Monday, June 01, 2009

Cokyn-Baba


Cork boat bits
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker
This Sunday sees the annual KMBC open day. We'll have Slingshot racing (exciting), yacht racing (model sailors praying for the wind to blow), free sailing (anything goes) and a new challenge - cork boat racing.

The Cokyn-Baba is a toy boat made from a cork block and powered by think plywood sails. A sheet metal keel keeps the thing upright. Interest has been sparked by an article by Alastair Roach in last Octobers Marine Modelling magazine. He gave a brief history of the models, some instructions, plans and best of all the offer to supply parts for a very reasonable price. Once the competition was announced I sent off for my bits and the photos shows what I got. Marvellous.

Of course I didn't start work immediately, the bits have sat in the pending pile for a few months until I realised the deadline drew near. I also discovered that a number of my colleagues had built their own models and I didn't want to be left out !

Anyway, this should be a nice simple job I thought. The first task was cutting the cork sanding block in half and then shaping it to make a hull. Marking cork isn't as easy as I'd expected - pencil doesn't show up and I ended up using a ballpoint pen. Once I'd carefully marked out the top and cut it my Dad pointed out that he's just drawn his hull shape on a bit of folded card, cut this out and unfolded it to give an automatically symmetrical shape. Obvious really, except to me...

Cork marked out

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