Shipyard blog-3 !!!
These pages are designed to share the work in progress on the shipyard. They cover the work that needs doing to restore and convert our lightship. We decided to do some work ourselves, and leave the "heavy work" to the shipyard people who are much more capable than we are with steel work and such. On these pages you can follow our progress and frustrations...
This blog is split into several pages now, since it took too long for all those pictures to load at once! For the previous one click HERE. For the next page click HERE. Enjoy!
By the way: feel free to leave comments on our project HERE!
22 July 2009: Most of the areas below deck have a vent to get air in and out. However, some of these vents were either removed or in bad condition. So Dan and Steve were on a mission to replace them! They re-created many vents and of course Agnes chased them with the paint brush.. Here's Dan welding one of them onto the deck.
17 July 2009: The fun bit of this project is that we try new technologies where ever we can. The side walls of the treatment rooms will remain uncovered to show the nice riveted steel work of the ship. So a solution had to be found to insulate them to prevent condensation during the colder months. Agnes came across a product that consist of microscopic ceramic balls (it looks like very fine powder, see the first picture) that you mix with any paint. I must admit, I was VERY sceptical about it but we tried it anyway. Just one layer of primer, mixed with the product, proved the point: if you hold your hand against a painted part of the hull and compare it with an un-treated area, you can feel the difference! Let alone if we put two layers on later on.. So here is Agnes painting with the exotic mixture. And since we like some fun every once and a while, we installed a new flag: a Red Duster pirate style! ;-)
14 July 2009: The bathroom is starting to take shape! With the framework for the ceiling in place, you get a feeling of the room when it is all boarded-up. We have two hatches in the ceiling that will provide more natural light to come in. These too will be nicely panelled. A nice picture of Lee sticking his head through one of them!
9 July 2009: Work in the bathroom is well underway now. Canadian Steve and Dan welded many lugs on the steel structure yet again for Lee to attach his wood onto. And the structures for the cabinets and such appeared by magic. The last picture even shows Steve the Boss getting his hands (and head!) dirty burning away some pieces of metal covered with tar! Nobody can resist working on our lightship; right Steve? ;-)
3 July 2009: Today, Lee completed the wooden framework for the shop area. He is a wizard in doing so: making something square on a ship requires a very different way of thinking and lots of skills! Next thing to go in are the electrical cabling and central heating before we can start panelling. Lee is off to the bathroom area now to frame-up that room. Talking about challenges!
26 June 2009: As suspected, Agnes attacked the new railings and bollard IMMEDIATELY with primer! She finds lot of satisfaction from painting. I love her for that: I do not have the patience to paint and there is (and will be) a lot of it on a ship! Look at her... she is enjoying herself!
23 June 2009: A couple of weeks ago, the port bow bollard foundation was renewed. This time, it was the aft one that underwent it's rejuvenation. Both port bollards will be responsible for the final hook-up of the lightship when finally moored in Gloucester. Here's Steve welding the aft one back on it's spot on the deck.
19 June 2009: The renewal of the hand-railing around the superstructure has been completed. Steve and Martin made it look better than new. It involved precise welding and grinding/polishing to make it look great! Surely Agnes will be attacking it (the railing, not the guys..) with primer.. nothing escapes her paintbrush!
12 June 2009: The roof of the shop needed some modifications to allow more head-room. Some supports had to be cut, and some new additional ones to be welded in. Bogdan came back on board to do this work. It was good to see him (and his work!) again. He spend a lot of time on board in the beginning of the project, see blog-1
5 June 2009: There is no stopping Agnes! She made great progress with the painting the walls in the treatment areas. Primer all over the place! A total of 3 layers of primer before we will spray-paint the walls in their final colour. Starts looking good!
3 June 2009: You may notice little updates being posted. That's because no work has been done at all by the shipyard over the past 3 weeks, very disappointing to say the least.
22 May 2009: Work hasn't progressed well over the past week due to other activities on the shipyard. With the old hand-railing (used to hang-on for dear life during storms!) on the side of the superstructure removed, the new railing is being prepared. It is not easy to re-construct this and will likely take a week or so to renew. In the mean time, Agnes is removing about 5mm (!!) of paint from the inside hull in the treatment rooms. Those walls will be re-painted with a very special mixture of paint with microscopic ceramic balls to ensure both thermal and sound insulation.
13 May 2009: With the studs for the walls of the treatment rooms in place, the next phase could be started: installing the electrical cabling! And there will be MILES of it throughout the ship for sure. Cabling for sockets, light, alarm and fire detection, data and telephone.. We are installing it all to the 17th Edition of the IEE Wiring Regulations standard since the ship doesn't fall under Class (marine standards) anymore. And with our ship having a future connection to mains-power from ashore, we decided to go for the strictest standards! So with a plan in hand, out came the cable-rolls, the clamps and lots of tools. Once the cabling is installed, it will all be officially tested.
9 May 2009: Over time we took a lot of things out of the ship, and we stored it all in a big container so that we can re-use it if possible. This will ensure we retain the "feeling" of the ship. Sometimes it goes a bit too far maybe.. We saved four metal shelves that were originally used to store paint on in the chain locker area. We decided to re-use them to create shelves in the boiler room. So out came the grinder to cut them to fit (always spectacular fireworks as you can see) and weld them on. Agnes made sure they were used the moment I was finished with them! And then we started on the next project; see the last picture as a hint. Can you guess?
