areas below the waterline then I'll probably do the same to them. If I have time I may even do the welding seams to be on the safe side. i'll take the boat out of the water in 2 years time to check on the progress and report my findings. BTW I have no interest in colour matching, as long as it stops the hull corroding I'll be happy,

The rust lines are parallel to the waterline so think it is safe to suggest that diesel on the water surface is the culprit with bitumen the original blacking. Is it kept in a marina ? I've had my boat blacked 3 times since ownership, twice by boatyards and once myself and each time it has had rust at the waterline within a year. It's expoxy for me next time.

I've done some boat painting over the summer and used these 4 inch rollers as they are designed for gloss, got some good reviews and were pretty cheap. They do leave bubbles on the surface if you roller too fast but as I was layering off with a brush afterwards didn't really matter. I did have emulsion rollers but they fell to bits pretty quickly. I too would be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this. http://www.screwfix.com/p/no-nonsense-high-density-mini-roller-sleeves-gloss-4-pk10/24050

Found this video of it on YouTube. Looks pretty terminal

The oldest Inn in the country, the Trip to Jerusalem, AD 1139 apparently. http://triptojerusalem.com/

I read in a book somewhere that more engines are ruined through well intentioned tinkering than ever wear out.

By 'bottom shell' do you mean the baseplate or the lower section of the hull sides? How old is the boat ? For insurance purposes I think they require that the hull is a minimum of 4mm but this only comes into effect after the boat is a certain age, depending on which insurance firm you use. Has the boat been blacked since 2007 ?

If you haven't got one, invest in a 12v water pump. They are very handy at times and are a good investment. Pump out contents of tank as per DaveP suggestion then either repair / replace faulty valve or fit a new on the hose coming off the valve.

According to the BSS, if the engine & stern gland bilges are not seperated then one option is to fit a 5 micron filter in the bilge pump outlet. You need to provide evidence that the filter is 5 micron, I fitted a filter to my bilge outlet to get my boat through a recent BSS exam and that had no seperation between the engine & stern bilges. Filter housing - Screwfix £20 5 micron filter - Amazon £10 I don't think the above prices were even that much. I had to glue a lump of wood on the side of the boat to house the filter and get a length of hose to extend the existing layout but that was it. BSS - Fixed bilge pumps and bilge suction pipes must not draw from an engine tray or oil-tight area, unless the: discharge is through a bilge water filter capable of a 5 parts per million discharge performance level, as verified by markings on the filter or an appropriate declaration from the manufacturer or supplier.