MFV BF494 'Pansy', an old Motor Fifie Conversion

for those of you that missed parts 2 and 3, they'll be appearing next week, as Pansy makes an appearance in Ambridge, where Joe Grundy is revealed as the long lost nephew of Pablo Escobar, and is caught smuggling a boat load of comedy shaped turnips into Borchester.

Prior to that though, a bit more work progressed in a generally progressive fashion today, beamshelf repaired (needing a scarfe? in this weather?? well thats old ladies for you), even almost sorta matched up the wee bit of detailing on the bottom of the new bit with the old bit

screwed, glued and muckle big nails just for good measure (aren't nails great!)

so then on to the bendy but not bit of oak, cut to length, a few hundred thousand funny angles measured, guessed, re-measured, marked out, rubbed out, marked again, and then sod it chop it off with the chainsaw, I'll trim it up with a chisel, and finally dropped into its almost final resting place

A little know fact but oak beams have the cunning ability to quadruple their apparent weight when you drop them on your fingers, its true, honest

deckbeam, cut to length, tweaked, shaved, honed and trimmed and dropped into place ready for knees and fastenings (aren't nails great!)

One of things I love about big old fishing boats, trawlers, MFV's call em what you will is the relative lack of finesse in their construction. yachts, pleasure boats and the like tend to be scientifically crafted, every piece a perfect match for its neighbours. The muckle big lump of wood and some nails approach is much more my cup of tea, So here we go, deckbeam replacement for the novice!

first job and possibly the hardest is to find a lovely big bit of wood, and hack at it for a bit so it looks bendy but isn't:

bendy but not!, sweep hacked/gouged/chiselled/planed into an oak beam

next take your chainsaw and do something that feels oh so wrong!, not just a bit not right, but really really wrong... plunge chainsaw one side of the dodgy beam and cut along, repeat the other side of the beam as well

Hmmnn.... looks a long way down, and still feels wrong!

view from below, no deck, no beam, just beamshelf and knees left to attack

next up, rip out old lodge knee, or in our case, allow mass of soggy wood formerly know as a knee to fall out, the starboard side one fell out any way, the port side one is sound (and as yet un photographed), the beamshelf was equally manky so chopped a lump of that out as well, plan is to scarfe a new bit in

nee knees as the say in this neck of the woods - not bit of blue rope, lashed in as a makeshift repair in peterhead - get your priorities right aka - its all going horribly wrong

and the dodgy bit of beam shelf cut away, a good thing and a bad thing, good beacause it will look better afterwards, bad because the frame head fell off as well

ok so we need something to nail/bolt the deck beam to so need to grab a big bit of wood, preferably oak, completely do your head in cutting a funny 27 different angle scarfe to match the originals scarfes that hold the frame together....( ok, I realise that a piece of wood with 4 corners can't have that many angles, I maybe exaggerated (a bit), there were only 15 angles). none of these angles are normal by the way (ie 45 or 90 degrees), get another bit of oak hack to shape with whatever tools come to hand, and put it all together

et voila, some new stuff in with the old

before sticking the bits together, lashed loads and loads of Stockholm Tar on the 'stump' just in case any nasties are left lurking in it. Was half hoping some uber sexy horsey type would wander past, get a whiff of it and think "I say, there's a man that smells like he knows how to give a filly a good time" luckily I can run fast so John McCrirrick couldn't catch me (an explanation of that joke is available on ceefax page 911)

so there you go, next up drop the new deck beam in, luckily the knees/frames are in fine fettle on t'other side, so it'll be pretty much a case of patch the beamshelf bit up I chopped out, drop new beam in and stick some giant comedy sized bolts through, oh yeah and make some new knees as well

few hours in the sun, even had me shirt off much to the distain of the odd yottie that passed by, hacking away with adze, chisel and plane, got 2 deck beams done. , Sweep of the deck roughly hacked out with the adze, cleaned up a bit with a 2" wood chisel, the squared and finished with a plane. There's a lot to be said for hand tools, apart from the enjoyment of the physical labour, not sure I'd have achieved quite as good a result with power tools

just need to cut some big holes in the deck to drop into place now

Started to attack one of the new beams today, but.... is it just me or has any one else ever found themselves looking lovingly at a piece of timber and though it too nice to cut up, and had a few pangs of guilt??

