Diary

All Pictures © Bluebird Project
All text by Bill Smith (unless otherwise stated)

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See the Diary Archive for material up to August 2006.

Newest entries are at the top.     For Diary of lift see Diary Archive.

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6^th November 2008

 

I’ve been away shooting for a few days. I go every year with my dad and his mates to visit death and destruction on the bird population of Cumbria.

Oooh! How horrid and cruel, I hear you say. Those poor birds…

But it’s not like that. I admit to liking ducks in all their guises – paddling on the pond, crispy and aromatic in the Chinese restaurant and winging past the end of my twelve-bore on a one way flight to duck-heaven. Pheasants too… They’re equally good sport once released from their centrally heated, fox proof, full-board lodgings and made to fly. But whereas the popularly held belief is that a single shotgun cartridge can fill the air with lethal lead from horizon to horizon the reality is that it’s actually quite difficult to connect a teaspoonful of shot with a fast moving target.

Add the shooting etiquette that frowns upon taking easy or low shots and the greatest glory clearly comes from downing an afterburning speck through a gap in the trees. The odds definitely favour the birds.

And there’s more… all those rich toffs tooling up in their Range-Rovers and M-Class Merc’s absolutely must stop at every outdoor shop en-route to outdo their mates in a spending competition on executive wellies and jackets with random suede patches and strange pockets. After that, the gas-guzzling vehicles, having been removed from the urban traffic jams for a day or two, sit about silently and as green as everything else while the shooters slurp sloe gin and sail close to their first heart attack.

Out go the toffs in their new kit paying heavily through the nose to blaze away at high-flying targets. The dispatched birds – and no, birds shot with a shotgun are not full of little lead balls – ultimately end up on the tables of local restaurants where diners pay through the nose all over again for the pleasure of eating them. The whole shooting game amounts to an efficient money-pump that sucks cash from affluent city-types and pours it into rural communities.

Admittedly, it’s a bad day for the birds in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I only shoot (badly) once a year in the same coat I’ve owned for ten years so my contribution is minimal but as a whole the effect is highly beneficial to the local economies.

But here’s the bit that’s so rarely considered…

Were it not for the shooter’s desire to traipse through miles of prickly undergrowth and fall over hidden logs, loaded shotgun in hand, many shoots would long since have been cleared for the production of rape seed along with their natural inhabitants. Appreciable chunks of England’s green and pleasant land, therefore, get to remain exactly so in the name of wholesale murder rather than being turned into acres of yellow hayfever…

It’s swings and roundabouts and I often get the feeling that people say the strangest things without taking a beat to consider all the angles. Take, for example, the first piece of feedback on our new DVD.

“You were wearing scruffy shoes…”

I was wearing a smart shirt to do the presenting but the shoes weren’t up to scratch, apparently. Sure enough, captured forever in digital excellence are my scabby, old Nikes that went to that great running track in the sky some months ago. They’re in almost total darkness but if you look carefully and perhaps freeze a frame or two you can just make them out.

I had to laugh.

The workshop is a total sh*t-pit throughout, my gloves were falling apart and I could do with a new welding screen too but did anyone care? No, because my piece to camera was performed in tatty trainers.

What’s this preoccupation with shoes anyway? I can just about understand it where the girls are concerned because they can transform themselves into goddesses with the judicious application of only a leather beermat and a shoelace on each foot (well some of them can) but footwear that’ll turn me into Johnny Depp is yet to be designed, I’m afraid.

Then there was a recent motorway café acquaintance who spotted the project logo on my sweatshirt and wanted a detailed history of events to date. His physique suggested he’d not run a marathon of late and the whiff of partially-burned armchair – that trademark of smokers the world over – confirmed he’d lit a series of small fires to self-administer mind-bending chemicals whilst white-water-rafting down the M6 in his Vauxhall Vectra. Having then stopped in search of black coffee and a double-battered fat-burger he listened raptly to my tales of derring-do beneath a hundred and fifty feet of freezing water with two tons of jagged scrap for company without a murmur but on learning that the boat was being built to running order he asked cautiously,

“Won’t it be dangerous?”

Certainly not as dangerous as sucking nicotine in the fast lane of the M6, thought I.

But then I got to wondering just how people perceive this up and coming event. What do they imagine we’re going to do? A few lads, perhaps having quaffed a tin of lager or two, screaming up and down an otherwise peaceful stretch of water in Bluebird, laughing hysterically and weaving between canoes and sailing yachts? Perhaps we could perch our mates on the sponson tops and give everyone a laugh.

I think not…

As a model for what it’ll actually be like I compare it to a fascinating event I drove into accidentally one day on the way to the unfortunately named, Cockermouth; that’s where I enjoy the shooting.

There’s a section of road that runs parallel to the western shore of Bassenthwaite Lake and opposite is a small, craggy mountain, or a fell or whatever Cumbrian hills are called. In winter it’s just another section of road but last year I passed through in springtime and wondered if I’d stumbled into a paparazzi convention. For hundreds of yards on either side of the road cars were parked and binocular and camera-wielding pedestrians waited expectantly though none seemed to be looking in any particular direction. Being curious I stopped to find out what was going on and soon learned that a pair of Ospreys were nesting on the hillside and hunting in the lake. Sea Eagles… so that’s what all the fuss was about. http://www.ospreywatch.co.uk/images.htm

No one could go near the nest or say with absolute certainty when the eagles would put in an appearance though their behaviour could be plotted with acceptable accuracy by those in the ornithological-know. Nor could anyone predict what the fish might be up to and therefore whether the eagles would wheel around for half an hour with rumbling bellies or have their larder stocked in ten minutes. The birds might make a spectacular stoop right before the crowd or feed away in the distance but one constant ran through the drama. Those people were prepared to stand for hours waiting to see an Osprey take a fish and if they got to see it every living second was one well spent.

That’s more like what running K7 will be all about...  Lots of furious spannering and organising in our boat shed but unless you’re interested and go in search of the action it’ll all be lost in the peaceful tranquillity of wherever we happen to be – just like the Ospreys. But if you’re passionate and patient and events go according to plan you’ll be treated to an astonishing audiovisual event and earn a memory to cherish – then peace will descend once again.

It’s anything but peaceful in our workshop at the moment, however. We’re mending a shedload of transverse bulkheads…

What now? I hear you ask.

For reasons that remain unclear, those Norris boys augmented Bluebird’s structure with a set of bulkheads that span the hull, most of which do very little work but as they were there when we found her we’d best put ’em back.

Here’s one.

This was taken the day we stripped out the main spar, which can be seen at a strange angle on the left but look beneath the end of it and you can see a trashed bulkhead or two.

There’s this one…

OK – it’s a good example of a bad example because it’s about as knackered as the bulkheads get. The reason for its destruction whilst lying so deep within K7’s structure is long and complicated and I’ll write it all down one day but the good news is that the road to recovery was embarked upon long ago and even by the end of 2006 we’d brought it to here.

But this is as far as we took the repairs until recently. Now it’s welded back together and pinned in place. Soon it’ll be painted and ready to go back in the hole once and for all.

A couple of doublers, a fistful of rivets and some Airbus glue and it’ll be good as new but this example wasn’t too difficult to mend because the biggest piece of material is only about six inches across and it’s not rocket science to chase a stretch to the edge and get rid of it.

Not so with the F-15 bulkhead from the back of the cockpit. We discovered it sunk in the mud with only the left hand edge showing above the silt. The manipulator on our ROV wasn’t powerful enough to pull it free but a lucky entanglement eventually brought it to the surface and we watched the depth slowly unwind on the ROV display and the surrounding water become greener and greener as our prize neared the surface. About a dozen hands grasped it the second it came within reach but later on the jetty it was a sorry sight indeed.

The green stripe running across it in the foreground is where the left hand seat former was riveted and the hole halfway up the right hand edge is where you’d put your spanner through to tighten the upper seat belt anchor onto the frame tube. Take a moment to appreciate its condition. This is one of the long standing problems we’ve had to contend with on this project. Those who don’t know simply cannot comprehend how something can lie submerged for three and a half decades and yet still be good for its original job once recovered and straightened.

Think about it… constant temperature, considerably less oxygen than exists in the everyday air we breathe and no UV light. On balance the bottom of a freshwater lake isn’t the worst place to store something.

Nothing daunted, we set about getting it somewhere near for our dry build in order to reconstruct the original cockpit.

And so it was bashed and bullied into the hole so we could check that all was present and correct.

