My 'Big thing' at the moment is de-stressing and relaxation along with my morning midweek swim Monday to Friday. So with a nautical them in mind, it's a good job that my current relaxation project is a rebuild of a Model Pond Yacht to form the Centre Piece of a Scalextric layout.
I have found out that the Yacht that I am renovating as a Scalextric Centre Piece is a lovely wooden hulled model sailing yacht made by GINER of Spain.
The original model is a double masted beast unlike the single master that I am building. The original model has “Guaranteed to Sail” written on the label, whereas this model ain't sailing anywhere. Indeed when I get around to it the harbour has to be drilled in two places and the Pond Yacht screwed home from underneath the layout. The Model Yacht has a drop down metal keel that I dismantled to make it flat bottomed for the Scalextric layout. The hull is approximately 23½ inches long with a width of approximately 4¾ inches. On the original model the height from the top of the mast to the bottom of the drop down keel is approximately 33 inches, whereas on my re-build, the height of the single mast to the deck level is 32.5cm.
The photograph shows the boat unfinished but after a considerable amount of modelling work undertaken over several weeks. This work has included dismantling the original model yacht, sanding off thick paint, priming, airbrushing several layers onto the hull, lining the hull with white acrylic, and then over-lining the white band with gold acrylic. The deck barrier posts were made from cocktail sticks, with the hull marked and drilled to receive these. The deck post wire is a single strand of unravelled picture frame wire that has been threaded through holes drilled in each cocktail stick. The bolting base for each post was cut out of an old ice cream tub. Well it wouldn't be a new one would it? Because if it was where would all of the ice-cream go? Now if there was enough of that, then that could be swimming heaven....
