More tales from the drydock

We're making very slow progress so far because all the parts have not shown up yet. Hopefully, tomorrow the new rudder shaft and it's bearings, stern tube, cutlass bearing etc. will arrive and the bent rudder will be cut off the old shaft so it can be straightened and welded back onto the new shaft.
We've done a test section of about one foot of gunnel with red oxide, then matt black, then petshop grit (harmful stuff removed) then another coat of matt black. It looks like that is what we will be doing on the rest of the gunnels.
I cut out my engine inspection hatch and we'll weld some studs around it so we can bolt a cover on (with it's rubber gasket) 

I can finally get at the front of my engine, allowing me to take the rubber cover off the heat exchanger matrix and access to the raw water pump, so I rodded the holes through the heat exchanger and gearbox cooler matrixs.
Replaced a lot of the hoses & clips and improved the flow of raw water by using copper tubing with obtuse bends in place of the rubber hose with 90 degree bends.
Also removed the Jabsco raw water pump, cleaned it, and turned the inspection cover inside out, as the inside of it was quite badly worn. Then replaced it and moved the belt to the right pulley.

I de-greased, cleaned, scraped and red oxide painted the stern section of the bilge, followed by a few coats of grey garage floor paint.

It's amazing what you find in the weedhatch of a narrowboat! I climbed up inside so that I could reach the stern bilge section to clean, scrape and paint it

Glenda finished off the blacking, all that's left is the rudder which we'll do after it's straightened and the weed hatch, which needs de-rusting, and treating with Fertan before we re-black it.
I'll also use Fertan in the rudder tube, then coat the inside and the rudder shaft with Waxoil.

We are making slow but sure progress

Once in drydock we enlisted the help of my old friend Sinc and set about stripping the flaky and rusty bits of the hull so that Glenda could treat it all with Fertan rust convertor.

Clive and Nene Marine's Mark set to stripping and removing the bits we wanted to repair or replace.

Sinc takes a break to catch and release a small fish from the caisson

Glenda applying Fertan, which is a great rust convertor

We also fitted a new Whale Gulper waste pump to the shower.
And I've stripped and started to clean the whole raw water system, we're stripping the many colours of paint and sand from the gunnels so we can re-paint and re-sand.

Woo Hoo! We got to move our motor (boat) again!

On our eventful trip from Cheshire to Northamptonshire we had an incident where a 'helpful' boater opened the lock paddles as I went to climb up the lock ladder, the boat shot backwards and crashed into the lock gates , bending the rudder.

So we claimed on our insurance and they agreed to pay for dry-docking and straightening the rudder.

Yesterday evening we breasted up to Clive the marina owner's boat and, once through the lock, we started our engine and moved to the dry-dock under our own steam (we have had a problem with our raw water cooling which is causing the engine to overheat after a while) but she managed to get us into the floating dry-dock without a problem.

 

We have pressure-washed the hull using Clive's monstrous Lister 4 pot jetwash! Not for the faint-hearted, next we power wirebrushed the loose stuff off and treated the hullsides with Fertan rust converter before we re-blacked. We did black her last September, but it was our first time and we didn't spend a lot of time on preparation.

Clive's 'Beast' a Lister 4 pot powered jet wash!

A strange sensation, being 'moored' but the floating drydock is constantly moving!

Freyja tucked up in the boat hospital

While the rudder is out for repair we will fit a new sealed steering stem bearing.

We will also fit a new cutlass bearing and stern gland (on the drive shaft)

Fit a new propshaft flexi-coupling

Get the engine re-aligned ( it is out of line at the moment, causing uneven wear on the drive shaft bearings)

 Cut the top off the diesel tank and clean all of the crap, water and diesel bug out (after having paid £190 to polish 50-70 litres!!!! Grrr!)

Cut an inspection panel in front of the engine bulkhead, so that we can get better access to the engine , which is very tight to the bulkhead, making it almost impossible to work on some parts of our engine.

Either fix our raw water cooling or re-connect the engine to the skin tanks (that are not being used at the moment). We think that raw water cooling is fine for rivers but prone to getting blocked by plastic bags etc. on canals.

We will also fit our new galvanic isolator and a 'Whale Gulper 220' waste water pump to the shower.

Phew, I'm tired just writing about it all!

Giving our old G.W.R. oil lamps a polish and converting them to LED

Glenda got the Brasso out and started cleaning one of our old brass G.W.R. lamps, I advised her to soak them in cola to take the worst off (neither of us like drinking the stuff!) then she buffed them up nicely with the Brasso.

So I decided to fit a new glass bulb style LED while the bits soaked, the old 12v fitting was a bit of a bodge, so I re-wired it and drilled the top out, then filed the pins off the sides of the bulb, soldered the wires to the double contacts, this means we can paint one side of the bulb orange for mood lighting then rotate the bulb 180° to have the original brightness.

Nearly finished, just need to straighten the loose-fitting top & bottom sections. Gives a nice bright but soft light. I'll tidy up the wiring too and think I'll fit a pull-push switch with a brass knob on the bottom.

Funny goings on at our marina

Last year, while driving out of the 'Kendal Calling' festival, I had to stop to move a sled that had been dumped in the middle of the road, someone had used it to drag their gear to the exit. I thought, that could come in useful, and in all the snow, earlier this year, it did. I used it to drag bags of firewood, gas bottles etc.
A bit further down the road I had to stop to move a wheel barrow, I thought, that could come in useful. It had a wonky wheel but came in very handy during the floods earlier in the year as the only way onto the pontoons was by a narrow gangplank, so the marina's 2 wheeled trolley was useless.
Eventually the wonky wheel collapsed, I looked for a replacement in the UK but they were very expensive.
On the last tour I was in Germany and found a cheap replacement wheel, Glenda was at the boats for the weekend and I told her I'd found one :o) 
Unfortunately, she didn't tell Barry, the marina manager.
So when I went to get my barrow to fix it, I found out that Barry had burned it a few days earlier.

This is how I went from having a barrow with no wheel, to having a wheel with no barrow!
Barry then put this old wheelbarrow up 'For Sale' for £1.50 with instructions to pay the money to me.

I've had to change my workshop/lathe set-up.

This is how the fretsaw attaches to the lathe bed, so it can't be used when the lathe is built into the bench, I took the front of the bench off so that I could pull the lathe out, then I needed to alter the lower shelf and found the middle bench leg was in front of the treadle spindle, so a five minute job became an hour job, HoHum....

All I need to do now is to work out what those two pointed and threaded screws are for, there is a small clamp-on table with hole in the centre for the blade to pass through

Detail of the rear of the attachment, the black pulley and handwheel are part of my separate Singer 29k, at the time of this pic, the cast rockers were not properly seated in the top and bottom cups

Unfortunately, I haven't got around to buying any fretsaw blades yet

A stud screwed into the faceplate locates into this wooden slot, oscillating the fretsaw arm

Here is a short video showing how the face plate to fretsaw set-up works

We haven't got any chickens yet but, suddenly, we've got eggs!

We arrived at the boats to find that Glenda's planter, that she had planted up with herbs and pansies appeared to have been dug out by a cat..............

But on closer inspection we found a duck egg!

When we got up we found 2 duck eggs, and very nice they tasted too! By the way, it was as well to eat them, as the nightly frosts were ruining them, and, normally, she'll lay more before she'll sit.
UPDATE :- Now, a few weeks later, there are few ducklings on the lake and the swan is sitting on an, obviously, dead egg. Those late frosts took a heavy toll.