Here it is with one of the partially built seat formers – original, of course – but what you can’t see is that once released from its various clamps and pins it leapt out of there like a scalded cat and that’s no good on the finished job. Yes, it would clamp down with lots of rivets and glue but in so doing the part becomes riddled with residual stresses so it’s just waiting to crack and we can do without that.

To give you an example, I was once lucky enough to visit the assembly hall of the Typhoon Eurofighter and at one end lies a big heap of parts. Depending on how many you buy as a nation determines how many of the bits you get to make. We make the pointy end while the Germans knock the aft fuselage and reheat section together. Italy makes one wing while Spain makes the other so one end of the hangar is piled with parts sent from abroad. But the interesting thing is that there are no holes anywhere by which they may all be joined together. What happens is that a spectacular, hydraulic jig is loaded with a couple of wings and enough bits to make a fuselage and then smoothly slots everything together and holds it there while the fitters drill the necessary holes and bash the rivets in. You see, having to toggle a hole half a millimetre across to insert a rivet is potentially enough to introduce a stress that’ll lie there for years then cause the tail to flip off your plane just as you’re about to down the enemy in a dogfight and we can’t be done with that!

So even though we’re not striving for a constant nine-g-rated boat what we needed was a panel that wanted to be flat and that’s about the hardest shape in the world to tin-bash.

Many hours later we had this…

…which isn’t bad but again you can’t see the gotcha. Its problem now is that the bottom edge rivets to the floor of the boat so its position is crucial but it ended up half an inch adrift once the panel was pushed and pulled back to flatness. No problem, we chopped it in half…

…built an elaborate jig to get the bottom edge spot on…

…then welded it back together again after a few subtle adjustments.

John and Doddy spent ages setting it up.

And now it’s as good as new.

We’ve designed in some additional strength here and there too for a negligible weight penalty so, once again, part of the boat is completely original whilst being as strong if not stronger than ever it was.

Here’s another and this part represents the other type of problem we face. This is F-13-S (at the right of the shot), which although corroded due to its proximity to the steel, auxiliary fuel tank, has lost none of its shape due to crash damage.

And here it is today.

But as you can see, there are a large number of small corrosion holes and, worse still, they’re dotted all over the place making repairing them all virtually impossible without losing a big chunk of the panel. So we took a different approach. There’s more good material than bad so as long as we could pick up on that we reckon we’ll be OK. To that end our mate Mike Bull put down his cartooning pens and bashed some tin into these neat, little doublers complete with joggles to fit around the flange-plates on the frame tubes.

Once again – a liberal helping of rivets and glue and all will be well. Incidentally, this business of dismantling the boat again five hundred years from now if we stick it all together with Chemetall-Alan’s chocolate sauce has caused a certain amount of consternation and I wish I’d not mentioned its adhesive qualities now…  True to form, no one is impressed anymore that we can take a sliver of aluminium that was years old when it was blasted to smithereens and has corroded ever since and make it good as new – instead they’re all crapping themselves that future engineers won’t be able to unstick our glue!

What’s wrong with everyone?

At least that issue has been put to bed by none other than Chemetall’s other son… Trevor called the other day to say he has a pot of Naftosolve for us. It eats sulphur bonds or something so you daren’t get it on your rubber gloves, shoes or car tyres but it’ll sure as hell unglue our panels. Interestingly (if you’re an anorak like me) the stuff was developed for Airbus to get rid of surplus chocolate sauce that was gooing-up thousands of skin pins and costing them a fortune.

So there you have it – another happy ending.

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Part 2 (1^st November 2008)

 

It’s been a busy week or so… some of the family went visiting pals in Ulverston so the rest of us made a trip of it and met up in Coniston for a beer where I took the opportunity to have a look-see. The Conistonians were flooded out last week to the extent that you had to be there in 1954 to remember the lake ever being so high. A foot of water covered the workshop floor at the Coniston Boating Centre and the Bluebird Café became a small island as the lake rose dramatically.

But the new Bluebird Wing at the museum didn’t leak so much as a drop throughout and doesn’t it look fantastic?

Can you see the join? The extension looks like it’s been there since the last Cumbrian glacier was melted by the output from too many Smart Cars because someone has cleverly constructed it from reclaimed slate. Old material persuaded to perform to modern standards – what will they think of next?

The foreground is made of ‘grasscrete’, concrete blocks full of holes through which grass can grow so it looks like a lawn but doesn’t degenerate into a mud bath when you move your two-ton hydroplane around on it in the Coniston rain. The big, blue doors in the centre are to let the boat in and out and there’s a purpose-built driveway onto this turning area from the nearby road. The museum is ticking all the boxes and public interest is phenomenal. I masqueraded as a bored crag-rat for an hour on Sunday morning in the newly extended shop area listening to visitors asking how long it would be before the rebuilt boat came home and was it true that she’ really going to run again?  I couldn’t help comparing our boat to the building itself.

One issue not quite made watertight yet (pun fully intended) is that if we conserve all that cruddy, yesteryear aluminium and ask of it what we’d expect from tin straight off the shelf we can never be properly satisfied with our work until it’s had a thorough test, which in our case ought to be more like a forty-year event than the half-century job that soaked the Bluebird Wing roof yet failed to find a way in.

K7 will need a good set of shakedown tests – tentatively scheduled for the spring of 2010 – before she’s finally signed off as good to go and released into the new building. Such tests must go well beyond simply starting the engine in the car park or floating her peacefully alongside the jetty.

All her systems and structures need to be tested not only statically and in isolation but also under load and in harmony with one another before we can say, with good conscience, that she’s properly rebuilt and ready to be home-ported.

As the planned finale of a massive effort to bring our unique project to a conclusion first dreamt of in late 2001 we hope that with a little luck and support from all the important quarters we’ll be permitted to conduct our proving trials on Coniston Water.

We could, of course, stick with the River Tyne, which has a suitable, unrestricted stretch but I fear some of the romance would be lost. Still – any port in a storm… There are many practical advantaged to running the trials on our doorstep but for once practicality has to wait its turn.

Coniston Water is naturally our ‘gold medal position’ for the proving trials and excitement seems to be building at the prospect considering what I gleaned when asking about town. Just think about it – the whole valley turned into a giant, outdoor museum for a week providing endless opportunities for topping up the coffers of everyone in the village. I can see driveways rented out as executive parking places and all those spare rooms turned into B&B opportunities; and why not?

But there’s always going to be the occasional moaner and already hints of a complaint have emerged that the museum building sports a certain amount of blue paint on the exterior, of all the unholy things to use in the park!

Mr Moaner, may I respectfully offer, at my personal expense, the services of a skilled and experienced dominatrix of your choice with a view to boosting your imagination, sense of adventure and perspective on the likely impact of a pot of blue paint on the bigger picture?

But that’s the full extent of my interference in such matters. The museum doesn’t tell us which hammer to use any more than we tell them where to hang their lights, an arrangement that suits everyone. So thoughts quickly returned to where we’ve got to with the metalwork. 

Our next job once the frame had cooled was to get our boat strapped into the new jig and, needless to say, we treated the frame as though it were made of blown glass having brought it home aboard our Land-Rover anorak’s truck. Alain assumed forklift duty and we soon had everything back at ground level.

Pic © Louise Bainbridge Oct 2008

Then, as the sun set, we blocked the roads without police permission and escorted our favourite lady back to her workshop…

Pic © Louise Bainbridge Oct 2008

…where we all grinned like idiots with no idea of how tricky it would be to get K7 into her rollover jig without scratching the paint.

 

And so began a new set of problems mostly caused by me building the rollover jig wrong. The crossbar that supports the frame was designed to be easily dismountable so we could fit the spar-boxes later but due to some back to front setting up and fully welding its mounting brackets to the hoop without checking first it became almost impossible to remove instead. Oops – ‘dropped a bollock’ there as we say here in Geordieland.

The spar-boxes are simple, rectangular water baffles that fit around the roots of the main spar but they also pick up the side skins so they have to be there when we start putting K7’s clothes back on. Just as Bill and Debbie thought we’d left them in peace I dashed back with an urgent request for two silver-painted spar-boxes that the team spent Wednesday and Thursday preparing. No sooner said than done.

Then another step up the learning curve… we’d not yet tried any of Chemetall-Alan’s clever, Airbus fuel tank adhesive/sealant/dissimilar-metal-rot-stopper so this occasioned an hour of very carefully weighing out resin at the ratio of ten to one. To our consternation the stuff looked for all the world like chocolate sauce and had the ability to spread faster and further than small-person’s poo.

There were questions asked here and there about the ferocious sticking power of the chocolate sauce and what would happen in years to come should we ever need to dismantle parts of the boat. Would this not result in damaged original fabric when using the earlier mentioned hammers and chisels?

