Richard T

A few years ago as part of the Birmingham challenge we took little woolwich Auriga throught the tunnel from Parkhead to Dudley. We arranged a tow with the tunnel trust - it was a great trip very eerie going through silently. Auriga went through easily with the cratch down and the mast and stands taken down. Unfortunately we have no pictures.

Off work with a nasty dose of flu so was catching up on a DVD which I have had for a few months. It is of Scouting around Loughborough in the early 1960s shot on Super 8 and now transferred to DVD. There is about 3mins of Willow Wren camper Warbler on the S Oxford - its very nice footage. Also on the Cranfleet Beeston reach is to be found 50ft wooden top Lapwing - externally it looks right apart from the paint job -it still has the nice big brass air scoop the location is so remote the thieving ... have not nicked it. On Cranfleet cut there is another wooden top whcih I am convinced is ex Willow Wren but it has no name. To finish off GUCC motor Slough is still moored on Sawley Cut.

Remember that the crack is a potential source of combustion gasses entering the boat and they include carbon monoxide. So for your own safety replace ASAP and check that your CO detector is working.

There is a well known builder of top quality boats who hire their demo out that had a design fault which meant that the air vent to the water tank became effectively a U bend trap. When the vacuum in the tak was sufficient a air would be pulled through this with some spectacular noises. Hopefully the boat in question is not one of theirs but it would be worthwhile checking the air vet and making sure it is properly supported and rises to outside with no nasty sagging.

Just remember when buying foam for upholstery that you should get flame retardant grades. If not in the eevent of a fire the smoke will kill you not the fire. Commercial upholstery by law has to be flame retardant and have to pass all sorts of tests.

RAL colours are a german standard and consist of 4 numbers eg RAL5024 , which is a blue grey. BS (British Standard) is another means of describing a colour. eg 10B15. Dulux have their own system of colour notation as do some other paint manufacturers. In the print world Pantone colours reign but they include the white of the paper so are difficult to mix as a paint. Remember colours are affected by the light they are viewed in, so for the outside of your boat take any samples outside, they will look very different under LED or flourescent tubes. Phil Speight can probably mix any colour with a bit of trial and error. If you are happy with automotive paint any good motor trade suppliers will mix it for you. Try Hex Holdings in Loughborough, Leicester, Nottingham and a good few other places. For Dulux/Crown Dave Putt by the Greyhound in Loughborough 100m from the cut is very good.

In my humble opinion it should be a BSS requirement to fit CO and smoke detectors to all boats. One of the most difficult things I have ever done was to do a reading at the funeral of brothers who died in a rented house from CO poisoning, it is not something I wish to repeat. My family still mourn for our friends some 10 years on. (the landlord ended up have a long holiday at HM expense) We have a CO detector on our boat, earleir in the year it did go off, after investigation we found that a small section of seal had failed in a solid fuel stove - easy to repair but the detector saved us from a potentailly life threatening situation.

If you want a new matress try the Edwardian Bedding Co. who advertise in WW. They did a made to measure one for us and it was very good. Do you have a brass roof vent in the space? If so you might want to consider a way of catching the condensation from it which can produce stains of a dubious looking nature on your new matress!! We use a nice turned wood bowl suspended under the vent. If you go down the route of a fixed bed with storage under neath hinge the bed base because there will be some usefull stoarge for those once in a blue moon items.

We have just had a hasp and staple welded to our boat whilst being reapinted. This is then secured with a padlock. It will not put off a determined thief but is a good deterent!

Crosland 357 oil, 522 fuel, Halfords HOF202oil, HFF203 fuel, Fram PH2857A oil, C1191PL fuel, and I think these are Coopers WL7078oil, WF8019 fuel but will stand corrected if wrong. The oil filters are all spin on and the fuel is a steel cartridge. Hope this information is of use. Can anybody add any others? Come on Alan its unlike you not to post on a query like this!!

Union Canal Carriers including 'Barney' boats which are trad with solid fuel stoves. Very cosy when cold.

Looking at the photos some way back in this thread I notice that one features one of Tam and Di Murrells boats. I notice elswhere in the forum that they have now joined us so welcome Tam and Di your experience of working boats will be welcome.