hey ho though, hope my woodworking skill are good enough to do it justice I suppose

Now, here's the thing, me and power tools, we've not been getting on as well as we might of late - the chabble saw eating my finger was a bit unpleasant, but its ok now as I've grown another one. Actually, The bairn asked me this morning why, if you get fish fingers which are made from bits of fish, are sausages, which are made from bits of pig, not called pig fingers??
but I digress....

So, back to oak. Traditional boats and traditional materials, must surely call for traditional tools, so out from the back of the shed came the adze, was my great grandad's, who built a boat or three by all accounts, so it should know what its doing and be able to tame my hamfistedness. and sure enough, a few hours later the first deck beam is taking shape and I've still got 10 fingers, although I haven't taken my shoes off yet so I'm not certain on having the full compliment of toes still

quite chuffed with me bitself, balanced on top of big bit of tree hacking away at a bit of 100 year old oak, from the same place the original oak that made the panser 70 years ago came from. bit of fine tuning with a big chisel, then a bit of planing and I think it looks ok so far... and not a power tool in sight, the sweep of the deck curving gracefully across the beam...

had a few passers by stop and stare for a while today at the nutter with the adze. I'd like to think they were marvelling at the traditional skills being kept alive, more likely just laughing at the strange creature trying to chop his toes off whilst wearing a beret

decided I'm gonna buy myself a clay pipe to smoke whilst swinging the adze from now on so as to look like I really know what I'm doing

After much trawling (geddit?) we found some 'ickle (!) bits of wood for the old girl.

So pretty much a year on, this old fishing boat is pretty much 'bottomed'. nothing left to throw away hardly, so here starts the putty back together phase I guess. Just had a look back through some old posts, all archived away out of embarrassments sight, but worth a look, the voyage home still raises a smile: The Pansy Genesis - Where it all started

So on to new stuff, and specifically some rather hefty bits of tree that arrived yesterday, and just as an extra test to the combined ingenuity of passers by that were roped in (literally) and plied with beer, it was bang on low tide. which means the pontoon is some 5 or 6 metres below the walkway. 16' long beams, 8" by 5" aren't the most portable things in the world.

First suggestion was just throw them over the side then fish them out of the water, luckily I spotted the potential of 200cwt of oak torpedo hurtling across the marina and getting intimate with some shiny white plastic thing, so that was rejected

after a bit of umming an ahhing,a few visitors were press ganged into service, some ropes whipped off the boat, wrapped around the barrier a couple of times and the beams lowered on ropes down to the pontoon - The Friction and Gravity method - It worked well, only Keith's broken toes to stop it being heralded a complete success

The press gangee's then dutifully carried the demi-trees along and stuck em on deck for us

Problem now is, I'm already rather fond of them (the woody bits, not the press gangee's, although I'm quite fond of them too, obviously not in any dodgy have my babies kinda way, just a bunch of nice blokes)

100 year old scottish oak (I counted the rings) felled not far from where the originally timbers that make up the Panser were felled. It just looks lovely, I might possibly have cuddled one bit when no-one was looking, but there they are, lying across the deck, seems a shame to chop em into shape.

So, got wood, got a chainsaw, got nails, got sticky stuff and tools - what's the worst that can happen

behold!! rot free wood! Introducing the panser to here new deck beams, frame heads, knees and beamshelf

A 'Big Up' to Henry here for selecting and milling the timber for us, and loading it on the wagon, First class job. Although I bet he cheated and used one of them forky lifty things

not a shake, knot or crack in sight, Next week though I'll probably be offering lots of blunt tools for sale