Back in the water

If you haven't already checked it out, have a look at Seb and Becky's blog (wendy ann 2 on the sidebar). They have, over the past three and a half years, done the most amazing thing, and turned a big pile of rust into an amazing, beautiful vessel that they can live on.

Well done guys!

stand by...

...monster blog update on the way.

I've been working really hard in the real, non boat, world for the last month or so, and we've been making a loot of progress ON the boat too, and it's left no time for blogging.

This will be rectified asap.

coals2u update

You may notice that i have toned down the entry below somewhat, though i feel it'd be disingenuous to remove it entirely.

The reason why is:

A couple of days ago, a very apologetic man from CPL Distribution phoned me up to apologise profusely for the bad service we had received and offer us our original order for free, to make up for it. Although this doesn't entirely make up for a january with no heating i do appreciate when a company cares enough to apologise when things go wrong, and takes steps to make it right.

So thanks CPL, maybe we can still be friends!

coals2u

So at the beginning of January we ordered some coal from CPL Distibution.

On their website it states that "We will endeavour to deliver your solid fuel order within 3 working days unless otherwise stated, if delivery is likely to be more than 5 working days we will ring you to advise you of a delivery date." We ordered our coal, when we reallised we had almost run out, on the 2nd of January and, 24 days later, finally cancelled the order after losing hope that it would ever actually arrive.

The company didn't contact us after 3 working days, and when, after well over a week, i contacted them to find out what was going on, they said that it would be any day now, before eventually admitting that thee were 'supply problems at the depot'. Of course, if i'd known this earlier i could have gone elsewhere but it took them a long time to tell us. Then they said that the depot had got the coal and that we would get our coal, hopefully last friday (didn't happen) and if not then DEFINITELY today. When i phoned today they still didn't have a date for delivery so i cancelled the order.

In the meantime, and through a record -10 degree cold spell, we have been entirely without heating, which has rendered the boat almost uninhabitable at times and certainly unpleasant to be in. The lack of recent blogging has been partly down to the fact that most things have ground to a halt because it's just been too damn cold to do anything. It's a real shame because the idea of getting coal delivered to the door is great, it's just that they never managed the actual delivery bit.

We're now going to go and get some ourselves, something we could have done 3 weeks ago if we'd known that the coal we'd ordered wasn't actually going to be arriving any day now, and so the boat should once again be nice and warm.

The Girls' guide to Cutting and Grinding.

Hello. Lorna here.

This morning I had another welding job.
I thought it would be a good opportunity to write a little guide to angle grinding.


Step one, gather all your stuff together.

I have a small 115mm angle grinder because it is more manageable, the huge ones would be too heavy to direct and hold steady over longer cutting projects.
I have my sheet of steel that was lying around in the engine room. It's 3mm mild steel so doesn't take many passes to cut.
A clamp to hold the sheet steel in place.
Work bench to rest everything on.
Thin cutting discs for metal. These are 1mm thick so that they cut neater edges and kick out less dust, and are just easier to handle. You'll go through a few though.
A flap disc for cleaning up the steel's surface. It goes onto the angle grinder.
Goggles to protect precious eyes from sparks.
Gloves. I use my welding gloves just because they are so robust. They protect your hands from sparks, spinning discs and sharp metal edges.




Now time to mark up the steel with the pattern you want to cut. Some people mark with soapstone, or pencil, but when you have so many sparks and steamed up goggles it can be difficult to follow a line, so I like to make a mask the right size and use spraypaint to mark out the edges. Another tip- don't rely on tape-measures for working out what size to cut your metal to. I like to use scraps of wood or card that I can cut down to size and make sure they fit into the gap perfectly. So many shapes that you think are rectangles turn out to be irregular polygons.


Now time for cutting! You want to hold your angle grinder disc down, and at 90 degrees to the metal. The body of the angle grinder will be pointing directly upwards. Hold it with two hands and run it along your marker out line. You'll be cutting a shallow groove with your first pass, as straight as you can. And don't forget to go past the end mark a little too. You shouldn't be forcing it or that's how you'll get a wobbly line, it's pretty much the weight of the angle grinder doing the work and you just easy it along and direct it. If you are happy with the groove then you can make a second and third pass along it. If you are holding it straight above then it should follow the groove and you'll need less stearing. When you have a nice deep grove, hold it tighter and work it back and forth along the line. Be very aware that sometimes it can jerk when it breaks through to the other side so you should never stand behind or in front of the line you are cutting. When you've cut through the metal the whole way along, switch the grinder off and move the clamp so that you can cut the other side.



And just cut the other long side and finally the short edge.


I always cut it a bit longer so that I can take the metal to the spot where I am going to weld it to make doubly sure that it isn't too short. I then mark out the excess to chop off and either cut it using the cutting disc or grind it off using a grinding disc depending on how much needs getting rid of.



So that's it, all cut out and trimmed to size. Because I'm welding it into place, it also needs to be polished down to fresh bare steel to keep a clean Arc. For this I use the flap disc- a disc that goes onto the angle grinder with lots of pads of tough sandpaper. This is also perfect for smoothing off any sharp metal edges for the long edge that won't be welded.





Here's the spot where the metal plate will go. Between the two U beams that support the window at the bottom. At the moment water has been dripping through into the boat where the window reaches the hull. What this plate does is take the drips and channels them outside.


And voila! Here it is! All painted and perfect.

Roller Girl

So who was doing all the painting, you ask?

Rex came round to help again and set to work with paint and a roller

working with incredible speed she got the walls nicely coated with wood primer undercoat in record time

and meanwhile Lorna painted all the metal beams with black Hammerite

and the door with primer undercoat.

Before long we could begin to see how the room is going to look when it's finished. The end is in sight...

Boxing Day

The next thing on the list was to finish the metal boxing in of the porthole, and also create a little box/inset shelf in the wall, in the space above the porthole. Unfortunately this also meant taking the wall off, just when we thought we'd seen the last of all that insulation and battening. Lorna prepared the pieces of steel we were going to weld in

while i removed the wall panel

then Lorna welded in the side pieces of the boxing in for the porthole


and i made a box and attached it to the back of the panel.


Once the panel was back up and the holes filled


and sanded smooth

it was all ready for painting.