Part 17

Of Mary's view here. I'm confident time will prove me right on a number of the points raised (fingers crossed!)

Shiply

Occasionally you come across something on the internet that is surprisingly useful. I'd recently bid on an anchor on eBay and won it. Great, apart from the fact it weighed 200Kg. I did toy with the idea of picking it up with Mary's car, but we would've been stuck at the other end trying to unload it.

I did a search for courier companies that took large items and stumbled upon shiply. Basically you list your item, where it is, and where it need to go and haulage companies will bid for the work. The premise is that if they have a half full truck going that way, its extra money for them and benefits you.

Within an hour of listing the anchor, I had three bids, ranging from reasonable to less than the cost of a days van hire and petrol. The site even imports eBay listings, and pre-populates your listing with the information.

Nice, will be using it again.

Update at 2:10pm - the anchor has arrived in Goole, thats impressively quick from booking the job yesterday!

Let us spray

Having said that, I'm not actually sure why blog posts tend to start of with 'witty' titles. I know I'm not the only one to do it, someone must be to blame for this trend.

Anyhoo, we went up and did some more work on Misterton this past weekend and actually took some pictures this time.

Faced with acres of bare plywood to paint, I impulse brought a cheap paint sprayer thinking it would make it easier. Having had a few goes myself, all I seemed to succeed in doing was creating loads of dripping paint in a very short space of time. We fiddled around with some settings and I let Mary have a go. Things seemed to get better straight away, so I left her to it.

The face mask was essential, you can see how much fine mist there is. The paint seemed to need thinning loads in order to work, but you can't argue with the results.

These are just coats of white emulsion to seal the wood. Mary is in charge of the interior colour scheme (I did the outside, so seems only  fair) so I'm not sure what the final coats will be yet.

I predictably did some more work on the engine, blanking off some extra inlets on the seacock. I'd previously attempted to do this with hammered over bits of copper pipe, but the use of proper blanking plugs is much better. I like the contrast of the shiny new bits against the skanky greasy bits.

I also brought for 55p a length of cord to make an 'autostart' mechanism for the engine as shown in Mike Askin's video at the bottom of the page here. Worked well, and I was able to start the engine by myself.

That's it for now. Reading back through this, it looks like Mary achieved much more than me over the weekend, but that must be some kind of optical illusion.

Away in a manger

Just arrived yesterday, nested in shredded cardboard, the latest addition to our living room.

This is a hydraulic steering ram, which is the last major bit we need to get Misterton mobile again. Mary will be relieved to know its going up to Yorkshire this weekend.

Cummins

That's who makes this engine, seen at Goodwood last weekend. Possible candidate if the Lister engine in Misterton ever breaks?

Mary and I went to the Festival of Speed to have a weekend off from working on the boat. We've just got back from Goole this weekend and while we did quite a lot, forgot to take any photographs! We'll be up again next weekend and will take some then.

Basically we painted more things, the outside of the barge at least is starting to look more presentable. Inside, more work has been done on completing the walls. The ceiling lining should arrive this week, along with the last of the plywood flooring.

Managed to gash my head on the corner of the fuel tank again and freaked Mary out by appearing with blood running down my face (it always looks worse than it really is). Maybe I should put something over that corner.........

I finally relented and brought Mary a paint sprayer for doing the interior walls, however, I haven't let her use it yet as I need to familiarise myself with the instructions (i.e. have a play with it myself first).

There seems to be more commercial activity on the canal these days, with a few tugs and gravel barges in evidence. This is in contrast to mid winter when they never moved, victims of the global economy. Good to see.