Innehållsförteckning för April 2025 från Model Boats

The open aspect of the large lakes of North Tyneside on which I sail offer the perfect conditions for my large square rigger models, and this one is a particular beauty! I built her from plans drawn up by Harold Underhill to a scale of approximately 1:68, and she measures in at a mighty 1360 mm long (from stern rail to bowsprit end), with a beam of 190 mm and a main mast height, from keel to main truck, of 775 mm. “I built her from plans drawn up by Harold Underhill to a scale of approximately 1:68, and she measures in at a mighty 1360 mm long (from stern rail to bowsprit end)” The barque’s backstory In the last 20 years of the 19th Century and right up to…

In around 1977 I attended a weekend workshop seminar on the herring fishing industry in East Anglia. The course was held at Belstead House near Ipswich. One of the expert speakers was Ted Frost, who talked at length on the building of a steam drifter. Ted was a shipwright by trade and served his apprenticeship at Chambers Yard on Lake Lothing, Lowestoft. This yard built many wooden sailing and steam drifters and trawlers and was responsible for the standard design of steam drifter built for the Navy during the war. Ted had produced a very comprehensive set of magnificent pencil drawings, illustrating every stage of the construction of steam drifter Formidable, LT100, which was built in 1917. During his apprenticeship and later, Ted worked on every aspect of the building…

How difficult could recounting this tale be, I wondered? A few photos, maybe 800 or 900 cogent words? I could do that, couldn’t I? So, although not entirely convinced, I applied to be considered as a nascent journo… To my surprise, my proposed pitch was met with enthusiasm, and I was duly provided with a check list of ‘do’s and ‘don’ts, along with a few other pointers, the first of which concerned ‘The Heading’. Okaay… Something short and pithy, I thought, a real attention grabber. Hmmm... A headline that would play on the words ‘torpedo’ and ‘something else’ didn’t exactly trip off my tongue. And then out of nowhere, “Damn the torpedoes!” – a quote famously attributed to USN Admiral David Bushnell sprang to mind. When, during the Battle of…

Letters can either be forwarded via email to editor@modelboats.co.uk or via post to Readers’ Letters, Mortons Media Group, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6JR Library initiative On February 15, the North West Scale Model Boat Club took part in the Morecambe Bay Model Group exhibition in Morecambe library, following an invitation from the Morecambe club, issued at 2024 Blackpool Model Show. The event proved a great success and, while not all those who visited this entry free exhibition were modellers, everyone seemed to enjoy what they saw. DAVE LAWRANCENWSMBC What a great way to promote the hobby, Dave. It would be lovely to see this idea rolled out and similar events hosted by libraries all around the country. Bravo to you all! Ed. Kuwaiti Boom model up for…

OBITUARY Dave Brumstead The Brentwood Model Boat Club has advised us that, sadly, Dave Brumstead, one of its founder members, passed away in January following a long illness. Back in the 1970s, Dave and his fellow club members first began meeting up and sailing their model boats on a pond in Brentwood town centre, before sessions were then relocated to a lake on a local farm. When this much larger body of water proved to be ‘a bit fierce’, however, it was Dave who managed to find a more suitable venue, and the one still in use by the club to this day. Before having to retire due to ill health, as well as playing an active role within Brentwood MBC, Dave also served as Vice Chairman of the MPBA and…

At Bushy Park our builds gravitate towards the unusual and crowd-pleasing variety, as on a Sunday morning, if it’s nice, considerable numbers of people gather to watch the boats. Besides the usual stuff – speed, noise, Disney film characters, etc – a water squirter is always a sure-fire crowd pleaser. Having a squirter on your boat elevates it from just being an ‘also-ran’ to being top of the class. Just the other light-year, I finally got around to fitting a death-ray water squirter on my UFO (see the August 2021 issue of Model Boats) and when I put it back on the water, you’d almost have believed it was about to take off if you’d been there to hear all the ooo`s and aaah`s from the pondside spectators. Most boats…

