Steve Goddard

Well I honestly can’t remember the last time I sat down to write a post for the blog. Far too long ago I know that much. Siskin is now about 98% finished. She just needs some small pieces of trim round some of the cupboards, the lock on the bathroom door sorting, a refresh of some of the paint etc. etc. etc. . I suspect like all boats she’ll never be completely finished but I like that as a concept as it always give you an excuse to do a bit more.. Because of the long absence of the blog there’s been quit a lot of work done on Siskin not just by myself but by Ken and David and John as I decided early in the year that if I was ever going to get Siskin finished then it would be quicker with some help. In order to pay for said help I took a seasonal lock keepers job with CRT at Foxton. Lets just say it was not the best decision I ever made and leave it at that. The good thing however was that the work did get done on Siskin. So where to start? Well the obvious place is the end i.e. the dog box The design comes from a 1960′s Classic Boat magazine with some little changes because times have moved on and there are different materials and tools available but the proportions etc are as they should be. I had a couple of planks of Kwila (a very dark, hard and heavy timber) which I had brought back from Papua New Guinea with all the Rosewood which has ended up in Siskin. It is the ideal type of timber as it’s very similar in properties to teak. The main carcass of the box are two ends and two rails connecting them. In the Classic boat magazine they are joined together with hand cut water check dovetails which to be honest are WAY past my skill level to cut and even Kens not keen. In the end I invest in a mitre lock cutter and although it is a complete pain to set up when it is it produces an incredibly neat, strong and water proof joint. Result The carcass is glued together using West System glue as this worked really well on the Padauk in the back cabin and the Kwila is an oily wood to. The resulting carcass is very rigid despite having no bracing. You can just see the rebate in the bottom where it sits over the upstand on the roof. It’s been designed to keep the bottom of the box clear of the roof so you don’t get capillary action (had that problem on the front doors as the clearance was too small). The frames for the roof lights are 65 x 25mm Kwila rebated for the glass and with a special rebate on the bottom for a compression weather seal which is not traditional but a damn sight more effective than a face to face seal. The corners are mitred rather than butt joint so that there is a little exposed end grain as possible. To provide strength each corner has a couple of Miller dowels across the joint. As you can see in the photo the hinge end (left of the picture) has the seal groove in a different place to the other three sides. It’s not ideal as it mens more work but it keeps all of the edges and ledges neat and tidy. The big issue is that the seal grooves on the sides and back don’t match so it’s out with the Japanese saw and the smallest chisel I’ve got to hand cut the grooves over. It’s all good fun Honest With all the bits sorted it’s time for varnish, lot and lots of varnish. Four coats later (that’s enough for the mo I’ll put some more on over winter) it’s starting to look really nice. Next job is the glass. I would have like d to put sealed units in but there is simply not the depth in the frames so the plan was to put a single pane of glass in with secondary glazing at the bottom to prevent condensation in winter then Ken stated the obvious which was simply take the dog box off over winter and replace it with the “temporary” cover I’ve been using for the last three years. Has the added advantage that the dog box is not exposed to winter weather. Sorted A quick trip to the local glass merchant to order the glass is an eye opener. I need four bits approx 150mm x 75mm x 4mm thick toughened only to be told that the minimum order for toughened glass is 1 sq ft. No problems I don’t mind that I only want 1/2 sq foot I’ll pay the minimum but no it doesn’t work like that it’s 1 sq ft minimum for each PIECE. So I have to pay for 4 sq ft of glass which is 50 quid . The glass is fixed in with 12mm x 1mm security tape which makes a nice watertight neat joint. In the original design the lights were attached to the carcass with butt hinges and there was a complicated gutter arrangement to collect the water which went through the inevitable gaps. It’s a lot simpler just to use waterproof continuous hinge. Now the one I really wanted which was very small and simple only came on rolls of 50m so I ended up with some designed for horse boxes which although they are a lot bigger don’t look to much out of place and are certainly waterproof. The picture on the right shows the hinges and the top rail as well as the Miller dowels in the corners of the lights. The only thing from experience is that I need to put a little bit of seal at the ends of the hinges to stop water blowing in. Finishing touches are four brass stays to keep the lights open. Its nice that you can see the weather seals on the bottom of the lights as well. So with all the stuff finished its off to the boat to see if it fits. What I hear you say “you’ve not tried it yet?” Correct but I’m certain it will fit and it does. There are a couple of little things to sort out. I need to put some pull handles on to pull the lights closed and put some thin window tape around the rebate to get a proper seal on the upstand but apart from that it’s all good..

