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agg221

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  1. I am going to take a different approach. I am going to assume you are looking for a hobby and are thinking of a project boat as something you would enjoy spending your time doing. I am going to assume that you have some disposable income and that really what you are interested in is the process of doing the boat, but you quite fancy the idea of using it when it is finished, but you are not desperate to be out on the water and so will not become frustrated if it takes a long time. I am also going to assume that you know that it will almost certainly cost you more than it is worth when it is finished, but that is OK because you will have enjoyed doing it, and will feel a sense of satisfaction once it is finished. Under those circumstances, it is not a bad idea at all. A few things to think about: 1. What do you think you might do with the boat when it is finished? Is it for going away on at weekends, cruising the whole system, living on? This determines how big is sensible. A smaller boat (20') is much cheaper to do, takes less time and is cheaper to run. It will be fine for weekends or maybe a week. If you want to spend longer on it then you need a bigger boat for it to be comfortable. Similarly, how many people does it need to accommodate? If it's just you then small is fine, add more people and it needs to be bigger. 2. What type of boat do you like/what skills do you have, have access to or are prepared to learn? At one end of the scale you have a steel narrowboat which if it's a project boat may well need welding. At the other end of the scale you have a GRP cruiser which may need fibreglass repair. You will also need carpentry skills, some plumbing and wiring and to read/understand the relevant regulations. 3. Where are you going to work on it? Hull work will need to be out of the water so you need to plan for that. Once it is floating you will need to licence and insure it and have somewhere to keep it. All perfectly practical, just needs budgeting for. Budget - depends a lot on the boat. A small GRP cruiser may even be free but a steel boat will be from £5k if you are going to take on hull repair work, £25k if you want something very short with a relatively new hull or slightly longer (say 30-35ft) with an older hull which has been properly repaired. If you are happy to take on the hull repair then I wouldn't worry about a survey and just assume it is in need of work, get it somewhere to repair it and then figure out what needs doing. If you want the hull to be sound I would definitely get a survey before buying. Two threads you might find interesting to read as they give good insight into how other people have done this, including the ups and downs and just how much effort and time was involved: Alec
  2. The resolution on the photos posted isn’t quite high enough to read the registration numbers. If they can be read on the original photos then that would confirm whether it is the same boat. Alec
  3. Mum had an older sister and every Saturday our family and my aunt's family would visit my grandparents. There was a board at my grandparents' house and they pinned postcards to it. My first encounter with canals was the postcards my aunt would send to my grandparents every summer holiday, of an Anglo-Welsh boat, looking very like @buccaneer66's picture of Tixall, usually from somewhere exotic sounding like Llangollen. My cousins were slightly older and I was very envious of their summer holidays, as my parents thought my brother and I would be bored on a canal boat so we went to places like the Peak District or South Wales to go walking in the rain, sitting on the beach in the rain, looking at ruins in the rain etc. Eventually by the mid-1980s my brother and I persuaded my parents to hire a Viking Afloat boat from Brewood and we headed south and our first encounter with a lock was the stop lock at Autherley. We were going to go down the S&W and Severn to Worcester, but the Severn was in spate so we went down the S&W, back up the Stourbridge (stopping to visit Thomas Webb and Stuart Crystal and before the canal was altered and the shopping centre was built) and then down the W&B to Worcester where we winded, coming back up to central Birmingham, passing Gas Street Basin and mooring by where the Sea Life Centre now is while the warehouses were still all standing, then back on the main line (and yes, 'Tojo the Dwarf' was already there on the bridge!) I don't remember the details fully, but I do have notes of the trip (and that was back in the days when if you visited Cadbury's you got to walk the production lines and you could eat as much as you liked!) We went again a couple of years later, this time round the outer loop of the Four Counties and Cheshire Rings. There were a few memorable parts to the trip, including mooring at Tixall Wide and watching the kingfishers as the setting sun created a red glow on the farm buildings