Timleech

Usually a rail around stoves, shelves etc to stop things sliding off when the boat heels (sailing) or hits a wall (canal). Maybe the owner keeps so much stuff on the roof that he need one full length to keep it all on there. I can think of a few boats where it might be useful Tim

1890's probably, the basic hull. It's the stern of a Joey boat, probably one of the Bantock-built single ended jobs. Very likely the stern of what is now the Alfred? Tim

Maybe I should get him up here to help me clean the dredger up Should I get my wife to liven it up with some roses & castles, do you think ? Tim

So is this Tim

Various materials were used, including wrought iron, coppered iron, mild steel and I seem to remember a suggestion that some of the very late ones were built with a steel equivalent of coppered iron (something like Corten steel, perhaps?). I don't know if these things were ever properly documented, or whether Alan Faulkner had any knowledge of them, but I reckon it's quite possible that some were built with steel plates on iron knees, whereas steel plates on steel knees could be construed as 'all steel' if you take it as read that they were all of composite construction. Tim

Not quite like this, then:- The result of a flash flood washing debris down & blocking the culvert, then filling the dock before the boat had been caulked (see the 'Aberystwyth' thread in History & Heritage) Tim

OK, what was the format of the keelson & how was it secured to the bottom plates? It would be a fairly straightforward job, for a suitably equipped yard, to rivet a steel bottom in place of timber except that the keelson would need to be renewed. 'shoe' can mean all sorts of things, what is it which was missing? Tim

I think the 'all steel' thing is a bit of a red herring. It probably is a reference to the use of steel rather than iron in the hull construction. So far as I have always believed, all the (metallic) Fellows Morton boats were composite. I have juct checked with the current owner of the Dory, she was definitely composite originally. Also I've seen reference somewhere to her depth having been 'reduced by 6" '. the only reduction has been that the bottom has reduced from the 3" or so of timber to 3/8" or thereabouts of steel. Tim

I had a couple of minutes to spare so satisfied my own curiosity, measured the nearest motor boat at 10 3/4". I used to be fairly confident walking along a 5" wide gunwale on an open boat, very hesitant these days though Tim

Why particularly a horse boat? I can go out & measure a couple of motor boats in the morning if no-one else comes up with a dimension. I think they're usually around 10" or 11" Tim

More than I remembered Pretty much a complete new fore end:- Tim

Red lead is a real health issue for the poor s*d who gets the job of repairing the boat at some future date, or even cutting it up for scrap, especially so if he doesn't expect to find it there because the boat is 'too recent' for it to have been used. Tim

I see an awful lot of new boats which have had the hulls poorly painted, reblacking in the first year is always a good plan unless you know that a really good job was done by the builder on descaled steel. A common recommendation (I must admit I don't know whether this has any scientific basis) is to have 1.5 x the diameter of shaft overhang, so for 1.5" shafting that would be a bit over 2" of shaft between bearing and propellor boss. Also 2" clearance top & bottom is a good minimum to work on, though there are plenty of boats with less. Tim

Not worth buying for 'one lousy 15mm hole', but these (mini rotabroach) are very good tools which are not widely known, and may well be worth buying for someone who has a number of this sort of hole to cut. Tim

These don't need a mag drill and are very effective, much better than hole saws:- http://www.rotabroach.co.uk/en/products/En...ni-cutters.aspx Not cheap though. Tim

It used to be said, of working boatmen, that you could "tell the character of a Captain from the state of his Blade..." Tim

Any particular reason for hydraulic rather than air? There was a guy somewhere in the Abingdon area, IIRC, who advertised rivetting tools in the steam preservation press, I bought one of my air hammers from him. Last I heard, a couple of years ago, he was rather ill so it's possible that he may not be around any more. HTH Tim

They are or were sometimes made of steel, it will corrode more than brass and requires a higher melting temperature. Also cast iron was quite common at one time for steam boat propellors (large, slow turning), but it's vulnerable to impact damage. I think stainless is sometimes used for power boat props, as is aluminium. I should think stainless would be prohibitively expensive for a canal boat propellor, relative to any advantage gained. Brass (manganese bronze) does the job pretty well, but thin blades are no use on a canal boat. Plastics are often used for bow thruster props, they also often fail (break). Tim

It doesn't work like that in practice. I've spent many (happy?) hours in the past repairing round chine plating on various narrow and wide canal boats, the wear is always concentrated in certain areas. I remember replacing one bit of chine plating which had been doubled, and then 'trebled'. All three layers had holes worn through, the holes were just far enough apart that the buildup of rust between the layers prevented any leakage. Tim

Mostly 3/8" diameter. Maybe some 1/2" on the bulkheads. They're actually usually pan head rivets, the head is on the inside. The outer countersunk head is formed during the rivetting. You would struggle to find new rivetting equipment, I eventually found myself some suitable air hammers and made my own snaps to fit. Have you got a big job breaking out? Tim

Don't forget that these weren't the first Narrow Boats to have a rounded chine, some of the Cowburn & Cowpar boats did. They had a flat bottom, but my recollection is (I've worked on both, though only odd bits on Middle Northwiches) that the chine radius on the C&C boats was rather bigger. The Vee bottom, for those who haven't seen them, was actually very shallow to the point where I wonder why they bothered. Tim

I agree about the last bit. Simplest step at first is to check whether he has an ordinary Vee belt, or the deeper Wedge belt of the same width. The wedge belt will transmit much more power, provided the pulleys are deep enough (belt doesn't 'bottom' at the base of the groove). Wedge belts may have numbers such as SPA 1234, the equivalent 'old-fashioned' Vee belt would just be A 1234, where 1234 is the pitch length in mm. Different makers have different codes, though, just to be helpful. Tim

First (didn't see this thread when it started), despite the emotive subject headline, I haven't seen any mantion of banning dogs from the towpath. Second, I like dogs. Some dogs. Well, most dogs really. Third, too many dog owners suffer from the 'my pooch will never do any harm' syndrome. We were very aware of that when the kids were small and vulnerable to improperly controlled dogs. Fourth, I live next to the towpath. There are plenty of worse places for dog sh*t, but we get seriously fed up with the stuff. Lots of dog owners take the issue seriously, unfortunately there are too many who just don't care. Our cat was killed some years ago by a pack of terriers which had been let loose on the towpath and came into the (well fenced) garden, she was trying to defend her kittens. Two of them survived, my wife doesn't like cats very much but she hand-reared one as it was too small to survive alone. The owner's response was 'they're just family pets, I didn't think they would do any harm' I would certainly support a rule enforcing 'dogs on leads' on the towpath. Tim

AFAIR quite a lot of fore-end replanking. I'll try to find some pics in the 'archive' Tim

I wonder whether having petrol and gas bottles together is any more dangerous than, say, twice the number of gas bottles or twice the amount of petrol in the one locker? I can see there could be an argument that by separating the hazards, then if one 'goes up' there's some chance of preventing both from doing so, but is there more to it than that? Tim