Well, please forgive that small piece of poetic license, because although that’s what was actually said when I asked about parting the stuff, the reality is that various chemicals are available that will dissolve it back out again or it can be decomposed with a hot air gun at the sort of temperatures that won’t even hurt the powder coat. We plastered the inside faces of the spar-boxes then stuck em ’on.

 

Then we fired in a fistful of skin-pins and bolts because those spar-boxes are not coming off again. That’s it – they’re on for good. It was an odd though gratifying feeling. We bolted the crossbar in too and that’s there until K7’s centre hull is complete and ready to go onto her transportation cradle – an integral part of her structure when she’s not supported by water.

We fitted the rear pickup next.

Then threw her onto the jig.

Just as mounting our boat to the MK I jig was an ordeal so was loading her onto the second one but it was effort well spent. We ran in the last of the bolts and stood back for a look.

The jig still rolled too…

Now we have to carefully design an erection sequence (some of the team made their own arrangements when they first saw our frame on the jig) for the panels, bulkheads and floor sections. As we’re working with Airbus sealant this time we don’t especially want to build something that has to come apart again so we hung those parts that are ready to go in position and they’ll soon be followed by many more. Once we’re one hundred percent happy with a section of the boat it’ll be assembled once and for all.

Pic © John-Tidy 2008

 

What a feeling – how long have we strived to get to here?

And to celebrate we’re releasing the first in a set of professionally produced DVDs chronicling the work so far.

With fifty minutes of previously unseen footage of our tin-bashing in the early days it’s a fascinating insight into the way we’ve often had to feel our way through the problems and you can now obtain a copy from our online shop.

100% of the proceeds to the rebuild effort, of course.

You can also view a trailer on YouTube courtesy of Mike at ‘Load of Bull Productions’, as he once called himself. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RB0_GKDqcZM&feature=related

And you’ll catch a snippet of a previously unheard track by Marillion too.

Back in 2001 we tried to have the band create the soundtrack for the BBC documentary and though ‘Los Marillios’ were willing the BBC were not so six instrumental tracks quietly went away – until now.

With the band’s continued support we currently have exclusive use of those lost tracks for our DVD’s and promo videos and Mike has cleverly woven a few bars through a batch of underwater footage from the wreck site and some black and white stills shot on the day of the lift by Steve Rothery, Marillion’s founder member and lead guitarist.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2DmVKiXzl_Y

Right – that’s all for now but we’re really bashing along again. It was all hands to the pumps at our last gathering…

…lots of transverse bulkheads needing minor repairs.

More soon.

 

 

 

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10^th October 2008

Part 1

Morris was dead… I stared at his mutilated body in the horrified knowledge that his death was on my account even though I’d nurtured him since the day he was born. Reality rattled askew in its bearings for a moment before some self-righting instinct took over and I left him lying there and went in search of a cup of tea.

 

*

“Will you make a presentation for us on the Bluebird Project in July 2009?”

Not unreasonable, you’d suppose, but the bloke in question first asked me in 2001.

“Assuming I’m still alive, still involved and still interested I’ll see what I can do,” I told him. And so 2001 was disposed of. His 2002 request went the same way as did 03 but by 04 he wanted commitment so I told him I’d make a note as soon as my 2009 diary arrived. This got rid of 04 and 05 but in 06 he lost his patience and started moaning. You see, he was owed a favour and this was it and I wasn’t cooperating so far as he was concerned…

Having explained (yet again) that 2009 diaries couldn’t be bought at any price and that I’d see what could be done nearer the time he went quiet again until early 07 when he re-emerged to wear over the same old ground one more time.

So here we are – finally – when you can buy the appropriate diary and has he called me? Nope. Maybe he’s died, changed sex, been voted off whatever committee he was on or suffered any one of a million other scenarios that could’ve put a stop to his organising. Who knows?

But the point is who would ever try to plan an event and book a speaker best part of a decade ahead of time? Now that’s what I call self-belief.

It’s a rare occurrence that I accept a speaking engagement these days anyway (though I’m asked most days) simply because driving bloody miles to live out of a suitcase wore very thin long before I had a good reason to be home every night. Still, the odd one here and there can be fun.

I made a point of not living by a diary once I turned forty in 07 – I just don’t care anymore. Rachel tells me when I’m due on holiday or at the dentist’s so that’s the important stuff dealt with and anything else just has to take its chances. It drives the bank manager/lawyer/accountant, etc absolutely crackers. The conversation with their secretaries usually goes something like…

“Can we make an appointment to come and see you?”

“Of course.”

“When would be convenient?”

“Whenever you like, just call me half an hour earlier in case I’m not here.”

“How about Tuesday the 11^th at three?”

“Whatever – just don’t forget to call.”

“Are you writing this down?”

“No.”

Having said this I do at least two gigs every year for the National Trust aboard SY Gondola. ‘Special Interest Cruises’ they call them where a guest speaker comes aboard and innocent members of the public pay good money to listen to our ramblings. It helps keep Gondola going and I’d do it every week if they asked me. But the deal is twice a year and they ring a week beforehand to check whether I’m still up for it and work up a backup plan if I’m not. (I’ve missed three cruises in six years – working for Greenpeace, blown out by weather and Rachel birthing). I then blast over to my favourite Cumbrian village at tea time and do the talk for the price of a bottle of cheap plonk from Coniston Co-op that the crew present to me every time and I share with Rachel in front of the telly when I get home. It’s a delightful arrangement.

But I’m often asked to make presentations several cities away and agree occasionally but on explaining the rules more often than not I’m told that this is not how things work and unless I’m willing to sign in blood the gig can’t proceed and what basis is this on which to organise anything?

Seems to work for the National Trust…

Just as I was beginning to worry about how enslaved people seem to have become to their diaries a businessman pal of mine told how he’d blown out a million-dollar meeting with a team straight off the Tokyo flight because his kid was rushed to hospital with suspected appendicitis. That’s more like it.

And so as I stared grief-stricken at Morris’ murdered remains I thought, for goodness sake, if this is the worst thing that’s happened to you all day then stop moaning!

 

*

Morris’s story began one Sunday lunchtime as I tried to persuade my sister-in-law, Katie that what she needed for her kids was a chicken in the garden. They love our ‘chickies’ so one of their own seemed a great idea but their mum was dubious.

“Tell you what…” she said, “if you can hatch an egg from the supermarket I’ll have a chicken.”

No sooner said than done, so off I went to the local Morrisons and bought a half dozen of their super-duper, free range, organic, happy-hen eggs and slapped them into the incubator. Morris was born precisely twenty-one days later to everyone’s astonishment.

From that moment he became my only son. Fresh food and water four times a day and what a thrill when his first feathers came in... He grew into a fine young cockerel and once fully fledged he took up proud residency in his very own hen-house with a mesh enclosed veranda into which the local fox soon found its way and chopped him into bite-size pieces.

I was devastated – the entire family cried – why didn’t I fit heavier mesh knowing there were foxes about? And as I mourned what amounted to an advanced egg from the local supermarket I suddenly thought, what in the name of all that’s sensible are you fretting over?

OK – Morris’ passing was a minor disaster but in the grand scheme of things it’s no worse than your guest speaker catching a dose of the craps from a dodgy kebab and having to cancel an hour before your mates from the Rotary Club are pleased to be upstanding for the Queen.

 

*

Tonight one of the guys showed me a piece of Bluebird we repaired two years ago and asked why we’d not closed a small corrosion hole in it. As it happened the hole was so small we’d probably leave it alone even today but the real reason it remains is that we repaired that panel whilst still under the influence...

Back in the bad old days we were welcomed by the whole bureaucratic / museological system like a kid enjoys olives on his pizza; and, while we eventually turned our backs on the table with a bitter taste, they left a smell that lingered long after our project struck out on its own. We’d been portrayed as incompetent mavericks with no idea of what we were doing and most likely our departure was watched with a smugness shared by those who saw off the early explorers believing they were about to sail off the edge of the world.

But our plan was a winner from the start and we knew it; however, like the pioneers of rock-n-roll we had something subversive and dangerous so far as the establishment was concerned and their influence, though it has waned steadily, continued to linger until relatively recently.

At last, after so many years of damned hard work, we’re about to emerge from the club scene to play an open air festival with two fingers raised to the doubters. Corrosion holes – we’ll decide what’s to be treated and what’s not, thank you very much.

Let the build begin…

Did someone mention a dead chicken?