Everybody thanks for all the kind words, hopefully this time I will get to the end OK I've spent the last couple of weeks sorting out all the broken picture links caused by the issues with the domain name. Each one had to be fixed by hand as there is no global search and replace and for some reason not all of the links were editable and I had to resort to hacking the HTML. There are still some issues on some of the earlier posts with the emoticons which for some reason broke when I edited the posts but it's just too soul destroying to go back and do it all again. The editor for the forums is great but it does do some funny things to the underlying code. One of the reasons it took me so long was I got caught up in the blog and was reading every post again which was great as a: I had forgotten a couple of things that I had done and b: I just can't believe the amount of work that has gone into Siskin to date Right where are we now. Siskin is nearly finished (where have I heard that before ) honest. There are a couple of very small things left to do and then a bit of a tidy up with a splash of paint inside to spruce up the inevitable wear and tear and some small bits of trim. Chris and I have used the boat quite a bit now and I think I've got 99.9% of the niggles out of her. My plan is now to finish off documenting the build (retrospectively of course ) but it's going to have to wait for a couple of weeks as I have to go pick up a boat from Longport wharf and get it back to Debdale for a new training school John Barnard (remember him from the painting posts of the blog) is setting up. Strangely John has asked me to be the chief instructor so I'm now qualified to run the RYA helmsman. crew and diesel courses . Watch this space is all I can say. As a trailer for the next post all I can say is Dog Box. See you then

Right I can't believe how long I've let this slip. it's nearly 2 years since i last wrote a post. Athy gave us a shout recently while we were down the south Oxford and asked what was happening with the blog and I promised to get it sorted so here we go. I still have not managed to sort out the nbsiskin.com domain name so the only thing that I can do is to use the nbsiskin.co.uk that I also have. As you will no doubt realise the pictures on the CWF build blog are all linked through the .com domain and there is no easy way of changing that to the .co.uk other than doing each one individually (with no search and replace either) so it's going to be a bit of a task but I've started and will get to the end as soon as I can. I've started at page one (of 11) and am now on page 3 after three days Believe it or not Siskin is just about finished now and as soon as I've fixed the picture issue I'll start new posts showing the finishing stages.

Hi all Thanks for saying you missed me . While I've been out and about I've had several people ask if I'm going to start again and what's happened to the pictures on CWF so I thought I really did need to get my finger out and sort this out. If I can get temp admin rights so I can manually fix the picture issue it would be great. I'm still trying to retrieve my .com domain but it doesn't look as if that will be possible in the near future so that as an easy fix is not possible. It's up to you guys Regards Stev

Hi Tesla: I have changed the domain name in my profile but it does not make any difference. Paul C: it's along story with the domain name which happened when I wanted to change the registrar and despite strenuous efforts ended up with nbsiskin.com in suspension and then being snaffled by a domain pirate. I would like to get the blog on the forums back up as I've had a number of people ask what's happening on a recent trip. I know that it would be a pain but I'm prepared to change the links 1 by 1 if I have to and can get to edit the posts. Is this possible?

