Good evening gentlemen and any Ladies ...
herewith a bit more progress on the tug;
Most tug-boats have curved rails over the aft deck-- aft of the tow-point, to prevent the tow-line from snagging or getting caught
on deck-houses, bollards etc etc
These often are--on the real thing, a
T-section-- though not ever so deep in section,
=>which is why I abandoned any over scale attempt at creating an
T-section and used styrene strip 1 mm wide, pre curved and glues on in slight compression.
Once installed, I ran some slightly stale CA glue (!) ( to give me some time) along the underside on a sharpened cock-tail stick so at to encourage them keep their shape.
On some photos of real tugs of that era, one can discern bracing gussets --on the aft edge
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Tugs of this ilk mostly carried 2 boats, often with one under cover and the other in readiness to deploy.
The covered boat port-side was actually a scrap open 1/700 launch, that gained a ridge-back of wire and a canvas covering made of white glue spanning the gap ( more photos of the port side next time.
The Starboard boat was small pulling boat from my (extensive !) scrap-box of bits,
--this gained wooden outer whales ( made of tape cut to size) , a rudder with tiller and some oars.
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The railings were cut-and-shut to size -- on most tugs of that era these were 3 bar railing.
On a small vessel such as this, the PE railings can often start to look overpowering,
hence I used the thinnest I could find
==> which for me is still 1/350 WEM Koenig
I under-coated them in light grey-( and they can barely be seen against the background...( just how I like it! )
-and now that they are installed , they will get another coat of white.
next I completed the bulwark bracing; these triangular items ( which are pretty small!)
were made of paper slivers, tacked on with matt varnish.
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I added another cowl vent midships aft of the skylight. I had an old plastic item from an unknow donor source
which was suitable; BUT it was solid.
As ever I drilled it out, and honed it until it became acceptable
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next on the works list are the mooring bollards, fairlead fwd, anchors, rails on wheel-house roof with a binnacle,
4 x Davits for the boats, make handrails of wire for the stairways, 2 x masts,lifebelts etc etc
mount it on water ( and decide how fast it will be going! !)
so it will keep me busy!
It has been --so far-- an interesting project and great practice for scratch-building the 2 x tugs for the Vulkan tow.
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