*

We’ve been painting K7’s frame – everyone knows this much – but it’s all too easy to see this as a simple process. Painting an eight-metre conglomeration of steel tubes half a century old that only spent twenty of those years even half dry – and that’s without all the oils and other nasties leeched into her fabric over time – is akin to having your ninety-year-old granny put under general anaesthetic for a new hip. There’s just so much that can go wrong.

But we went into this stage of the project with the unflinching support of our local paint-hospital, their surgeons, doctors and nursing staff and the paint suppliers too so we had to be in with a shout of getting the job right first time.

Modern surface treatments are designed to perform according to a set of known quantities where the substrate and processes are tightly controlled but in this case just about everything was a gamble.

We knew there’d been oil ingress into some of the frame tubes but had no idea of its extent or what it would do at the sort of temperatures we were expecting to reach. It only occurs in the lower tubes so it’s most likely lube-oil from the Beryl engine – now what in hell was that on a good day? So would it burn off through the rivet holes and discolour the paint or simply flash off without a fuss? This, in turn, affected our oven… if we needed an extra few hours at high temperatures to get rid of the contaminants would it cope? The Promat-supplied lining was never in doubt but our ability to adequately design its application was up for debate. We’d never built an oven before.

And even if our construction was perfect in every detail it was still an add-on and therefore bound to affect the original oven’s performance. What if we’d missed something relating to the system as a whole?

But that was all academic without the necessary coatings. K7’s frame was originally zinc-sprayed – basically a blast of molten zinc that enrobed the bare steel – then a topcoat of cellulose paint and this is what we wanted to replicate albeit using up to date materials and processes.

Initially we planned to clean the frame with abrasive blast media then apply a chromate, etch-primer but this was only to fix the bare surface because blasting the frame would take best part of a day and such completely bare metal left overnight would be red with rust by morning. Trying to blast then apply a zinc powder would have meant a twenty-four hour shift and that wasn’t an option either because we can do all-nighters but something invariably goes wrong as we descend into knackeredness.

Consider also that the oven is Bettablast’s livelihood. Take it out of service and they’re staring at total loss like maintenance time is to a commercial airliner.

The zinc powder coat is the modern equivalent of melting zinc wire in a hot flame and blowing it all over the bare steel as was done to K7’s frame back in fifty-whenever. It’s basically powdered, metallic zinc mixed with an equally powdered resin and applied using an electrostatic charge that makes it stick to anything and everything in its vicinity. (Including our camcorder, much to John’s horror, as it slowly turned from black to silver).

So with time a precious commodity and an option available that wouldn’t compromise quality we dropped the zinc powder idea in favour of its wet-paint equivalent. Wet paint is what we all know and understand. It’s not powder at all, it’s liquid and you spray it. You can still mix a ton of powdered zinc in there and fire it from a gun so in our case we could apply that in place of the proposed, chromate etch-primer. Exactly the same result and half a day saved. By the way, this whole zinc thing… here’s a suitable page from Wiki for the metal anoraks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrificial_anode.

Where many people go wrong with surface coating is in not realising that Paint / powder is wonderful stuff but you use it to cover and decorate the job after applying a suitable corrosion protection system.

Bettablast, of course, know this only too well and we’re incredibly fortunate to have them looking after us on this journey.

We loaded our beloved frame onto a truck borrowed from a mate down the road – he mends Land-Rovers on weekends and they’re made of steel and aluminium, need I say more – and hauled it over to Bill’s place. For those who don’t know this already, the bloke who runs Bettablast is also called Bill Smith – how confusing is that?

Pic © Paul the carpet cleaning bloke in unit seven.

Job-one was to shift all that Ardrox. A year ago we treated the newly blasted metal with Ardrox AV8 as supplied by Chemetall-Trevor. It’s an inhibiting compound that prevents surface corrosion and a year later it came off again having performed impeccably. But even shifting that was a trial. Bill’s blasting room isn’t quite long enough to take K7’s complete frame so acres of tarpaulin had to be hung to keep the grit out of everyone’s coffee, eyes, clothes…

That done, the frame was moved quickly into a spray booth where, Wayne skilfully sprayed a double dose of Interzinc 72 over the exposed surface.

And this proved a revelation. We’ve all had a go with a tin of spray-paint and seen blokes painting cars but watching a man applying a perfectly even coat of zinc primer to what must be one of the world’s best collections of nooks and crannies with a spray gun without leaving runs or missing any was to witness astonishing dexterity. Imagine a man in protective clothing break-dancing whilst wielding a spray gun like Clint Eastwood used his six-shooter in A Few Dollars More.

Painting at that level is like the difference between bimbling down the shops in your Renault Clio against strapping into a F1 car and that’s without the matter of how complicated paint becomes. We’re not talking a bargain pot of trade emulsion here.

Earlier in the week we’d spoken with the local guy from International Paints, a locally based, global supplier of surface treatments. http://www.internationalpaint.com

Garry Bell was soon on the case and like so many of our supporters he soon arranged a small (to a company the size of International Paints) though vital contribution to our effort. The Interzinc went on beautifully.

We also shot a mile of footage – spot the amateur cameraman in the left foreground – because we’re very close to releasing the first of a set of DVDs chronicling the rebuild from its very beginning. Thus far it’s all been shot by Keith the cameraman but he’s been coaching us to be artistes and luvvies so hopefully you’ll not spot the difference when our footage begins to be worked in around disc number five or thereabouts…

And so K7 got to spend the night in fresh, grey pyjamas.

But that was only the beginning and she was up early next morning just like the rest of us to be wheeled into Bettablast’s oven so we could erect our Promat-enhanced extension around her. Once in there, with the extension in place, the frame wouldn’t come out again due to space limitations.

We worked our whatnots off to get everything built…

…and were quietly pleased at how well it all docked with the mother-ship.

Our bit looked great and fitted perfectly but it was a fragile spacecraft designed as a single-use, throwaway item with one shot at transporting our frame through the powder coating process. The shape of the factory floor didn’t help either and we ended up with almost an inch gap under one corner that had to be closed with improvised baffles made of spare Promat board. Its next big trial was being heated to the target temperature of 200 degrees Celsius and held there until the frame came up to join it. We really didn’t know whether it would work and there was only one way to find out.

Bill fired the burners and we watched nervously. Creaking and cracking shook the oven and wisps of steam from the last of Coniston Water boiling out of the frame tubes emerged through cracks in our secondary insulation. And yet the inside temperature crept steadily upwards as we ran around feeling for leaks and methodically taping over any we found.

Everything seemed to stall at about 160 but it soon set off again into the upper reaches until…

…target temperature 180 degrees, 182 indicated and the oven appeared to be holding – for now.

But Bill wanted the frame to reach full heat to burn the gremlins out and his frequent trips into the superheated cavern with a laser pyrometer amazed our lot. How on earth he could repeatedly walk deep into an environment that would easily cook a pizza and return alive was a source of wonder to us. John tried and got about a foot inside before being beaten back. The heat belching out of its darkened maw was enough for me.

For the sake of a good final result we had to go through this process but burning out the gremlins took several hours and by then the oven was beginning to suffer. Make no mistake, the Promat board remained completely unaffected but due to the limitations of our design heat was finding ways to strike through small gaps and attack the secondary insulation.

We could smell the outer foam getting hot while the creaking and groaning moved things and opened new escape routes for our precious heat. We inspected everything and found to our great concern that the roof was beginning to buckle.

And then, mercifully, Bill declared himself satisfied with the gremlin-burning and threw the doors wide. While Alain, John and I fled the scorching tsunami, Bill and Wayne strolled casually into hell and wheeled our frame into the open. The air shimmered above it and the grey primer looked very dry indeed as the oven ticked angrily in contraction and smelled of burning insulation – but the worst still lay ahead.

No time to rest, the powder had to go on next and Bill took over where Wayne had left off. Applying powder is altogether different to spraying paint. It doesn’t spray so much as waft from the end of the gun and due to its electrostatic charge it has the most peculiar tendency to roll past the job then double back and stick as intended. Applying it is still an art though. Too much and it’ll sag and run and the consequences of missing any or putting it on too thin are obvious.

Bill got stuck in but it was a long job. Up and down the frame he worked steadily; painting first the underside then the inside walls of one side then the other. Next he tackled the outsides and tops of the frame tubes and went over every millimetre again and again for good measure. We were well into the evening by now but it meant nothing. The job would be right and Debbie – another motive force behind the Bettablast team – alternately tended Bill’s umbilical hoses and kept the kettle boiling as everyone mucked in doing whatever they could to be useful.

Eventually the frame was powdered end to end and a final inspection was carried out by torchlight.