Hi I have an issue with my build blog (Siskin). When I started the blog I linked to pictures in my Wordpress blog under nbsiskin.com. Following real issues with my domain registrar Ihave had to change the domain to nbsiskin.co.uk. How can I do a mass search and replace nbsiskin.com with nbsiskin.co.uk so as the pictures appear again. Thanks Steve

Hi I've had to change the domain of my external domain from www.nbsiskin.com to www.nbsiskin.co.uk. All of the pictures in my build blog on this forum point to the .com domain not the new .co.uk domain How can i (site admin) do a search and replace to change all the picture links in the build blog? Steve

Normal Service will be resumed as soon as possible I am having an argument with my Domain registrar at the moment which has resulted in my own blog being temporarily off line until I get the issue sorted out. This is why the picture links are broken. Apologies for this, I'm trying to get this sorted ASAP Steve

Have just caught this thread and would like to add a couple of thoughts 1: I can attest from personal experience that if you have an issue and approach it in the right way that the paint manufacturers, the painter (in my case HMG and John Barnard) and Phil will actually do everything that they can to try and identify the cause of the problem. After all it really is in all their interest. The difficult bit is determining what is the root cause as there is NO SIMPLE answer. I now know far to much about paint chemistry, paint systems, paint testing methodology and paint failure modes than is compatible with retaining your sanity. Honestly from my experience I simply can not ascribe to any of the multiple conspiracy theories regarding a cover up by paint manufacturers. 2: Now for the controversial bit :- you know I suspect that there has always been microblistering/blistering and that it is not just a recent phenomenon. What, however is a recent phenomenon is the surge in social media allowing the whole issue to be more widely disseminated and debated (just look at the numerous threads on this forum). Go back five years and there was simply no way for people who were affected by this to see that they were not unique and also I guess no real way for the industry to see the full extent of the problem. These days everybody knows about microblistering (and is willing to tell you what causes it). My two cents worth ..

Hi Just a small though. If you stick weld it you can get away with a decent inverter which will run off a 13a socket. Plenty enough grunt for an overplate job but perhaps not as quick as a big mig. Steve

