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Scumbling


monkeyhanger

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2 hours ago, pete harrison said:

There would be little point in fitting a Petter PD2 vent unless you have an air cooled engine, and if I remember correctly HAWKESBURY has a three cylinder water cooled engine, having had its Petter removed in 1980 or thereabouts :captain:

Yes, fitted with a Jp3m no later than 1980. I have a reciept from when it was purchased in 1974, from Braunston services i believe (£100!) and a considerable amount of correspondence between Lister and the owner relating to parts ordered for the rebuild. 

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5 hours ago, Graham_Robinson said:

Talk about crawling!!! So this is how you get ahead of me in the queue.☹️

What you need to do Graham is to make sure your football team poses no threat to the baggies position in the play offs...

Oh hang on..

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Going back to graining, back in the late 80’s  I was considering having a change from steelwork and taking up painting instead, and as part of this idea I did evening classes in signwork at Leamington tech. I was chatting to the head tutor about boat decoration and graining one day and he suggested that I should go in on Thursday afternoons and he would teach me how to grain properly. Of course, I jumped at the chance, and went in every week for several months. Is this standard of graining really relevant to canal painting?  Probably not, but the techniques involved certainly are.

 

Instead of undercoat we would use an oil based eggshell paint as a buff, and the big benefit of which is that it is available from decorator centres in a full range of colours, there are probably a dozen or so that would be suitable for light oak. Most proprietary scumbles come in different shades for use over a common buff,  technically it is important not to have too big a contrast between the buff and the scumble, and hence if you want to alter the shade of the finished graining it is better to alter the shade of the buff to achieve this rather than altering the shade of the scumble. Raw umber is really the only pigment required to grain any shade of oak. If you want to go to town try using a couple of different shades of buff, you can use the same scumble over the top and you can get an effective contrast between panels. I too now use polyvine, but like Dave I also prefer to use the clear glaze and either use artist’s oil colours as pigments or polyvine oak stainers. By doing this you are more in control of the depth of pigment, and will need to thin it less. Again, as Dave says, don’t use a ready mixed scumble straight from the tin, it will need thinning, but this is rather to thin the density of the pigment than the viscosity. Too much white spirit will mean that the scumble will not ‘hold up’ and will sag, it is better to thin with a mixture of white spirit and refined linseed oil, in which case also add a little terebine to reduce the drying time, but NEVER EVER leave rags with scumble or linseed oil on lying around as there is a real chance of spontaneous combustion.

 

David, how long has it been since PNE have been able to challenge the mighty Baggies?

 

Anyway, I could go on ( oh yes I could! ) but I need an early night as I am planning a full days work on the Star tomorrow 

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On ‎20‎/‎04‎/‎2019 at 21:52, pete harrison said:

I can not speak highly enough of the standard of work so far and I am sure I will not be disappointed with the end result :captain:

 

On ‎21‎/‎04‎/‎2019 at 18:50, Graham_Robinson said:

Talk about crawling!!! So this is how you get ahead of me in the queue.☹️

 

5 hours ago, Steve Priest said:

Anyway, I could go on ( oh yes I could! ) but I need an early night as I am planning a full days work on the Star tomorrow 

Well Graham it looks like you are ahead of me in the queue at the moment :captain:

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11 hours ago, Steve Priest said:

Going back to graining, back in the late 80’s  I was considering having a change from steelwork and taking up painting instead, and as part of this idea I did evening classes in signwork at Leamington tech. I was chatting to the head tutor about boat decoration and graining one day and he suggested that I should go in on Thursday afternoons and he would teach me how to grain properly. Of course, I jumped at the chance, and went in every week for several months. Is this standard of graining really relevant to canal painting?  Probably not, but the techniques involved certainly are.

One of the problems with 'heritage' is that people think of things they remember or were not that far in the past. On canals, that would be traffic in its declining years. On narrow canals, which were less economic then wide, corners were cut, such as reducing the amount of decoration. This was counter-balanced by boatmen taking up the challenge of doing their own painting. On wide canals, such as the L&LC, cargo carrying remained reasonably economic until the 1950s, and the boats, certainly wooden ones, continued to be painted to a high standard, with the graining still being  to a high standard. Sam Yates, who did the paining at Whitebirk Dockyard in the 1950s certainly produced high quality graining, as was that in the cabin on my boat, Pluto, which I know was painted, possibly at Wigan, in the early 1950s Looking at early photos of narrow boats, they too seem to have had 'proper' graining. I suspect that the relatively simple graining now used on many narrow boats is just a reflection of the time narrow boat carrying was in the decline..

