Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Tow post


tomsk tow post
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.
If this boat is going to tow anything I knew I was going to have the build a towing post (I think this is the right term). Obviously it had to be strong enough to take the strain of a larger boat hanging on to it by a bit of rope (OK nylon string) but be removable so I could get at the insides of the hull.

I rummaged around in the bag of spare brass tube and rod bits I keep under the desk. It’s not really my bag as I bought it from a second hand stall years ago but every modeller needs such a supply of bits and at a quid I couldn’t leave it. Anyway I found enough bits to do the job.

My plan was that if I could find some tubes that would telescope into each other and then join them with a solid bar slotted through made using the pillar drill I ought to be able solder the lot up. This is pretty much what happened too. The bottom tubes were soldered to some paxolin which will be stuck into the hull using Isopon car body filler.

With all that brass I had to use a small blowtorch rather than a soldering iron to get the metal flowing – and remember not to pick anything up for five minutes afterwards ! The iron was used initially to blob solder on and tack everything together then the joints were well fluxed before loads of heat was applied.

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