I mad a simple wooden dipstick which is L shaped so that it cannot drop into the gearbox. It has notches cut into it to match the top and bottom markers on the dipstcik. This works very well.

Try Sileby Mill, they've just done our boat. I'm not certain if they can slip a broad boat. They appear to have been thorough with the preparation and used Craftmaster paints applied by brush to get a good finish on an old boat. As for cost we thought we got a good job for a fair price. Suggest you give them a ring.

You can calibrate screens to show accurate colour and get printers to print them However this is a 'black' art. Its easier to do on a Mac than a PC. My local Apple specialist will do it for you at a cost of £300 approx!!! Accurate colours for paints can be best described using RAL eg RAL5024 or BS colours eg 10B15 A good source of a RAL swatch is from Interpon who manufacture powder coatings for use on metals etc. They do not do all RAL colours but a fair selection which are useable. People like Phil Speight will mix paint to RAL or BS colours. 5024 is a blue grey which we've used on our boat.

Who ever stole the boat was equipped with bolt croppers to go through the fence!! We have done a local search, but if abandoned it will drift downstream until it fetches up on a weir. A replacement will not be cheap Oppies often fetch over £350 on fleabay. Thanks for helpful comments

I think Nigel Carton is the guy who does boat moving.

In the last few days a small sailing dinghy was stolen fro the Leicetershire Youth Sailing Association base at Watermead Country Park, Wanlip which is adjacent to the Hope and Anchor on the river Soar. The boat in question is an 'Optimist' which is rather like a bathtub which floats - about 7ft long 3ft6in wide with a pram front and painted yellow. Only the hull was stolen. If any boater along the Soar sees this can they please let me know via this Forum. Its very frustrating for the volunteers who teach sailing at the base to have equipment pinched - earlier in the year we had two outboards and a rib taken. The base is used as an RYA training centre and to introduce young people to the joys of sailing - on average we do 700 to 800 kid sessions per year. The only financial support we get is the occasional grant for new boats or equipment. Thanks for looking RichardT

This is off topic but Pav it was good to see the article on your boat saga in Canalboat. I followed your posts with interest last year and its good to see that you got the boat you wanted. Now enjoy it!!

Middlewich Narrowboats - trad boats Holly, Willow, Maple. Union Canal Carriers 'Barney Boats' All have solid fuel stoves and are nice comfortable cosy boats suitable for winter hire.

Try talking to Union Canal Carriers at Braunston - they have Sabbs in their 'barney boats' and I know from my hiring days that the mechanic is able to do rebuilds.

Thanks for the help guys. I've now discovered that I'm one bit missing so I'll try and order one. If I can't get it a bit of creative use of polystyrene sheet will probably work.

We have a C200 cassette which has been removed from the toilet with the blade assembly in eth wrong position. This means that all the bits have finished up in the ........ These have been retrieved and cleaned. Problem is I can't find a diagram showing the correct way of re assembling them or indeed if it is possible to do so. Can anyone out there help? The Thetford diagram does not show this as a spare part

If the shape is really odd QTG at Mansfield or for those north of the border Independent Glass in Rutherglen should be able to help. (Branches of same company) QTG have some very sophisticated cutting and polishing gear including water jet and a large tempering oven. If you want really good quality etched glass try Creative Glass in Ilkeston

We have fitted a calorifier to our Thornycroft BMC1.8. The connector was bought from Thornycroft. It screws directly into the block. We then fitted high pressure hose to this held in place with jubilee clips - note the plural. (ee photos) a 90 deg bend, then follows a short length of copper followed another length of HP hose which goes to the calorifier which is mounted vertically on a cradle against the front bulkhead of the engine room. The return then goes into a T in the cooling return from the skin tank (no photos of this impossibleo get a satisfactory shot). The system works well we get 12 gal of hot water in about 40mins from cold. The water gets to about 80deg so in the interest of safety have fitted a thermostatic mixer valve to the basin tap which restricts the temp to 43deg. We are happy to have the sink at full temperature as children are unlikely to use it. Our shower is also thermostatically controlled. For completeness the engine is linked to a PRM160 and you can see both oil coolers. The oil filter is remote from the engine which makes oil changes much easier and cleaner.