opposite; the smell when passing the marmalade factory at Droylsden (which still had the golliwog logo on it); mooring on the offside against a derelict wall at the top of the Ashton flight and setting off at 5am due to the horror stories about passing through Manchester - we didn't see a soul until we got to the Rochdale lock keeper at about 8am and paid for our licence for the '9'; passing through the last lock of the '9' with the shortened balance beams and chains; seeing the lock down onto the Irwell and the ship canal; cruising down the Bridgewater with a sense of relief at having 'cleared' Manchester before 10am. Again, I have a diary from this trip somewhere. I then hired for several years with University friends. The first trip was from Wootton Wawen (two friends on that trip are now married and have their own boat). Contrary to the recommendation of Anglo Welsh, we went down the Avon and up the Severn, based on my previous experience of not trusting the Severn. We were the only boat that went round the ring that way, and also the only boat that made it back to the hire base as the Severn and Avon went into flood and everyone else got stuck! I remember coming up Tardebigge with my brother steering the whole way up in the torrential rain, following which his German army parka was saturated and didn't dry out for the rest of the trip. Several more trips followed, including Great Britain from Union Canal Carriers with a large group of University friends, one of whom now owns FMC The King which we gave him a hand moving from Harefield Marina when he picked it up last year. As we came out of the marina, there was Great Britain moored on the towpath! Another two friends on those trips are also now married and also bought their own boat and my then girlfriend, now wife joined us on the later trips. To complete the circle, in 2019 when we were thinking of trying a hire boat with the children, we hired Molly from Penkridge. It was a fully licenced hire boat but owned by an individual rather than a company - it turned out to be an ex-Anglo Welsh hireboat from the 1970s, complete with wooden top and original engine and internal fit-out, exactly like the boats my aunt, uncle and cousins had hired which had first inspired my interest in canals so I finally got to try one, and yes the children loved it so we finished up buying Oates. Alec
  4. My wife and I used to do a fair amount of boating but our first trip with the children was from Penkridge on the S&W, down to Stourport, down the Severn, across the Droitwich (first time that way since it reopened), up Tardebigge, in to Birmingham, across the main line, down Wolverhampton and back to Penkridge, in a week, including visits to the Black Country Museum and Cadbury World (not worth it anymore), so it was a bit of a baptism of fire, but they thoroughly enjoyed it. After COVID we did another week, round the Four Counties ring plus the Caldon. They enjoyed it again, so we bought Oates. It is debatable how much they enjoyed painting the roof this weekend, but I have been informed that so long as we install phone chargers it will be acceptable. Your boys should be a good age to enjoy it all. About the only things you don't get are an aqueduct and a tunnel, although if you push on from dawn until dusk I reckon you could make Chirk easily! Alec
  5. A few other thoughts. What age are your boys? We first took our girls on a hire boat when they were 8 and 10 and they had a great time. At 10, our elder daughter could handle most paddles and gates on a narrow lock and our younger daughter could open some paddles and most gates. That made the lock timings fairly quick. If they are younger or tend to need careful watching then you may find you it is closer to single-handing, in which case the locks will be slower than the timings on CanalPlan. You will find out how many hours a day you enjoy cruising. We tend to do about 10-12hrs a day because that suits us, meaning we go further than most route planners suggest. For reference, a couple of years ago, on the last hire trip before we bought Oates, we had one day where we came down the Audlem flight, on to Middlewich, along the Middlewich branch, turned right and up to Elton Moss Wharf, 24miles/25locks covering about half of your planned route in a day. If you find you like fewer hours per day then you won't go as far as your planned route. It's worth having half an eye on this to find what is enjoyable, rather than pushing for a schedule. For that, you need options and it's useful to have half an eye on this in advance so you know where you might stop early/carry on to. The Old Barbridge Inn has been decent for food when we have stopped there (several times in the past couple of years). It has some moorings on the pub side, or the visitor moorings on the opposite side. Worth noting that there are not moorings on the Middlewich branch which are convenient for the pub, so don't overrun the visitor moorings if you are planning on stopping. If you find yourself running ahead of schedule, you could either go further up the Llangollen, or come back out and head up the Shropshire Union. That may depend a bit on whether you want more locks or not. It's quite an interesting stretch up to Nantwich with the junction and the aqueduct, and if you find yourself with time in hand, Audlem makes a nice destination with the Canal Bookshop and the Shroppie Fly which is doing excellent food. You can wind at the bottom without having to go up the flight and it's a short walk up to the pub and bookshop. Should be a good trip. Alec