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On 21/04/2019 at 08:43, BWM said:

I should have been clearer as to what i was pointing out, the collar has WJ Yarwoods and sons in raised , cast lettering on it - unlikely to have been fitted by H+W!

Returning to an earlier part of this thresd - here is the Yarwoods cast iron rudder tube collar on Beatty.

IMG_20190423_111219065_HDR.jpg

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10 hours ago, Pluto said:

One of the problems with 'heritage' is that people think of things they remember or were not that far in the past. On canals, that would be traffic in its declining years. On narrow canals, which were less economic then wide, corners were cut, such as reducing the amount of decoration. This was counter-balanced by boatmen taking up the challenge of doing their own painting. On wide canals, such as the L&LC, cargo carrying remained reasonably economic until the 1950s, and the boats, certainly wooden ones, continued to be painted to a high standard, with the graining still being  to a high standard. Sam Yates, who did the paining at Whitebirk Dockyard in the 1950s certainly produced high quality graining, as was that in the cabin on my boat, Pluto, which I know was painted, possibly at Wigan, in the early 1950s Looking at early photos of narrow boats, they too seem to have had 'proper' graining. I suspect that the relatively simple graining now used on many narrow boats is just a reflection of the time narrow boat carrying was in the decline..

Yes, I think that is exactly so, the post war period is still about within living memory and was better recorded, certainly photographically, and I think in a lot of cases people look to this period for historical reference, and tend to overlook what went on before. I am pretty sure that this applies to graining. When the number ones were working some boats seem to have been extremely well decorated, far more so than the fleet boats. I recall hearing that Charles Lane would pay the boatyard more to make sure that his boats were the best painted, and I would imagine this included the graining as well. The Freindship’s cabin is grained in two colours, with more detailing and to a higher standard than what we would now consider normal, and I remember Ron Hough telling me that Frank Nurser used to grain the cabin beams in mahogany in earlier days. I would agree that he basic, repetitive comb graining that we are more used to was a later economy. 

 

Regarding early Grand Union cabins, there are enough photographs to suggest that grained cabins were not uncommon, if perhaps not the norm. There is a passage in Susan Woolfit’s Idle Women where she describes the cabin interior on the butty Dodona, the lower part,side bed and drawers were dark blue, and the rest was ‘white; not cream, as in the other boats, but plain white’ ( page 154 ). There are several pictures of cabin interiors of trainee’s boats, predominantly Woolwich boats, I think there was a link to a series of photos some time ago ( the Monnington collection? ) which I don’t have to hand, but I do remember thinking how rough the woodwork was.

 

So on to rudder collars

 

Little Woolwich, restored as built. The large washer under the collar is threaded onto the top of the rudder tube, and is tightened and screwed down onto the wooden pad beneath it. The top of the tube comes flush with the top of the washer, the spigot of the collar fits inside the tube, and the flange of the collar sits on top of the washer. The rams head, dolly, and hook are all original. Little Woolwiches differ from  big ones in that the decks are completely wooden, whereas on big ones the cants and decking are mounted on a steel deck

 

4126D011-B63F-437D-A062-F2F334A59DC5.jpeg.f3e553c7785760521628e0de99d734dc.jpeg

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1 hour ago, Steve Priest said:

Yes, I think that is exactly so, the post war period is still about within living memory and was better recorded, certainly photographically, and I think in a lot of cases people look to this period for historical reference, and tend to overlook what went on before. I am pretty sure that this applies to graining. When the number ones were working some boats seem to have been extremely well decorated, far more so than the fleet boats. I recall hearing that Charles Lane would pay the boatyard more to make sure that his boats were the best painted, and I would imagine this included the graining as well. The Freindship’s cabin is grained in two colours, with more detailing and to a higher standard than what we would now consider normal, and I remember Ron Hough telling me that Frank Nurser used to grain the cabin beams in mahogany in earlier days. I would agree that he basic, repetitive comb graining that we are more used to was a later economy. 

<snip>

 

Ron Hough did the scumbling/graining in our boat. There are four different finishes, combed oak graining, oak brushed graining, mahogany brushed graining and oak swirls. 

(The castle and roses weren't painted by Ron.)