7 May 2009: Our "Chippie" Lee has completed the "Heads" and started on the living room. First of all, wooden studs need to be fixed to the steel walls and the ceiling so that we can then nail the wall and ceiling panels to it later on. And some insulation and electrical wires of course!
1 May 2009: We struck oil.. yet again... Some people would be glad with a statement like that! It implies "Black Gold" but not in this case. For MONTHS now we are trying to get the old engine room bilge clean from old engine/gear oils. Just thought we sussed it but then we saw fluids seeping through concrete covering the ship's hull way below in the deepest part of the ship.. Chiselling it away uncovered a mouse-hole (ships term) to a tank that we thought was full of concrete! Not... oily water came out yet again. To be continued I'm afraid..
30 April 2009: The port bow bollard had to be removed a while ago since it foundation was in bad shape and it had to be moved forward due to the new doors of the shop. Nathan constructed a new foundation in the workshop, and today it came back on board. Barry constructed a little tent to shelter himself from the April showers whilst welding it to the deck. No stopping this man!
28 April 2009: Our "Chippie" Lee is back on board this week, preparing the new Heads for panelling later on. Looking at his face, he is clearly enjoying himself! And since the kick-strips were finished, the railings could be re-installed. Last week, Bradley worked on the port side and on the hand-rail of the stairs, this week Barry worked hard on the aft side of the super structure and the new railing around the life-boat. Looks good guys! And of course Agnes was inspecting the lot..
24 April 2009: This week finally saw the end to the renewal of the kick-strips! It makes the ship look new, certainly with some new paint! And with the sun out, what is more therapeutic than painting a kick-strip..
20 April 2009: Today we received the official Planning Application Approval from the Gloucester City Council for mooring our lightship at the proposed site. See details on the NEWS page!
19 April 2009: Our light-ship is moored onto a quay side of the shipyard where people can come relatively close to. So during sunny days we tend to draw "day-tourists" to the fence to take pictures. They often ask questions if they can catch any of us, and we often refer them to our web-site. So we put a banner up earlier this week with our web-address; easier for all!
17 April 2009: Although the work on the kick-strips and hand-railing is still ongoing, the weather hasn't been kind. So an in-door job to be completed by Bradly and Dan: a new door to the boiler room! An old door from the lightship was re-used and the guys did a brilliant job.. it looked like the door was there for 50 years.
8 April 2009: Work resumed on the replacement of the kick-strips on top of the superstructure. This strip is to keep rain water on top of the roof so that it can be drained through the proper drain piping. Most of the original strips were badly corroded and need replacing. These strips also hold the hand-railing. So Bradly and Barry removed the railing, burned off the old kick-plates and welded on the new strips. After that, they will drill holes for the railing to be re-connected.
4 April 2009: It has been a while since the latest update, sorry about that. But with the shipyard busy on other projects, and us being away for a while due to circumstances, work hasn't progressed well over the past weeks. But today we discovered new skills: spray-painting! Since we had never done this before, and with brand new (professional) equipment, we had to try it on a wall that will be boarded up anyway. So we decided to spray that with grey primer after we touched some rusty patches with black "rust-eater". We used our PPE of course, so the first picture is Agnes in her Darth-Vader outfit! The other pictures show the wall prior to spraying, Agnes polishing up her skills, and the end product. It worked well; plenty of walls to go!!
12 March 2009: I get lots of questions regarding the light in the tower, in particular about the lens system and the light source. If you read back in this blog, you will see that we have put a 60-Watt ordinary light-bulb in the tower to see the effect of the lens system. The original bulb however was 1000-1500 Watt on 110V DC. It still had to be a relatively small bulb since the filament had to be small enough to allow precise alignment within the lens system. So here are two pictures of the original bulb for you all to see! (and a normal bulb for comparison)
6 March 2009: Steve and Tony worked hard on the new railing on top of the extension. It was a bit of a puzzle to make it all fit, re-using the verticals supports at the right distance to each other. But they did a good job, and by the end of the day most of the supports were up!
2 March 2009: The never ending smelly bilge... Despite all the work that was done in the past to eliminate the smell of oil in the former engine room, it was still oozing a not-so-pleasant odour. We skimmed almost 1 cubic meter of old engine/gear oil from that area and pumped around cleaners several times. But it was still there. Until we discovered that the bottom of the bilge wasn't the real bottom, but a 3 inch layer of mud soaked with oil. So here is our hero Josh scooping and sucking it all out so that we can do a final clean for once and for all.
27 Feb 2009: With the bathroom welding and grinding completed and with the weather improving every day, the guys started on renewing the kick-strips on top of the super-structure. This part of the ship, and some plating on the Wheel-house, are the only parts of this 50 year old ship that suffered corrosion to the extend it had to be replaced. To replace the kick-strips, the old ones had to be cut before the new ones could be welded on. More burned paint.. But the final painting job, once all work is completed, will make her look nice and fresh again, no doubt!
The previous blog page (click HERE)