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[chingdevil]

For some time now I have been working towards building this tug, well as my write up of Bereki is coming to an end that time has come and I have started to cut wood. A bit of history regarding Regain, she was the first true lighterage tug of its kind to be constructed for use on the Thames since 1966. She is owned and operated by Cory Environmental, and is a shallow draught tug built to go under all the bridges on the Thames. She has an overall length of 26.50 metres, a beam of 9.40 metres and a draught of 2.3 metres. I am building her to a scale of 1/32 giving me an overall model length of 81.20 centimetres long or 31.97 inches in old money

One of the first problems with looking to build Regain is there are not any plans for her, there are also not many photographs of her. I contacted the owners and the Marine Superintendant, Tony Harkett not only let me have copies of some of the plans used to build her he has let me have unlimited access to her for taking photographs of which I have about 350. I have also been able to take measurements of a lot of the detail of her, and get a trip on her earlier on this year. I still need to go and take some more measurements of the superstructure, which I can arrange when she is next in her home base at Charlton. Without the help of Tony this model would not have got built. The picture below is from a press release and comes from the Cory site


Brian

[chingdevil]

So first off build a board to construct the hull on, at work we had a packing that a pump had been delivered in being thrown away. Nice flat 15mm ply with 15mm ply supports, so I acquired one side of this case bit bit but after cutting down to size makes an excellent board. I gave the surface of the board a couple of coats of gloss white, just to calm down the wood grain of the ply.  I then marked out the board with the centre line and then marked out the station positions, I marked it out on both sides also marking the bow, stern, port and starboard so when I turn the board around I still know where I am

[lighterman]

Looking forward to your build of the regain, i built a model for a mate that works with me for cory, of the retainer i will try and post up some pictures of the same. as of next year some of the older  tugs like the Recruit and Mersina will be going, and replaced by brand new damen shoalbusters as i am a bit of a traditionalist i will not be building any of those:)
good luck with the build Brian and i am sure Mr Harket will be more than helpful.
i have the plans of some of Cory's smaller barges and have promised myself that ONEDAY i will get round to making a plug of one so i can mass produce a few to clog up the pond:)
regards
Martin

[tolnedra]

Martin, that sure is one attractive looking tug!

Danny

[lighterman]

Thanks for that Danny. thought i would post the drawing of whats coming to the fleet in the next year.
i think the retainer will be sold soon as the new boats come into the fleet

spose i am far too outdated, but how can these boats be as nice as these?



this is a waterline model of the mersina (built as the Repulse) which i worked on for 3 years. i think there is a replica made from LEGO at legoland as is a model of the regain

[Guy Bagley]

YUP THERE IS , I BUILT HER ! - WILL FIND SOME PICTURES...

[chingdevil]

I took a photocopy of the line drawing showing the hull lines and station shapes from this I blew it up to the correct size for the model. I then made quite a few copies ready for me to cut out the templates. When I had cut all the halves of the templates out I held them together with masking tape, then using spray adhesive I stuck all the templates to thin card. I used one of those wallpaper seam rollers to ensure the template was stuck flat on the card. When all were stuck down I used a propelling pencil with a 0.5 lead in it to draw around the template, giving a shadow which is easier to see when I cut around the templates.
A big thank you to Malcolm Reade of Reade Plastics for marking the line drawing so I could understand the station spacings, without his help I am not sure I would be building this model.

[Guy Bagley]

i have now found the folder on an older pc with the pictures of regain that we used.... if you pm me  with your email address i will forward the pictures i have  ( most of the images were supplied by CORY's own PR office )

[chingdevil]

I have finally been moving on with the build of Regain, various reasons over last year prevented me getting on with it. Well here is an update as to where she is at the moment. So I stuck the templates to the wood for the frames using some sparay adhesive and then cut round them, leaving about 1-2mm to sand back to the line. I the sanded the frames using a shooting board to ensure they ended up square.





Brian

[chingdevil]

You will notice on the last pictures that the centre line of the frame has been marked on it, this was done to help aligning the frames when they were mounted on the board. I then driled holes in three places to make it easier to cut out the centre of the frames. These were cleaned up and a 6mm notch cut in the top corners to fit the deck support









Brian

[chingdevil]

Now for the mounting of the frames, the board already had a centre line so I mounted a wire along the length of the board set at the height of the tugs bottom. I then cut up some small wooden blocks to mount on the bordrd, with some aluminium angle cut to mount on the frames. the angle had a hole drilled in one end to mount on the blocks and a slot in the other end to allow alignment of the frame. I then drilled holes in all the frames to take the 3mm cap head bolts. Apart from the bow and stern blocks which were super glued down the rest were screwed down. The pictures show how the frames were mounted on the angle, the wire is touching the bottom of the frames. As I added frames I checked the wire was at the correct height by a gauge I built, I will post a photo of it shortly








Brian

[chingdevil]

When all the frames were mounted and checked I then stuck on the deck support. The little red clamps in the picture are brilliant, they are really tough and when I was planking the hull the really helped hold the planks in position on the tighter curves. The frames timber is 8mm marine ply, damm thats expensive. The planks are 2 x 10 Lime strip 1 metre long








Brian

[chingdevil]

Some of the details of the tug, she is going to be fitted with two MMB 755 5 pole motors unsure what esc's I will fit to her yet and I am not sure what voltage I want to run them on. 48mm props fitted, correct scale should be 50 mm, but measuring where they have to go I think they will be too tight against the hull with the weed guard fitted if I want to get the angle correct. An ACtion mixer will be fitted as well as one of the noisey things. The tow hook will be operational as well as the mast raising and lowering, and I am going to use 2.4ghz RC.

Back down to Charlton on the 29th to take some more measurements that I appear to have lost, might see the new tugs while I am there if so I will take some pictures of them.

Brian

[Corposant]

Brian,
        You certainly have an eye for detail! Looking forward to the next installment.

Mike