 

26 - Copy2.jpg

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12 minutes ago, roland elsdon said:

The half paneling and bookshelf on the steel bulkhead is sensible and unusual. Thaxteds steel bulkhead used to be a misery on a damp cool night

My understanding is that the bookshelf was not standard, but was fitted as a concession for the 'trainee' steerers.

 

When I owned BADSEY the person who refitted the cabin in the early 1970's (David Humphreys ?) built a bookshelf quite high up above the bed. The big difference to the bookshelf in SUN is that BADSEYs was on the cabin side rather than the bulkhead, and this was quite an important difference as the contents of the bookshelf in SUN would be liable to fall off if a cill or gate was bumped a bit harder than was normal :captain:

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2 hours ago, roland elsdon said:

Just to observe there is a world of difference between cabin in post 58 and post 60.

The cabin in post 58 was built by Len Beauchamp at Braunston in 1985. It's apparently based on the cabin of Raymond with Arthur Bray checking on progress daily, as it was being fitted out.

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Yes one from horse boat days with full family detailing, as a home, the other built by a company for its workers, and maintained during a period of austerity.

There is no right or wrong only period induced modifications.

i think the Raymond copy one is lovely, mines a bit more like sun being in a woolwich boat.

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  • 1 month later...
On 18/04/2019 at 20:43, pete harrison said:

 

Equally many Harland and Wolff Ltd. built motors now sport W.J. Yarwood & Sons Ltd. style pigeon boxes, although in fairness many of these boats lost their original pigeon boxes under 'British Waterways' when they were replaced with wooden flat top versions :captain:

 

So what sort of pigeon box should a H&W boat sport?

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18 minutes ago, David Mack said:

 

So what sort of pigeon box should a H&W boat sport?

Take a look at old photographs or, for a Big Woolwich, the one on Buckden was as close as Brinklow Boat Services could get to "as original" at the time.

 

They're plug ugly mind, like the original back cabin doors were.

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26 minutes ago, David Mack said:

 

So what sort of pigeon box should a H&W boat sport?

Three major differences to a Yarwood pigeon box that I can see:

 

1 - the pigeon box is riveted to the engine room top.

2 - the flaps and top appear to be made of wood.

3 - the flaps are fitted with a single letterbox shaped light rather than twin portholes.

 

Period photographs indicate that both small and large Harland & Wolff Grand Union motors had the same design of pigeon box :captain:

 

18839282_1933588753553778_1365225213857689175_n.jpg.a618e9b2a00aa9dec2476c0271793e40.jpg

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26 minutes ago, davidg said:

Take a look at old photographs or, for a Big Woolwich, the one on Buckden was as close as Brinklow Boat Services could get to "as original" at the time.

 

They're plug ugly mind, like the original back cabin doors were.

BUCKDEN at Braunston 2011 (photographs are both courtesy of John and Peta Millard) :captain:

 

DSC05918.JPG.51d17f833705904079448160fb1e71ed.JPGDSC06084.JPG.9f18e94b9ca0de46c8246a4d832ec2b6.JPG

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On 25/04/2019 at 07:17, Derek R. said:

I am almost certain it was Dave Humphries who at some time rebuilt BADSEY's cabin. I first met him in 1979 and he spoke of having rebuilt the cabin shortly before. A stickler for detail I believe. Good bloke.

Yes it would have been Dave.

He is still about, and not that many years ago I met him in a non-boating context.  I believe he is still involved with canals, but I'm not sure if he sold his boat or not.

When I first knew him he had Badsey in not far off "post Wendover" state, but I think had acquired Barnes already restored.

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On 23/04/2019 at 23:10, Mike the Boilerman said:

I have a Ron Hoff water can I paid £15 for brand new at Crick a few year ago. 

 

Seemed like a bargain even at the time!

 

Despite being only 8" tall!

 

Now if it were Ron Hough, it would probably be worth more!

 

On 23/04/2019 at 11:26, Nick G said:

Returning to an earlier part of this thresd - here is the Yarwoods cast iron rudder tube collar on Beatty.

IMG_20190423_111219065_HDR.jpg

That's pretty well what both "Flamingo" (which was "Letchworth") and "Sickle" have, I think.

That said, I think that's about where authenticity ends.  I don't think that what actually sits above that point is very "original Yarwoods" in either case!

Edited by alan_fincher
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