  6. One piece of information which might be useful in general - what is your boat made of? Question applies to both the hull and the cabin (and are they the same?) and what sort of boat is it? This won't give you definite answers to anything, but it might help guide people giving further advice in future. Alec
  7. A crockery mosaic is cheap. Smash up unwanted/broken crockery in a range of colours, apply a layer of tile adhesive and stick on the bits to form a mosaic design of your choice. Boxes of about 100 pieces of crockery were going for 20p in my local auction last Sunday, or you may be able to get a job lot of damaged crockery from the local charity shop (my wife buys old t-shirts by the binbag full from the charity shop for £1 for rag rugs and they'll keep aside a bag full for her when she lets them know she wants them; it's likely they would do the same for you with crockery). Alec
  8. I have noticed that when The Dambusters is broadcast, the dog is now called Trigger, and the call-sign for the destruction of the dam is now T Trigger. History is already being re-written. Alec
  9. agg221

    Tow

    What I have done in related circumstances (controls fell apart rather than being stolen) is have someone in the engine room to operate them and agree some hand signals. Doesn't need much - faster/slower, forwards/neutral/reverse. You can swap around to avoid getting too bored or deaf. Anyone you could travel with? Alec
  10. I think he did, but doesn't Hesperus or Ariel have engine parts 'stored' in the hold? Alec
  11. It is definitely an interesting hull. CanalPlan has it, described as a Bantock which looks correct but the conversion is unusual and it would make the basis for a decent boat, albeit possibly with some challenging repair work needed. I fear however that CBS will not price it at a sensible level for what it is, judging by the pricing of the other boats currently listed and how long they have been for sale in a rising market. On the plus side, being on hardstanding makes it easy to get a survey, and the fact that they are slow moving means you probably have time to get a surveyor in before someone else snaps them up. It is also not a bad part of the world to get a good surveyor to with experience of challenging historic boats. On the minus side, the prices seem to be significantly higher that for comparable boats and you also have to add road transport and craneage, although since CBS is clearly capable of this, I wonder whether a deal could be done. I fear however that on this particular boat there will be a desire to ensure that the price does not enable it to be bought, dumped in the water and eventually abandoned. This means pricing high, but there are equivalent historic boats about which pop up from time to time and would be more cost-effective. I am presuming that the inside is squalid and will need completely gutting (possibly whilst wearing a Tyvek suit, into biohazard bags for burning). I am also presuming that it would be very difficult to create something which does justice to the hull without completely replacing the cabin. The boat was last registered as unpowered so probably does not have an engine currently fitted. With that in mind, you would really only be buying the hull, with a lot of stripping down work before you could get started. Personally, even in today's market I wouldn't think more than £5k, or £10k if the hull is actually fairly sound. I would guess they will pitch it at more like £20k, judging by Equus, at which point it will sit and rot in a field. Alec
  12. Hydraulic hoses can be very expensive. Fortunately, there are couple of factors which work in favour of marine hydraulic drive owners - one is that they are usually running them at a very low pressure compared with design pressure (ours are at about 300psi on 5000psi rated hoses) so when they fail it is by bulging rather than immediately bursting and you do get fair warning. The second is that they usually see no UV so do not perish at anything like the same rate. This means they can last a very long time, over 20yrs if properly made. Unfortunately the weak point remains the connector. One piece of advice I got recently was to get most of the hose replaced with an appropriately rated steel pipe. There is no risk of internal corrosion (permanently oil filled) so if well maintained the weak link remains the hose. You then have much shorter hoses which are lot cheaper to replace and far less awkward to store (and much easier to fit as it is no longer like wrestling with a large python in a small box. In terms of storage, it is a good idea to keep a spare, the same length as your longest hose, as you can then fit it to whichever one fails which gives you a reasonable time to get the replacement set made up. Alec