The powder application was eventually signed off as the last stragglers on the trading estate locked up around us and went home for the evening. We wheeled the frame back into the oven and shut the doors for the grand finale. Bill hit the switch and the roar of the roar of the burners was soon joined by the groaning of our oven as the heat found its weak spots once again and exploited them mercilessly. We’d spotted its shortcomings after the first round but due to the risk of dropping inclusions into the freshly applied powder we’d not dared go in to make repairs or modifications. It would have to hang in there.

We paced the floor making whatever makeshift repairs we could for an hour as the red digits transfixed us with their climb towards the target temperature. Much of the tape we’d applied on the oven’s first run was lifting by now. Then – bad news – Bill made another of his ventures inside and returned to say that the back of the frame was hot enough but the front was hanging ten degrees low. The curing time for the powder was recalculated and extended by another hour we couldn’t afford.

What to do? We could ratchet the burners up to persuade things along but we were on limits already so best if we could tolerate an extra hour without the increased temperature. But the decision was taken to go for broke and Bill cranked up the gas while we stuffed rags under the doors and taped over every conceivable source of heat loss.

The Bluebird Project contingent worried and fretted but Bill only sipped his tea and looked at the clock about once every twenty of those special, long minutes normally only encountered towards the end of a long-haul flight. Meanwhile, I casually strolled up the step ladders several times to alleviate my boredom by confirming that our oven roof was OK – yeah, right.

Debbie had to bale out sometime around ten pm let her poor dog out before he had an accident and Alain couldn’t hang about any longer either. Wayne had left earlier so that left only John, Bill and I to stare at that accursed clock.

“I know this is a stupid question,” John said after yet another check on the oven’s integrity, “but is this the same two hundred degrees I use to cook a pizza?

Such was our disbelief that Bill could casually walk in there with his pyrometer and return minutes later still with skin on his face.

It was the same two hundred degrees.

“How do you know when it’s cooked?” we asked him next.

How it works is that you stick a coating of powder to your substrate – K7’s frame in this case – then cook it until the powder melts, flows then flashes off the resins that allowed it to go liquid in the first place. The skilled operator can therefore touch the cured powder with a knife blade and know exactly when the job is complete. All sorts of clever technology exists to do this digitally but there’s nothing like a craftsman.

The race between powder curing and significant oven failure was a close run thing but we won the day albeit somewhat nearer to midnight that we’d envisaged and the doors were finally opened to reveal a minor miracle. We’d done it.

Never again will I view painting as a simple process. It’s as complicated and scientific as anything you’re likely to encounter and what certainly came out of the evening is that we’re definitely in the right hands.

We returned next morning to tear down our oven. It was heart-breaking after all the work we’d put into it and having willed it to hang on the night before but we had to get Bettablast’s factory back into action so we cut it to pieces and threw it in the skip. Poor thing. We did, however, save enough of the precious Promat board to help out the local pizza shop so hopefully, by becoming an organ donor, parts of our creation will live on – and we’ll get some free pizza…

A final bit of scrounging and we had a team shot taken by the local Associated Press photographer who popped in to record the moment.

Pic © Owen Whassisname from the PA Oct 2008

 

Left to right – fat Geordie diver, Debbie, Bettablast-Bill and Wayne.

It is important to understand, however, that any shortcomings of our oven were entirely due to the compromises in its design and not related in any way to Promat’s products, which came through the ordeal without even breaking sweat. We’d had to design something simple to transport and quick to both assemble and disassemble to minimise our impact on Bettablast’s day to day business. Also, we’d no experience of building such things and had no means to test it first so an excellent result, all things considered.

And what can we say to Bill, Debbie and Wayne – the Bettablast crew? I could write another couple of thousand words on the far-reaching effect of their contribution but I’ll not. Instead I’ll speak on behalf of an awful lot of grateful people – thanks!

 

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16^th August 2008

 

Saturday morning dawned once again. Rachel plopped a pot of coffee onto the bedside table while I clutched the pillow to my head and vaguely heard Lucy tell her mammy that daddy wouldn’t wake up again.

I’d normally correct this within a minute or two but fate had conspired to shut the BBP down for a day. How dare the guys take holidays with their families and children with so much aluminium still un-fettled? So instead I lay there listening to the sounds of the house enjoying the luxury of not having to get up.

Rachel bustled through the bedroom door presently, shot off a couple of questions to check I was in there then called, “I’m going downstairs to watch the cockless fairies.”

At least that’s what it sounded like through the pillow.

Cockless fairies, thought I…

Concluding that she must’ve discovered some niche-porn, streaming-video site to tickle her fancy and wondering whether they might have something for the aluminium fetishist I chucked the duvet, brushed my teeth and arrived half asleep in the living room to see what was what.

Sadly I wasn’t to be mortified and fascinated all at once by what some people do for pleasure. Instead I found Rachel watching four blokes in a rowing boat hurtling along as though trying to outrun a tsunami.

“What’s this then?” I asked, yawning.

“The coxless fours,” she said without taking her eyes from the screen.

Ahhh…

“What’re they doing?”

I just don’t do sport unless it has wings, wheels or engines. Rachel, on the other hand, loves to watch people running and jumping so she’s been glued to the Olympics and feels I’ve missed the point somewhere because all it means to me is that material prices shot up when the Chinese worked most of the world’s spare metal into their stadium.

“They’re racing,” she explained exasperatedly, “and the Aussies are beating us.”

Now I don’t mind being beaten by the Aussies – they’re a good bunch – but again, Rachel felt this wasn’t quite the way to view the situation. Then, as I watched the combatants powering towards the finishing line, the Brit lads suddenly set their jaws and seemed to vow death or victory as the commentator grew increasingly excited and willed ‘Great Britain’ to win.

I paused to wonder when I’d last heard this. Wherever did ‘Great Britain’ go? Somewhere along the line the political-correctness freaks downgraded our pair of letters from GB to UK. It’s like when seventy degrees was a hot, summer’s day, eighty was killing heat and you sometimes saw a hundred on your holidays if you were rich enough to go ‘abroad’. Now folk tell me it’s going to be thirty-degrees tomorrow and I think, is that hot or cold?

But back to rowing boats… The Aussies were busting themselves but somehow they had no answer for our boys who found a reserve of something special and pulled as though collecting their children from Gary Glitter’s welcome-home party. No doubt the Aussie lads had trained as hard as us and they probably had the same things for breakfast. I’d reckon they wanted to win just as badly too but with clenched teeth and bulging veins and sweat pouring down their faces the four lads in our boat just ground the Aussies lead to nothing and grasped their prize in the last couple of hundred yards. The commentator cheered Great Britain as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Later that evening I tried ingratiating myself with a barmaid whose forearms were barely visible beneath rolls of those, ‘I support this or that’, rubber bands in myriad colours. She set out to discuss the abolition of world poverty but recoiled from this Anti-Christ when her suggestion that the G8 nations handing out a squillion dollars and all the oil you can drink would make the world a happier place was matched by my theory that if you gave everyone who’s a bit skint a council house and a new Mondeo on Monday half of them would’ve sold the lot by Friday and drank the proceeds.

“Cynic!” she accused.

“Definitely… I think it came in a selection box with my grey hair and flabby tum.”

“Racist…”

“Of course,” I agreed.

Her mouth fell open revealing a ball of chewing gum the size of a bull’s testicle and a five-eighths Whitworth bolt through her tongue. I thought I’d best qualify my answer before she rang Bob Geldof.

“The Germans manufacture machines better then anyone else in the world,” I said knowingly. “The Italians produce brilliant designs that often don’t function for very long and the British, when they put their minds to it, can jolly-well overcome all obstacles.

“Donald Campbell said that, you know.”

“Who?”

Her jaw clamped down on the ball of gum – I think it was symbolic, but mine wasn’t the variety of racism she’d been brainwashed to recognise.

“Donald Campbell…” I repeated whilst waiting for a hint of recognition but blankness came effortlessly to this girl.

“Seven times holder of the world water speed record and one time holder of the… oh never mind.” I collected my pint and sat down in the far corner. I imagine she’d be more thrilled with free minutes for her mobile than anything Great Britain might achieve.

Yet I live in everlasting hope of firing the imagination of youngsters so I was excited to see the process beginning at a recent meeting with some of the people who will eventually shape the museum display and bedazzle its visitors.

For the first time since I stood in the Bluebird Café having just returned from a dive only to witness the disappointment on a little kid’s face when his dad told him he couldn’t see Bluebird because it sank I could finally see a way to put it right.

So I hosted last week’s meeting bubbling over with fascinating stories from the past twelve years (don’t forget that we started looking for K7 in 1996) and was initially asked for some info on Donald.