Well perhaps I do have a little bit of an excuse for not writing the blog . For some bizzare reason I could no longer get any photos downloaded off my phone. This has happened before when my PC “updated” itself “for my protection” and it was a bugger to get fixed then. This time I really struggled and in desperation I eventually updated the phone to the latest OS. When I had done this I at least got an error message which made some sense. It seems that the latest iPhones actually have a chip in the cable which lets the phone know it is a genuine cable . As I had bought some cables off eBay which were not original (cheaper and a lot longer ) it seems that these were the cause of all the issues. I really am beginning to wonder why oh why I ever bought an Apple Anyway the big news is that Siskin is on the water. Chris and I have just spent a nice couple of weeks leisurely boating from Brinklow to Coventry and then back to Debdale where I’m keeping the boat over winter while I really finish her off. The weather was great (most of the time) and as we were not in a rush it was a relaxing break. However in order to get ready for that there was an awful lot of stuff that needed to get done and a load of very very long seven day weeks. A bigish construction job was the bed which pulls out from under the tug deck. It’s a pretty standard construction with 18mm ply base, 2 x 1 battens and a temporary 12mm ply headboard. As the head of the bed is towards the stern of the boat I made the base 40mm higher than the foot of the bed so that with the boat trimmed up properly the bed is horizontal . I can state from experience the bed is great. Before the bed went in however I needed to get some more ballast in the bow to get the trim right. I decided to get some steel ballast (well stainless steel actually) from Bill at Man Buck. It’s a bit expensive but its great for trim as it’s really dense so you don’t have a lot of volume. What you see on the tug deck is 500Kg and is in the right place to trim the boat laterally, however it was not enough to trim it longtitudinally so I had to get another 250Kg but the boat sits about right now. Next job was to get the boat into the dock so that we could fit the inlet strainer for the generator. Every thing is double welded to prevent leaks and we’ve put a couple of bits of guard to protect it. I also took the opportunity to reblack the hull so Siskin looks nice and tidy (for a bit anyway) Theres a frantic scrabmble in the engine ‘ole to get everything sorted to a point where it can be used. I’ve drawn up the engine panel in CAD and got it laser cut out of 1.5mm stainless at a local company. I just love this as you can seethat although its got some complicated cut outs everything just fits first time. Given that its £40 including the material you can’t go wrong. A couple of coats of etch primer and then a couple of coats of gloss and then mount the switched etc and the jobs done in a couple of hours RESULT . I’ve already made the side of the cupboard which will hide all the electrical gubbins and where the panel is mounted AND got it painted so its not a long job to get it mounted. The top front of the cupboard is a screw off panel as there is nothing behind it which needs getting at on a regulat basis and the bottom has a door in it so that you can get to the breakers and fuses. It all looks a bit good when its together. Last bit of woodwork before we go is a coal box for the back cabin so that you can get in and out of the back doors. I don’t know but it just looks a bit more classy than the Heinekin crate (other crates are available) with a bit of ply tie wrapped onto the bottom which I had been using. It’s basically 18mm ply with a nice padauk step on and with it painted up to match the paintwork in the back cabin it looks really nice. With all this done it’s time to shift all the crap (sorry tools and materials) which has accumulated in Siskin over the past few months. There’s car loads to go home and by the time I’ve chucked it all into the workshop theres practically no room to move in. Where does it all come from and more to the point why the hell do I want to keep it. It would be nice to report that everything worked perfectly on the shake down but that was not the case. No big showstoppers but a few little niggly bits. The most annoying is that the solenoid valve on the loo water inlet leaks and so if you leave the pump switched on the loo bowl slowly fills. Not what you would expect from a 500 quid bit of kit. I also need to fit a non return valve to the cooker diesel feed so that that does not drain down and need bleeding if it is not used for a while and sort out why we don’t get hot water in the shower but apart from that everything works really well The plan is to spend winter over at Debdale. There a bit of woodwork to do (doors for the bathroom, finish the bed properly, box in some services, make a dog box etc. etc.) which I will do at home and then take over and fit on the boat but the plan is to be REALLY finished by spring of next year. Now where have I heard that before Modified to try to get the font right Steve

Rule one of blogging. If you dont do it on a regular basis then you wont do it (or something like that) Yet again lots of time has passed without updating the blog and the longer you leave it the harder it becomes to start. As you can imagine lots has actually been done since the last post. The big “admin” job is that I’ve had a BSS check and passed with flying colours. Well to be honest if it hadn’t then there would be something very very wrong with the way I’ve done things. The last major electrical task is to fit the generator. I made up a template to a: make certain it would fit and b: position the mounts correctly. With the mounts welded down to the floor plates we can lift the gen set in and get it bolted down. I’ve gone for a DC generator as a: it’s a lot easier to connect as you don’t have to worry about multiple mains supplys b: it’s variable speed so it’s quiter and more fuel efficient c: it’s dead easy to control via the Masterbus system. I’ve made some little changes to the exhaust manifold and welded a stainless steel elbow to the bottom of the manifold so that the exhaust comes out tighter and the gen set can be mounted lower. Theres and awful lot of gumph goes with gen set, water lock and silencer, mud box (why oh why wont gen set manufacturers allow you to skin tank cool a gen set), syphon break, lift pump, fuel filters and what seems like a whole lot of electrical control gubbins. (Pictures to follow) Theres a couple of long days getting everything in, modifying the floor plates and connecting it all up. We can’t get the water inlet in yet (I’m not drilling a hole in the bottom of my boat while its floating ) so we toss the inlet pipe out of the side hatch to try it out. The gen set fires up at the first push of the buton . A few minutes with the PC and I’ve set it up to start when the batteries get to 40% discharge and turn off when fully charged. I just need to figure a way now of ensuring that it only comes on during the day. Shouldn’t be too hard. Dry dock is booked for the 27th to get the inlet welded in. Simons been hard at work riviting up the pipes and chimneys. I really would have liked to have been involved but there is so much else to be done it didn’t make sense to have two of us working on it. When he’s finished I mask up and spray them with etch primer and black gloss and the end results are stunning even if my photos aren’t. The titch pipe causes a lot of envy around the yard but I’ve always said that it’s better to have a nice small one (don’t go any further with this) . The back cabin chimney is really nicely proportioned and elegant and the little pipe for the range in the galley is nice and simple. I’ve been busy on the woodworking from as well starting on the high level cupboards in the galley. I’ve made the ends out of rosewood and the shelves are birch ply with rosewood cappings where required. One of the things that was worrying me was what I was going to do with the bare ply wood on the cabin side as I did not have enough rosewood ply when I lined the cabin side. Fortunately I kept the offcuts and wonder of wonders they are big enough to to fill in between the shelves. Result With the shelves in and everything varnished up it’s time to fit the front frames and the doors which Rex and I fabricated some time ago. I like Another job we’ve tackled is the door linings on the front doors and the side hatch in the galley. We’ve made these out of bubinga and they are a simple design with a fielded paned in the center and stop champhers on the paneling. I hate this job as it involves the use of lots and lots of Sikaflex and no matter how careful I am I always seem to get the bloody stuff all over me. Two tubes of Sikaflex later and the panels are on and I can spend the next couple of days trying to get the stuff out of the hairs on my arms I’ve also made some little triangular shelves near the side hatch. They are totally useless to put naything on but they are a nice little finishing touch . All I have to do now is the hatch linings and we’ll be close to finished on the woodworkside in the galley.