  13. Not sure why - we found it to be a decent mooring, quite well used with a fair number of boats about - probably six moored on the way up, four during the day on the way back down. The sides are deep and there are plenty of mooring rings installed to encourage boats to stop. That was in the school holidays too - lots of parents with their children in the park during the day, more babies being taken out in prams in the early evening and no sign of unsavoury goings on even late at night. Got quite a few friendly waves from the bridge in the evening too. Certainly felt safe enough to us. Alec
  14. Foodshion Garden for us. Wei Sun is always very welcoming. Alec
  15. Useful to know - I'm probably in too much of a hurry to get to the Chinese to have noticed! We are on the farm moorings out near Betton Wood Bend. Alec
  16. If you aren't in a rush then another nice mooring is in Hanley Park on the Caldon. You have to go through the staircase and one other shallow lock, but it's not that far and it's a nice spot - quiet all night too. Not sure how far you would have to go up to wind though? Alec
  17. True, I had forgotten that. We are moored north of bridge 65 and Morrisons is also open much later (10pm I think) so it is always the easier option for us. Not sure which would be the shorter walk from mooring by its respective bridge - very little in it I think. Alec
  18. Depending on where the timing puts you, and what you like doing with your evenings, The Shroppie Fly is now doing really good food again - had lunch there just after Easter and dinner last night. Despite being short-staffed the service was friendly and efficient. I seriously hope the new landlord (who is also a liveaboard boater) stays for a long time - it feels like a decent pub again. The Bridge next door can be excellent as more of a pub, but I particularly like it when they have a band on. I would second the comment about Audlem Mill bookshop, although sadly not for much longer. There is also a good butchers. Market Drayton is one of the most convenient places for shops - the visitor moorings are good for the town centre, including the cafe by the butter market and the excellent Chinese restaurant. If it's a quick trip to a supermarket then Morrisons is a shorter walk from bridge 65 (Victoria bridge). Brewood is quite a nice little town and has a few shops and pubs/restaurants. It's quite a nice place to spend an hour. There is also a decent pub right by the canal. There is surprisingly little between Brewood and Penkridge. It's not actually that far, well under a day's cruising, but we have tended to try and avoid stopping within that stretch as it just isn't very interesting, although it's pleasant enough countryside for the most part. If you do find yourself needing to moor near Autherley junction then it's probably slightly nicer if you go on a bit towards Aldersley. If your boat is 26' then you can wind anywhere, but for longer boats it's only a few minutes down to Aldersley, wind and then head back to Autherley. Autherley junction is also slightly easier from the south than the north - not enough to bother doing the trip specifically but it does help, particularly in a longer boat or one which is prone to being blown around. Alec
  19. Norbury also do long term hires. They are one long/two relaxed days from the ring you are planning, if you intend to go up the T&M/Bridgewater, or an extra day if you plan to go up the Macclesfield/Peak Forest. At least one of their boats has a solid fuel stove, which could be a useful feature at that time of year, particularly on an extended cruise where you may not want to just run a diesel heater. Alec
  20. We did the Four Counties plus the Caldon in a week in 2021. The trip up to the Black Lion at Consall Forge was well worth it. We moored at Hazelhurst Junction which was a very pleasant spot - just onto the Leek branch there is some decent piling. The Holly Bush was easily reachable from there on foot. Just up the hill from there, over the footbridge and along the public footpath, is one of the largest surviving elms I have seen in recent years. Alec