Now there are many people with a far more in-depth knowledge of the Campbell’s history than me and I made this known thus skipping several items on the agenda though I did provide the name of someone who knows the job inside out. Next on their list was an idea to really get the kids buzzing.

Despite being married to a teacher I still don’t do fluent teacher-speak and keystage, foundation, SATs for level-two remains gobbledygook to me but one thing I remember vividly is the thrill of being a small boy . “Too much time to grow up and grow old,” said Donald once upon a time. “It’s a sad day when the man loses the enthusiasm of a schoolboy…’

So the proposal to stun the youngsters with awe and amazement was something I was really looking forward to. It turned out to be a real corker…

 

“We thought about a piece on health and safety issues comparing then and now… For example, they may have used flammable foam in the seat in the sixties but presumably you’d not use such a thing nowadays?”

 

I swear on Lucy’s ducklings I’m not making this up. Please believe me.

 

Health and flipping safety, of all things!

Donald was a health and safety free zone, for God’s sake! He drank, smoked and…

 

[Rachel made me delete this bit so all you need to know is that sex with a stranger has since been proven to be a potentially life-threatening situation.]

 

Oh, and he drove a jet-powered, tin-boat at stupid speeds until it killed him. I’ve done dozens of presentations, lectures and interviews on Donald and Bluebird K7 but not once has anyone ever asked whether his seat was likely to spontaneously combust. Easy to wipe down, perhaps, but who gives a flying fling at a rolling pastry what it was made of?

Ellie and Mike have a made an historically perfect and beautiful reproduction for the rebuilt cockpit but will it catch fire? How the hell do I know and I care even less. Anyone daft enough to sit on it while it toasts their gonads deserves all they get!

Rant over…

I took a deep breath before replying.

“Now I usually get myself into trouble,” I said slowly, “and I seldom care. And now I feel I’m about to do it again.”

Had my interviewer been from the Hapless Lottery Failure I’d have… no, they’re not allowed in the building. In fact I did ban one once on the basis that she was an archaeologist and therefore oblivious to what was required. I did relent eventually and proved myself right, but I digress.

“If you want to excite kids,” I suggested in a controlled sort of way, “what about pathology, crash investigation, diving, marine salvage? Do you know how much G-force it takes to break a man’s back?”

They didn’t.

In the course of our search and discovery of K7 we became involved with the RAF school of medicine and the AAIB at Farnborough to name only a couple of interesting establishments. Health and bloody safety… get a life.

Anyway – bless ’em – my interviewers seemed to take this aboard and by the end of the afternoon we’d laid the groundwork for a dozen interesting concepts. Just goes to show what kind of a disaster we may have ended with had the musos and HL-effers been given free rein.

As things stand it’s looking like the museum display will be full of offerings from those who were actually involved. Artists, engineers, crash investigators and don’t forget the two electricians, an IT engineer, a warranty clerk and the amateur tin-bashers who’ve been slaving away in the workshop to bring you this.

The frame is up on her moving dollies. I had a quick conference with Bill at Bettablast before we built anything. He asked me whether we had wheels for moving the frame about. “Yes,” I told him, thinking the ones we’ve been using all this time were perfectly adequate. “And what will happen to them in the oven?” he asked… fair question, seeing as ours are made of plastic, so we greeded some of his cast iron ones instead. Good job he asked that one or we’d have had our boat standing on her axles in four bubbling puddles of polyurethane.

The next problem is that to make our frame corrosion-proof it must undergo a process whereby a coating of zinc powder is applied then stoved at 180 degrees C for twenty minutes to properly cook it. Then a second coating of polyester powder is applied electrostatically (the powder is given an electrical charge that makes it want to stick to the frame in the same way as dust likes to stick to a TV screen) then this is cooked too. But there’s another problem – the frame was filled with oil in places and we’ve since splattered Ardrox all over it, some of which will have inevitably made its way inside through the multitudinous rivet holes. We need to cook the whole frame first to burn off any nasties that may contaminate or discolour the paint and we’ve no idea how long that might take.

Not so straightforward, is it… and to make matters worse Bettablast’s oven measures only 5.5 metres and our frame is nearer 8m long so we’ve been building an extension. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought of writing such an absurd idea into our application to the Hapless Lottery Failures back in the bad old days. They, of course, would want to spend thousands having the frame hauled around the country to an architectural powder coaters only to have themselves shafted by an outfit who would see the word ‘lottery’ and apply greedy-rates to their invoice. Naturally the lottery failures would then immediately declare this ‘not value for money’ and the whole plan would collapse in a bureaucratic heap.

But imagine the outpouring of stupidity we’d have got from them had we said, ‘give us a hundred quid and we’ll build something to do the job – that would’ve thoroughly baffled their ‘experts’. Yet that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Thank you, by the way, to the last two people to purchase one of Keith Hick’s fantastic paintings from our web shop… you just paid for our powder coating oven.

First things first. We popped across the street to see our mates at Percy Hudson’s Sawmill and went on the scrounge, as we do. We’re forever greeding bits of MDF and plywood from them and we nick the bits of timber they leave lying in the street overnight too. They occasionally bring a piece of broken woodworking machinery for us to weld back together but it’s mostly one way traffic so it was nothing new when we went begging for the few unused lengths of industrial racking through which weeds were growing at the bottom of their yard.

Good as gold are Hudson’s boys…

This lot will likely cost us several cases of lager for their Christmas bash so someone else get in that shop and buy another painting, please.

In double-quick time we’d set about it in true Scrapheap Challenge / Junkyard Wars style and chopped it into pieces.

‘Bluebird Project, you have eight hours remaining – eight hours.’

Next, we welded it all back together again in an exact size and configuration that’ll assemble into the mouth of the existing oven. Still looking a bit rough at this point but you see where we’re going with the concept.

But the interesting part was specifying a suitable material to keep the heat in while the powder cooks. Insulating materials abound but go looking for a board that’ll happily take 200 degrees C for twenty minutes and the options close-in rapidly. Fire-board will do it but it’s frightfully expensive. Normal loft insulation can handle the heat but by the time you’ve built something to support it and fitted an inner skin to prevent particles flying about and sticking to your wet paint the cost has skyrocketed again.

We finally settled on a foam board, which coped very well in the oven except that its foil backing began to blister after a while. Concerned that fragments might get loose we simply stapled cooking foil over the top and it performed beautifully from then on. Job sorted – a pack of said foam was purchased at reasonable cost from the local stockist and ‘Rob the Saw’, as we named him for the occasion, was charged with cutting to our carefully marked out dimensions while Mike steadied the job.

When only balanced in position you can see that our lash-up is going to get the job done.

This stuff is 1.6 times more efficient than your normal glass-wool insulation so we effectively have the equivalent of about 80mm here and we have to build a pair of doors to close one end. It’s a bit laborious but all in a good cause because we know that the surface coating on the old girl is going to be absolutely the last word in attention to detail and corrosion protection.

Our new rollover jig is nearing completion too at Ivanhoe Forge – I’m off to inspect that part of the job on Monday. The time is fast approaching when K7 will start going back together for real…

 

---

 

6th August

 

I knew she was a nutter the second I saw her dog.

I also thought I’d escaped the woman by being slightly ahead of her on the ramp from the beach but in that moment my sheepdogs mugged an unsuspecting spaniel, nicked its tennis ball and streaked off into the distance; lithe, muscle-bound little blighters that they are.

But whereas mine are a credit to their wolf ancestry her terrier-type seemed to be descended from a small sofa. And – horror of horrors – it was wearing a coat. OK, the sun wasn’t properly up but it’s still summertime.

People who put coats on dogs should be banned from ever keeping dogs.

I must qualify this, however, because I was once delivered to Anglesey in a Greenpeace helicopter where the woman, whose garden we landed in, had a terrier as bald as a snooker ball because it’d had steroid injections so it needed a coat. But otherwise… dogs have fur.

Nor was I in the mood for such silliness because I was running late and morning coffee was the one vital item culled from my itinerary.

I struck the fear of God into my mischievous hounds with a yell that, if you’re a thieving collie, translates into, ‘put that ’kin ball down before I thrash you to within an inch of your miserable life you b’stard!’ and tried to continue my escape but the grey-haired biddy was onto me. So that I’d not make a successful getaway she adopted that quickened-pace, finger-wagging, steady eye-contact thing that only women can do properly and closed inexorably as the Titanic’s iceberg.

“I saw you on the telly,” she called across the divide to properly set the hook. Her dog waddled after her as though encased in a pink quilted iron-lung.