I’m not even going to try and explain why I’ve been so bad at keeping up with the blog. It’s just happened. There has been a lot of progress since the last post with stuff happening all over the place. I’ve finished off all the 24v wiring in the back cabin and got the roof lights and the berth lights installed. The lights look really good but they are not particularly well thought out in the installation stakes. In fact I would go as far as to say they are pretty pants. A little more thought on the practicalities of how you would actually fit them would really be useful. Still they’re in and working which is the main thing. The berth lights are quite bright but I may need to put some brighter LED’s in the roof lights. We’ve also finished the doors into the engine room despite the issues with the hinges. A couple of ball catches finish the job off. Now all that needs to be done is to paint the engine room side of the doors. Phil’s back again to finish off the back cabin decoration and to paint the top bends. he’s actually manged to find a copy of an original drawings for the paint scheme on a C and C boat which takes a lot of the guess work out of the job but does bring up an interesting conundrum (see below). With the top bends painted and a couple of little changes to the fore-deck colours it all looks rather splendid. The conundrum is that the drawings clearly show a fouled anchor at the front of the bend. Now everybody thought that that was just a Barlow’s motif but it would seem not. I’m sure it will start a lot of discussions Phil also grained and painted the back cabin doors so it looks pretty finished with the doors open. Just need to get it finished varnished and fit the bright work. A little while back I bought a can off ebay (for once at a reasonable price). It’s a bit battered missing a couple of handles and the paintwork is shot but it has nice proportions so it’s out with the scraper, wire brush etc to get the paint stripped so Phil can take it back with him to Scotland so he can paint it at his leisure. A nice mindless bit of repetitive work . With a couple of new handles made out of some copper soldered onto the lid and handle it looks just right. David and I have also been ploughing ahead with the combi and batteries. I’ve hoisted the domestic batteries out of the space and put some 1.5mm rubber sheet underneath them and made up some hardwood restraining blocks to hold the batteries secure. With the leads all numbered and the temp sensors fitted to the batteries this bit is done. I pop the master switch on and head out of the boat for a well deserved cup of tea to be greeted by Phil who casually says “Whats all that smoke coming out of your boat”. Damn I head back into the boat expecting to see lots and lots of charred wiring but the batteries and inverter are all working fine. The problem is that with the shoreline disconnected there’s no 240 v to the heating controller and it resets. As soon as I connect the batteries the inverter cranks up and the range fires up. Only problem is that I’ve got the chimney capped so it all backs into the boat. Still its better than and electrical fault. As Dave’s boat is in the tunnel getting painted I’m now on the outside of the stack and as I’m walking over I notice that there is a perfect reflection from the Siskin on the cabin side on the top bend of Jamie’s boat. Perfect I’ve decided that I’m going to have a go at making the chimneys and pipes for Siskin. A little bit of of geometry and I think I’ve worked out the shape for the chimney so I knock up a paper template to see how it fits and surprise surprise it actually fits properly first time. Armed with the template and a drawing for the pipes I head off to Charlie Watts to get the stainless cut and rolled. Watch out for riveting it all together The last major bit of wood work in the back cabin is the floor. I’ve got some really nice Kwila flooring which will compliment the paduak nicely. The fixed bits of the floor need to be planed down to 9mm thick so that when the lift-able panels are fitted they will be level. Its a really fiddly job fitting round the table cupboard but it turns out to be a nice looking job when its finished. I ‘ve made up the lifting panels in one piece and will cut it in half when its all done just to make life easier. The floors all done now and it’s only a matter of getting them oiled The last two little bits really make me think that I’m getting near the end of the build. I’ve now got a CIN number from the RYA and an index number from C&RT. Whoo Hoo soon be survey time.