Like many modellers, I have a long-term project that will take me a couple of years to complete. Those in the same boat will be aware that there are times when spending hours and hours on jobs with little obvious progress can become wearisome. When this happens, I like to take a break and turn my hand to building something simple, fun and easy to finish. Past distractions have been a springer and a couple of models from the Dodgy Geezers Eezebilt website, plus I’ve motorised a 1:72 scale plastic Schnellboot – and a fantastic little runner it is too! So, while doing a poor job of rubbing down the varnish on my long-term project’s peculiar hull, I realised it was time for a hiatus and decided to get out…

Last month’s instalment of Boiler Room provided a round-up of the suppliers currently serving our hobby and the model steam related items they offer. This month we will be focusing more closely on one of those suppliers: Chiltern Model Steam (CMS). This company has been supplying the market from its manufacturing base in Staffordshire for 12 years now, having been founded with the express aim of providing affordable products that can also be of educational benefit for people with less model engineering experience and equipment (all of its kits are fully machined and ready to assemble). Profits are deliberately kept lean in order to pass on savings to the consumer, and the business remains very much at a cottage industry level. That said, I have found customer service to be…

FREE PLAN FOR INVICTA With a fully illustrated guide to building this Thames Waterman’s Launch PLASTIC MAGIC How to turn the Airfix 1:72 RNLI Shannon Class Lifeboat kit into a little R/C gem ZEELAND MADE EASIER? A hands-on build review of Billing Boats’ newly updated 1:35 scale kit PLUS A thematically varied selection of feature-length articles, all your favourite regular pages – including Your Models, Your Letters, news, reviews – and lots more (Please note: content may be subject to change) You will find more about the exciting content coming next, features of particular interest you may have missed in past editions and details of the very latest subscription offers on our website at www.modelboats.co.uk You can, of course, order you copy of the May 2025 issue, which goes on…

On visiting the 2024 show after a break of several years I was delighted to find that it had retained its support and popularity as a regional multi-modelling event, so I was interested to see if this successful formula would be maintained for 2025 – and I wasn’t disappointed! If anything, the scope has broadened, with boats and railways still the mainstays but stronger support from other areas of modelling, notably model trucks, helicopters, wargaming and interesting one-off displays – such as a large collection of Concorde (the Anglo-French supersonic airliner) models, now evident. There were also some superb Meccano creations, including a working replica of a German World War II Enigma ciphering machine, as used by the military, including on U-boats. Despite the additional content, there were still 12…

In this month’s exclusive prize draw we’re able to offer you the chance to win the newly improved and updated kit for the tugboat Zeeland recently announced by Billing Boats. Starting life during World War II as the Winston Churchill, this vessel was the last steam driven coastal tug built for the Dutch company Goedkoop in Amsterdam. When later sold on, in 1964, to the company Willem Muller of Terneuzen (located in the Netherlands’ southwestern province of Zeeland), she underwent a refit that included the installation of a diesel engine and was renamed the Zeeland. She was finally broken up in 1997 in Dordrecht, Holland. Examples of Billing Boats’ original, long out of production, kit for the Zeeland are now not only hard to find but can command a serious…

For a long time, I had two 1:24 scale tug models in my fleet: the 1924 American diesel tugboat Craig (as featured in the Model Boats 2008 Tug and Warship Special) and the 1933 Australian steam tug Wattle (see the Model Boats Winter Special 2013). That is no longer the case. As I shall explain, an unfortunate incident struck Craig from the register, and the Wattle has had to undergo a certain amount of modification and refurbishment to enable it to take on the Craig’s role as a camera craft. Loss of the Craig One warm and windy day last November, I was sailing Craig in the company of warships of the Task Force 72 Association at Albert Park Lake in Melbourne. I was eager to try out my new…

Cartoon capers Greetings from the other side of the pond! I thought you might like to see my rendition of Glynn Guest’s Waddler (featured in the October 2016 issue of Model Boats). This was an enjoyable build, and the model is a great deal of fun to run. I did make some modifications to Glynn’s design. First, I used geared motors with chain drive to operate the oars. I couldn’t find any wooden spoons that I liked, so I made my own oars. Instead of steel rods for the crank assembly, I used 6mm clear acrylic swizzle sticks and made a fixture, employing a heat gun to bend them so I could form the crankshafts that drive the oars. This makes the crankshafts invisible at a distance, so it looks…