I surrendered – it would’ve been dangerous to ignore a woman with zips up the front of her slippers for much longer – I was caught.

My dogs raced back and wrapped themselves around my legs with those tongue-lolling grins they use to ensure they never get thrashed for anything and stood by for further mischief.

“Saw you on the telly,” Mrs Dog-Coat puffed this time as the grade took its toll.

I turned to greet her but the smile on my face felt false as I watched her dog waddling towards a bed in the doggy coronary-care unit. The poor creature eventually crested the shallow rise despite being morbidly obese and flopped onto the cooling concrete at its mistress’ feet.

“I saw you on the telly… and I think what you’re doing with that Campbell’s boat is a terrible thing.”

Now this caught me off guard.

Remember the scene in Bridget Jones’ Diary where the bloke who’s sung the one-hit-wonder is accosted by someone in a restaurant and thinks he’s been recognised only to have it pointed out that he’s actually trapped the lady’s coat with his chair? It was one of those moments.

I’d been cocky enough to think she was chuffed at meeting me so next time I smiled it was for real and at my expense.

“Why’s that then?” I asked her, suitably disarmed.

I’ve heard every argument – some are valid, voiced passionately and worthy of respect while others are just plain stupid – either way, my answers are usually loaded into in the breech faster than one of those American missile cruisers can come alive. But this one got me.

“Well, it’s not very green, is it?” She said.

I’d not heard this before so I had no ready-use ammunition.

“It’s not, you’re right enough,” I offered lamely, “it’s completely blue, as a matter of fact.”

It was Mrs Dog-Coat’s turn to have her gyros toppled… she eyed me in a slanted sort of way.

“No,” she said after a beat. “That’s not what I meant at all. What I mean is that it’s… well, it’s noisy and you’ll… you’ll scare the ducks if you start the engines.”

That one drives me nuts! K7 has exactly one engine and anyone who suggests otherwise is evidently clueless on the topic.

“Noisy, like low-flying RAF traffic sort of noisy?” I asked innocently.

She’d obviously not thought of this and it showed.

“And as for scaring ducks,” I continued quick-as, because having a brood of recently hatched ducklings at home meant I held the high ground, “I terrify mine every morning when I rattle the door to their house to feed them but they soon get over it. The local blackbirds panic too whenever a sparrowhawk cruises over but a good fright does none of them any harm.”

I’d long since concluded that Mrs Dog-Coat was the type to save the world by carefully washing milk cartons and placing them in a council-supplied Noah’s ark for reusable materials but I thought I’d find out whether her efforts went any further.

“Do you keep ducks too?” I inquired.

Evidently she didn’t.

“Chickens?”

But really I knew I’d found two bird species she didn’t have back home.

“Ultimate recycling machines,” I pointed out. “Feed ’em just about anything and they pay you back with fresh eggs (whilst taking up less space than your fat dog – I thought but didn’t say) and if you chuck some chicken poo on the vegetable patch you’ll soon be re-enacting the story of the giant turnip… any uneaten turnip you can feed to the chickens.”

But she wasn’t impressed with agricultural notions not mandated by her local authority so I made a move towards my environmentally-unfriendly 4x4 to chuck the dogs in before they got bored and ate her pooch – or what they could of it anyway.

“You’ll pollute the lake,” she called after me.

“Excuse me…” I turned and fixed her with a level stare. “We’ve already removed two and a half tons of potentially toxic metals and one dead person from Coniston Water. What do you suppose we might put back?”

As usual… as ever… and typical of your average do-gooder, she’d not taken a moment to look beyond her recycling bin to consider the bigger picture.

“You deliberately want to make greenhouse gases,” she spluttered finally. “It’s people like you who are destroying the planet with all this global warming.”

Now she was really knackered. That’s like picking on a bloke cutting grass beside the M25 because his lawnmower is a tad smoky. I gleefully pointed out that Coniston Water was carved from solid rock by a glacier that seems to have melted approximately twelve-thousand years ago for reasons that can’t have had anything to do with 1960s jet engines.

She opened her mouth to spew more nonsense but in my caffeine-deprived condition I was on a short fuse.

“Why’s your dog wrapped in an eiderdown?” I shot back instead.

That silenced her momentarily.

“I beg your pardon she said at last…” Glancing confusedly between one of evolution’s finest designs melting in its man-made-fibre cocoon and a bloke she’d set out to vilify a minute earlier.

“That pink, quilted number,” I wagged a finger in imitation of her. “It’s August,

 fair enough, and not the hottest day since records began, but it’s still the middle of summer so why is your pet encapsulated in one of those things they use to heat the tyres of Lewis Hamilton’s F1 car?”

Mrs Dog-Coat was aghast.

“She’ll get cold. Won’t you Chloe…” Her dog panted and twitched its tail beneath a layer of lagging.

So that’s what it was called…

The woman knelt to comfort the animal in case the very mention might cause chill draughts to waft beneath its quilt.

Your dog won’t get cold, you idiot – I wanted to scream, but didn’t quite.

“Have you considered,” I said instead. “One, that Chloe has fur – thanks to a few million years of evolution during which her great-granddaddy dined on Siberian hares and never met a human. And, secondly, that you’ve overfed the poor thing to the point where she’s obviously uncomfortable, unfit and in imminent danger of dropping dead.”

This appeared to hit the spot because Mrs Dog-Coat gushed concern and started taking the pooch’s pulse – so far as I could tell anyway.

I really didn’t want to upset someone’s grandma but she’d started it and by now I was so incensed that I lobbed a final round her way before buggering off.

“And I don’t mean to be rude,” I said sweetly, “but please don’t sermonise me with your lofty, do-good waffle until you can understand a dog well enough to give it a happy life.”

And with that, my bad day began as I reminded myself sadly that we’ll have to deal with literally thousands of ignorant, Mrs Dog-Coats in our efforts to run a boat that’s gone from hero to zero along with its pilot within my short lifetime. It was a blessed relief later, therefore, to get back into the workshop with the boys, back to our old routine and safe once again in the bosom of a team that say b*ll*cks to the lot of them…

 

*

A week earlier we had a complete boat. She looked fantastic and everyone was clapping us on the back for such a fantastic job.

Rob’s local rag even gave him a whole page with the headline, ‘Bluebird’s Back Thanks to Rob,’ which earned him some quality ribbing from the team. But the party is over and now our boat is back to bare bones. We hung the flutes from the ceiling because we’ve run out of space. There have always been at least some of the panels attached at any one time since last September but with literally everything stripped off and more panels than we started with we’re becoming somewhat cluttered.

 

We’d always estimated a few weeks to get the frame ready for the paint shop but once we got into it things fairly flew along. It’s only possible to stay on the same job for so long before morale begins to suffer. The nose was a good example – the air intakes another. The trouble is that when we go all specialised not everyone can get involved. I mean, it’s two people max on the English wheel and if that’s all that’s happening the rest of the team is at a loose end.

But give us a pile of fettling to do on the frame and we’re tight as the Royal Philharmonic.

One thing we decided on long ago was that the pilot’s harness would be properly fixed this time and fate dealt us a good hand where this is concerned. You see, all they did for the upper fixings in 50-whenever was to drill the transverse, upper frame tube at F-15 from the top downwards and stuff a bolt through. That was acceptable – just, at the time – and one of the fixings even survived the crash but only because the other three failed.

But, ominously, the lower ones weren’t actually attached to anything of any substance and, at the risk of causing much controversy, it has to be said that whoever arranged the lower harness fixings would, in this day and age were a similar accident to occur, be facing accusations of gross negligence, possibly even manslaughter. And I don’t say this lightly.

So we took advantage of the fact that both horizontal, F-15 crossmembers are non-original replacements and made a few mod’s in the interests of pilot safety.

We drilled the upper tube in the right places, drilled new fixings in the bottom one too where no holes existed before then sleeved each fastening properly to take some high-tensile bolts when the time comes to strap someone into Mike’s replacement hot seat.

John did the metal cutting after we’d brought the whole welding armoury to the party.

Then we drilled the frame tubes and fired the sleeves in.

Below you can see the work on the F-15 crossmembers where I’m busy welding the portside (left), lower hard-point for the harness. The starboard one is clearly visible above my head. The frame is portside-down and you’re looking aft so the upper crossmember is to the right of the pic where one of the upper mounts can also be seen.

Next we sleeved the holes in a section of vertical frame tube that PDS had to replace ahead of the main spar; same routine.

This is where the main spar bolts into the frame and as usual it’s been over-engineered by those Norris boys. What a privilege it is rebuilding history to their designs.