The next job is to make a start on plugging all the screw holes in the back cabin. There are literally hundreds of the things. Normally this is a job I hate with a passion as you always seem to end up with glue all over the place trying to get some on the plugs before you knock them in. Change of tack this time, I’ve got some chair repair glue which is thin enough to be able to apply with a syringe and is designed for exactly the type of joint that a plug makes. It really works and is nice and clean although the syringe and needles in the washing up sponge after I’ve cleaned them out cause some comments I’ve also made up some little plinths to mount the berth lights on as there is not sufficient clearance behind the lining to fix them because the come right on one of the recessed panels. A nice little job which takes a surprising amount of time to get right as the mounting holes are so close to the cut out it has to be super accurate. Still they look really nice when they are done. So thats all the good stuff however there have been a catalog of problems. The first (and most embarrassing) was I took a dive into the cut trying to save my new (and expensive) battery drill which I had knocked off the boat. Apart from my pride it also buggered my phone which was a lot more expensive that my drill. I rescued the drill which works after drying it out and have now organised a new phone (and a totally waterproof case). I can honestly say that this is the first time I’ve fallen in the cut for over 40 years. The next thing to go wrong was the bed board (again). The bloody thing will just not stay straight and has a 3mm bow in the middle. I love the appearance of the padauk BUT it is a real pain in the arse to work with. The remedy this time is to let a strip of 35mm x 6mm brass strip along the edge of the bed board. The brass was over 50 quid so it had better work. With the strip cut to length, drilled and countersunk we can machine a little rebate in the edge of the bed board, pull it a little bit over straight with a couple of cramps and a strong back, bend the brass in the fly press the wrong way and screw it all together. When the cramps come off it looks and stays straight. Hopefully it will stay that way. if not I’ve just about run out of ideas The last failure is with the sexy hinges for the engine room doors. When we hang the doors they work well enough and the doors perform as I want them too but there is just too much slack in the hinges and you cant get a decent fit on the center. Damn. In the end we simply replace them with ordinary butt hinges and swing the doors into the engine room. Good news is that the port door still hinges flush back to the bulkhead so there is easy access. Anybody want to buy some nice hinges

have a look on ebay for tractor weights. You used to be able to pick them up cheap but I now see that most of them seem to be coming out at around £400 per ton. This looks interesting but expensive http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/25-kg-Ballast-Weights-Boat-Ship-Barge-Market-Tractor-over-100-tonnes-in-stock-/200925224140?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_BoatEquipment_Accessories_SM&hash=item2ec8139ccc#ht_880wt_1172 and I've just noticed where they are