  21. Not sure if the OP is still looking for a solution to this, but if so a few thoughts. I can happily point you at a foundry which could make the parts. The part is pretty simple so could be cast from the original. You need to bear a couple of things in mind to do this - the part you are seeing has machining so the original cast part was bigger at those locations; it is rough because it was cast in sand but if you go for the same approach again it will need to be smooth so that the pattern will come out of the mould, and whole pattern was bigger than the part now is because the hot metal poured into the mould then shrank as it cooled. The shrinkage would be about 3% which won't really matter along the arms, but point to point between the two pivots and the pivot to spring boss it might matter. Fortunately, all of these are easily addressed with the same solution - take an original, glue it back together with epoxy, remove or file flat the inserted pins and then fill any drilled holes in bosses and the machined areas back to size and shape with car body filler, then put a thin skim over the whole lot and once it's cured, sand off smooth, ideally using something to check dimensions but you could get away on this one with nothing more than a ruler. Once smooth, give it a coat of primer, a couple of coats of enamel and you're good to go. I would use this approach if I wanted to cast ten as it would be worth the trouble of sorting out the pattern. For reference, if you only needed one I would use the lost wax process. Basically do the same as the above but then buy a low hardness silicone rubber moulding kit on Ebay, set the part in silicone and then slit it round the edge to peel it off. The silicone mould can then be filled with wax to make the pattern and the wax set into a plaster mould and then melted out. This is more work as you have to re-make the wax pattern but is the method used in art foundries casting bronze, so if that's the type of foundry you have available to you then it is a viable route and not that much worse to do. However, unless you simply want the most accurate replica possible, I would be asking myself why the originals failed and what I might want to change to stop that happening again. Did all three fail at the same location? Notably, they broke rather than wore out on the moving faces, suggesting a design weakness under what could be deemed normal conditions - not necessarily ideal use but something which can happen in service, so could happen again. There are three general types of loading which could cause this - slow strain rate loading - simply applying too much force, e.g. someone attempted to turn the handle the wrong way really hard and it snapped it; shock loading, e.g. someone slammed the door and fatigue, where doing the same thing repeatedly over many years caused a crack to start and gradually grow until the remaining metal was too thin to take normal load stresses and it broke. You may not know which of the above caused the failure, but there may be some clues. Did any of them break while you owned the house, if so did you notice them break and what happened to cause it? If any of them broke quite recently, can you look at the fracture faces and see if there is a dull region where the surface has oxidised and a bright region which has shows it failed recently - that would indicate a propagating crack, ie fatigue. If you open up any of the unbroken ones, are there signs of a crack which has started but not yet made it all the way through? You may not know all of the above, but the more you do, the better the approach to solving the problem happening again would be. This is likely to be changing design slightly, and/or material, but more information would allow a better assessment of how much change would be needed to prevent this being the weak point (and yes, I do do this kind of thing for a living!) Alec
  22. Hi Ian, In no way questioning your figures or approach - you work with what you have available and what works for the group of owners. Hence I also wholeheartedly agree with your comment regarding skill set and the time/quality/cost equation. However, if you can access the right skill set and equipment, it is sometimes possible to considerably reduce cost. For example, I roughed out the counter block for Pelican in half a day, made the stem post for Hagley from a log to a finished post in a day (mostly by adze and side axe after the chainsaw packed up) and drilled the stern post for the prop shaft in a couple of hours. The timber for each was zero cost. My point being, the 'free labour' part of the owners or friends putting in the effort can go a very long way to cutting costs (if you have the right friends!) The next phase of work on Samson will require a lot of shearing and several replacement knees made from naturally grown curves. That would cost a huge amount in materials, but in practice will cost nothing because of what can be accessed in the way of materials and equipment, just a lot of time. Alec
  23. What are your thoughts on the bow section? The planks would of course have originally run right through to the bow, horizontally, but the exterior appearance would have been the ice plates, running vertically. Which do you reckon you will go for? Alec
  24. Yes, it is. There are ways to keep the costs down, or the time, but not both! However, I can also say that it is really satisfying work. There is a lot more craft to it than a steel boat I think. However, I wouldn't do one alone again. Alec
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