MFV BF494 'Pansy', an old Motor Fifie Conversion

Pay the seams? Gladly pay a small fortune at the minute to see them filled. slowly but surely though its getting done. Done another couple of days and most of one side is almost ready for paint

that'll be a shocker, will have to run her around so the crappy side remains hidden until that sides done as well I suppose. Still biting my fingernails though, and not dead yet, well not from the waist up anyway!!

hardened up the caulking in the hull (again) and got busy with the putty goo stuff again. tried the sloppy putty goo mix in a caulking gun and that didn't work. It worked for a bit, but as the stuff cools down from the bit of warmth put into it from your fingers as you mix it its stiffens up too much for the gun, so canned that idea and decided there's nothing for it but fingers and trowel/knife. Slow, tedious, laborious and frustrating, but gets there eventually. Found a neat little trick for the final smooth over. Brush the newly filled seam with raw linseed oil. smooths any lumps and bumps out nicely and the extra oil will do it no harm at all apart from possibly stopping the putty from over hardening which is no bad thing, and it gives the wood a bit of boost too I suppose.

Also did a bit of sealing on the deck. Some of the cotton caulking has been squeezed out a bit here and there with a summer of being totally exposed to rain/sunshine hot/cold, so it needed a going over with the mallet and a caulking iron first. Then masked it up and after much hunting around, talking to 'experts' and reading webby things, struck out on my own. Bitumen based Trowel mastic has been, well, trowelled I guess on a bit of deck to see what happens. On paper it should be the perfect. Its got plenty of coal tar type things in, so thats good for killing the nasties, it hardens on top but only semi sets under the skin, so thats good for the give and take of the wood as it gets wet, its oil based so it ain't going to sulk about all the oil thats been lashed on the deck, and most importantly it doesn't have the word Marine in it so is cheap as chips - Gallon can for less than some places charge for a single tube of sikflex. Only time will tell I guess- watch this space

caulking hardened and seams sealed, brushed over with a bit of raw linseed oil. the rest of the exposed timber has been given a wee drink of linseed oil as well with the dregs of some white lead putty mixed in as well (based on the can't be arsed cleaning the brush principle)

some black go in the deck seams, takes a couple of days to harden so if we get anymore burglars in the next 2 or 3 days (thats another story BTW) I should be able to follow their footprints

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, did anyone see Pansy's granny on 'Coast' on the BBC a couple of weeks back? Lying on the bottom of Loch Ness Must post the vid on here soon