Newsletter – November 15th 2008.

Welcome to the latest edition of the website. A lot of work has gone into it, and after you’ve had a good look, it would be helpful if you could drop me a line to say what you think. Did you find it interesting and easy to use? Any useful bits of information on the models that you think I’ve left out? Would you like to see more practical info on any aspects of model boat construction? Let me know if you think of any additions or changes that you think would improve the site's usefulness, and I'll see what I can do.

If you've received a SPAM E-MAIL that appears to come from this site, let me assure you that it wasn't sent from here. There appears to be nothing that can be done to stop this happening, and the 'from' address was spoofed by the SPAMMERS. I have taken all possible precautions to prevent it, but if you have received anySPAM that appears to emanate from here, I sympathise of course, but it’s got nothing to do with me.

Website Updates.

I've had comments from customers from time to time, telling me that they visit this site quite often, but have to do a bit of searching each time to find new additions, and any other re-writes and changes. I think this is a fair point, so from now on, I'm going to maintain a list of significant recent changes at the bottom of this Newsletter page, so if something there catches your eye, you'll be able to head straight to it, rather than having to search the whole site. Of course, when I make changes to this page, I usually remember to change the date at the top.

At last, the new Price List.

A new price list has just been put on the site, the way costs of all my raw materials gave been rising in recent weeks, I couldn't put this off any longer. You'll all have noticed, that prices of oil-derived products are moving steadily upwards, if it costs you more to fill up your car, then it costs more for all my raw materials, like the resin and glass I make hulls from. I buy these from my suppliers several times each year, and my most recent batch was considerably more expensive than the previous one. It's around 18 months since the last Kingston Mouldings increase, I've kept these increases as small as I can, and larger hulls are worst affected, some small hulls haven't gone up at all, but almost every hull is going to cost just a pound or two more. Please check the site prices before ordering, and don't rely on old printed lists or price quotes. Another ever-present problem is low stock levels, and the shelves are rarely as well-stocked as I'd like them to be. This means that I'm producing many hulls as orders for them arrive, and as a result, most dispatch times are between one and two weeks. As always, I'll contact customers if their order looks like being delayed any longer than this, so please remember to supply full contact details when you send your order.

 

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At last, African Queen!!!

It's been a while since anything new has been added to the range, but at long last, the one that quite a few of you have been waiting for is here, the ever popular open steam launch AFRICAN QUEEN. I've done it at one tenth scale, which makes it around 930mm x 270mm, or 36½" x 10½". With those distinctive hull strakes, it hasn't been an easy one to make, and research has proved especially difficult. I've lost count of the number of times I've sat through the film DVD to try to gain fresh info on the boat, and I know almost all the dialogue for both Humphrey and Katherine off by heart. As all who have seen the film will know, the boat that they used was pretty rough and battered in appearance. I haven’t reproduced this effect on my hull, no dents but not a polished high gloss finish either, so you could also use this hull for a model of several other period launches if you want to. I originally thought that it would be a relatively simple matter of scaling up the little Billings kit design, but not at all, the original boat from the film still survives, but some time between the date the film was made and the present day, the boat topsides & deck layout were altered substantially, also the dummy steam plant used for filming was replaced by a completely different functioning one, all of which means that the Billings version is pretty inaccurate and really doesn't represent the film boat at all. Naturally, no useful drawings of the original exist, but I think I've managed to do justice to the true AFRICAN QUEEN design in the end. I've been producing the hulls for a while now, and am just about keeping up with demand. Of course, a detailed scale drawing is supplied with each hulls, and some pics of an excellent finished AFRICAN QUEEN have just been added to the AQ page on this site.

Most of the activity in my local club concerns sailing boats, and after many years when I've made little but steam and electric-powered models for my own amusement, the other members have converted me to the delights of sail at long last, so I've made a new IOM ONE METRE YACHT, a comprehensive update of the popular SPIRIT design, the hull is completely new and only the name is the same, see the relevant page for more details. As well as the hull, I've also made a very stylish skiff type deck moulding for this hull as an optional extra, and you can see both these new mouldings on the newly revised SPIRIT IOM page.

An addition to the range around one year ago was something really unusual, a British Waterways BANTAM CANAL TUG & BARGE. The tug measures 300mm x 125mm, and the barge is 510mm x 140mm, so they're quite small. These are sold together, but barge hulls are also available separately for anyone who wants one. As the tug's freeboard is very low, these aren't rough water models, but they are entirely practical for those with some experience, and there was an interesting article on building and sailing the prototype in the July 2005 issue of Marine Modelling magazine.

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