Manie B says

Baby Seal,a design by Manie


I very rarely check out forums,time says I am busy enough doing my daily orders and of course these bloger pages but by a total coincidence,I have just found this on a forum called www.boatdesign.net,its a shear fluke that I received an order from him and posted some more epoxy off to Manie today!

Manie wrote,

Last year when i was shopping around for plywood i was shocked at the prices of "normal" plywood sold at our local builders supply mega stores. One would assume that their prices would be cheap - WRONG.

I bought my marine grade plywood WBP from
http://www.ckdboats.com/plywood.asp cheaper than at ANY builders supply, and that was including shipping costs!

They supply kits worldwide, so check them out, you may be surprised at what prices they could supply - even to Mexico. Epoxy from ckdboats is easy to work with, incredibilly strong and you can build a damn fine boat.

One thing that i always advise is, dont design yourself - BUY A PLAN you will only understand when you have made the mistake of building your own design first time out. If you are a keen worker and have the time to experiment, and throw your experiments away, go ahead and draw your own plans.

Rufford Old Hall,North West England

Picture from the halls web site.



Photo taken by Charles Singleton (many thanks Charles)



picture by Graham Whitehead

Rufford Old Hall is really well named,it dates back to 1430 AD or thereabouts,there is a NEW hall too,constructed by one of the halls family,the Heskeths.The main part of the structure in this picture of the hall,is a single room,thats below the roof tower,to the back it is then double story and accessed via stairs,William Shakespeare is reputed to have performed in this lofty hall,not a single nail holds the structure together,its all Tree Nails,or wooden spikes.One of the treasures on display is a carving of a Briar Branch,done in Pear Wood and from a single piece,it was carved in 1830 by a local craftsman.Rufford Village is just north of Ormskirk and between the rivers Mersey and Ribble on Englands West Coast.

Tef-Gel anti seize metal paste,used on boom rebuild

The re assembly of an eight year old boom went well,it took slightly longer than normal,mind you even refiting the sail track has 96 monel rivets,so it was always going to take a while but with coating each rivet with Tef-Gel paste prior to fitting,we at least know that no metal to metal corrosion will ever take place now,cleaning is really simple,use white spirit,known also as Turpentine (turps) so it will not affect new paintworks as a strong solvent based cleaner will.

Cape Cutter 19 kit in build down in New Zealand

Ian Allen bought one of our kits back in november 2007,it shipped over the december period and in between running his successful B&B in Picton,South Island,New Zealand,he has finished the hull,this is it being turned by a group of his pals,party time!

On The Beach

early morning monday,the tide did not quite bring this lot in.



This is the timber our Ockume marine plys are made from!

This one has nothing to do with the Chris Rea song 'On The Beach' but its as good an intro as any,we had a ship loose 200 plus veneer logs recently,north of Cape Towns prison isle Robben Island,seven meter swells we hear,some were captured by local fishing boats and towed to Hout Bay for what I hope is a very decent financial consideration by the logs owners.