Next we did a spot of conserveering on the flange plates. These small squares of steel welded into the main frame are where the marriage between steel and aluminium takes place. They’re sharp little things and some of the forward ones have lost a millimetre or so. Not bad going for three and a half decades under water. Common wisdom would say chop ’em off and throw ’em away but that’s not how things are done around here so we doubled them instead.

This is the lower, starboard plate at F-15 and, as you can see, the original in the foreground is looking a bit thin. Not so the 2mm thick doubler behind it. Methinks the F-15 outrigger isn’t going to fall off anytime soon. This is also the place where the frame snapped. The repaired joint is internally sleeved with an extra external gusset inserted to the right of the flange plate just for good measure. The front of the boat won’t fall off again either.

The frame is therefore just about ready to go and Bill at Bettablast is soon going to give it a coat of paint. Well, actually, it’s going to get a coat of zinc followed by a polyester, powder coat in silver so it’ll look just like it used to and be guaranteed never to go rusty again. We’ll clean the insides of the frame tubes with a splash of Chemetall-Trevor’s liquid wizardry then put some inhibitor in there and she’ll be good as new. But painting the frame has thrown up one or two problems. Like how to support it so we can wheel it from spray booth to oven without touching it, for example; because if we touch it we then have an area without paint and that’s not an option either.

So we constructed this lethal assemblage.

Everything is upside down here but what you can see on top of the frame is our new moving-dolly for trundling K7 around the paint shop. It needs its wheels attached but you get the idea (ignore the castors in the foreground; they’re yesterday’s means of moving the frame around the workshop).

The frame sits on the dolly atop a series of steel spikes inserted into the existing rivet holes so the contact area will be virtually nil for painting purposes. We’ve built a similar apparatus for the front end so now all we have to do is build an extension for the oven at Bettablast and we’re in business.

Exciting times or what?

 

 

---

 

Recreating the Ultimate Hot Seat

 

By Mike (& Ellie!) Bull

 

Our involvement with creating the new cockpit seat for Bluebird came about after I jokingly told Bill that my wife Ellie- who can sew a mean historic or Gothic frock- was the possessor of an industrial flat bed sewing machine; you know, one of those ones with a motor so big, lights dim ten miles away when you switch it on. I was only kidding about but from there Bill seemed to ponder and then like the idea of there being a personal angle on the creation of a new seat for the boat, and eventually he invited us to do the job. That was the easy part…then I had to tell Ellie! Much like myself when first presented with a token piece of genuine K7 and a hacksaw, many of her bodily functions let her down at the news, though after a while some blood came back to her cheeks and she nervously agreed to help.

 

Searching for the best possible reference photos came next, and a very sincere thanks to all those out there in anorak land who helped us with this.

 

Initially my own part of this mini-project was to build a dimensionally spot-on mock-up of the seat area of K7’s cockpit here in wood, to give us a matching space to build the seat into. Then as research progressed, we soon realised that the seat itself had a few wooden parts and suddenly I was making those, too! Gulp…

 

During our research, we finally realised what Donald had been saying in his final cockpit transmission, too-

 

‘I can’t see much ‘cos my foam’s very thin indeed…I can’t see over the top…’.

 

I was also much amused by Donald describing it as a ‘G-seat’ a couple of times in his ‘Into The Water Barrier’ book; actually it’s clearly just ordinary foam and vinyl with the odd bit of plywood, a weaker and more basic structure in fact than that found inside the average 1960’s car seat! This made it seem all the more incredible to me that the seat had gotten out of the boat as intact as it had- seemingly, with only the top and the bottom halves partly broken apart from each other. Considering the condition of the surrounding metal seat structure, it’s astonishing that the thing wasn’t far more crushed. However, after a lot of pondering about it with Bill, I personally don’t think that the seat was held into the boat by anything other than it perhaps being a tight shove fit, and by Donald being strapped in on top of it, and that it thus shot out after Donald like a piece of wet soap in your hands as the rest of the cockpit was crushed around it. But, that’s just my own personal theory, and I digress; luckily from our reference material we could get a good look at the pair of wooden wedge shapes that supported the backrest from the famous images of the seat as recovered after the crash. There was the well known Paul Allonby photo, and here it is also in a still from a newsreel-

 

 

- as seen here it’s laying on the backrest, with the seat portion up in the air, and you can see the lighter coloured wooden pieces resting on the ground. From the shape and size of these pieces I was able to determine that the backrest angle wasn’t in line with the original metal seat structure in the boat- rather, it lent forwards of it somewhat. A picture of Donald sat in the seat when it was new at the factory, in a cockpit mock up, shows that the backrest was originally in line with the metal structure- so clearly, quite soon from new it was then angled further forwards- perhaps to make Donald more comfortable due to his bad back, or simply so he could better reach his steering wheel? Either way, that was another of the little nuggets of information that you can only find out as you go along, just as the boys have been doing with that big Meccano set of theirs.

 

Along with all of this, Ellie and I sat and pondered what clues we could glean from the original photos regarding the general stitching and original construction method of the actual vinyl parts of the seat. In the in-cockpit photos from before the crash, the seams that ran across the seat were visibly ‘grinning’ in some places- see, I’m learning all the sewing lingo- meaning, the seams were wearing and stretching open a little; not surprisingly, right under Donald’s backside as it happens. (Well, it was the fastest arse on water at the time!) So, that clued us in as to the original method of construction, and we made some practice pieces with some scrap vinyl and foam that we had, which looked pretty good. Bill approved, so it looked like we had our method settled.

 

A Christmas visit to the (pre-Spencair) freezing cold workshop then followed, where I was left to my own devices with the old girl (Bluebird that is, not Ellie) while the others got on with all that black-art metalwork stuff that they seem to enjoy so much. I figured out those skin-pin things by screwing them every which way and wiggling them a lot with my frozen fingers, and eventually various parts of the cockpit structure came free, so as Bill & the boys were busy putting bits on, I was busy taking them off, enabling Ellie and I to draw around them to make templates, take measurements, and generally get to know the relevant parts of the cockpit as well as possible. Following the Christmas break, I got on and built the cockpit mock-up here out of MDF; from this I could work out the final dimensions of everything relating to the seat, with the good old fashioned Mk.1 eyeball. ‘If this lines up with that, then that makes it this big, which means this part is this size…’…and so on. Basically, as far as I was concerned it absolutely had to match the original cockpit photos- such as they are- as well as possible. It wasn’t too difficult- a lot of it drew itself as I went along, absolutely proving the worth of having the real-size structure here to work into- and who needs a front room, anyway?!

 

Foam was purchased, and I swear, blue was the only colour it came in, honest! Once cut to size (Look, Ellie, I said I was sorry about the kitchen bread knife, okay?) this was immediately very comfortable and supportive in my cockpit when I had a trial sit on it, though an overhead hoist was needed to help get me back out of there again; it’s deeper than you might think in there! Bill supplied me with some squares of plywood- a bit alien to me, as I’m used to using rubbishy old MDF for making things- and I set about constructing the wooden elements of the seat. This took no time at all; indeed, our illustrious team leader seemed most amused when he rang me on the same day that the ply had arrived here, only to hear that I’d almost finished cutting it all out already! Only four screw heads show on the outside of the finished seat, and they’ll be hidden from view when it’s in the cockpit, but nonetheless I still used slot-headed brass woodscrews, just to keep the old ‘look’ right! A few coats of a nice subtle satin varnish- even on the bits that will never show- and the basic wooden parts were done.

 

 

There are some interesting square cut outs in those rear backrest wedges that just about correspond to holes in the sides of the metal seat structure, and presumably these were something to do with how the seat was once intended to be fixed in, but as the plywood parts came out of the boat absolutely intact, and the metal was annihilated, again I can only assume that there was no physical connection between the metal and the seat at the time of the crash. But for old time’s sake the cut outs were added anyway, even though they’ll also not be seen once in the boat!

 

Bill meanwhile was hunting about sourcing a suitable replacement vinyl fabric, about which he can probably better tell you himself. Suffice to say, I’m glad it wasn’t me who had to sign-off the colour choice, lest it be gotten ‘wrong’ and a herd of angry anoraks appear at my door late one night with burning torches and pitchforks! However, there were surviving scraps of the original for him to match to, including a piece from deep down in the cockpit where the sun wouldn’t have faded it, and I can say that the dark blue vinyl chosen looks absolutely fantastic both for colour and texture- it was great when a ruddy great big roll of it arrived here, and I couldn’t resist immediately photographing it in different lights, and in black and white, just to see how it looked!

 

Pattern making came next, flapping great big sheets of paper about over the wood and foam until it started to resemble something roughly seat cover like-