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Thread: Toy Lifeboats

  1. #1
    Join Date
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    Default Toy Lifeboats

    When my kids were a bit younger the oldest one, and by default his younger brother, became interested in the Lifeboats that are seen around the coast of the UK & Ireland, owned by the RNLI. In the run up to Christmas or Birthdays one year, I forget which, I took it upon myself to carve up some old blocks we had in the garage and paint them as lifeboats. I was pleased to see my eldest studying his before bed this evening.

    The first is a Tamar Class All-Weather lifeboat, quite a modern vessel designed to be launched down a slipway. This model required two pieces in order to get a reasonable height for the superstructure.

    photo2.jpg Bembridge-Tamar-on-slipway-Nicholas-Leach-Large.jpg photo1.jpg haydn_miller.jpg

    The second is a Mersey Class, carriage launched lifeboat. Considerably older, but still in service. It's replacement will soon enter service.

    photo5.jpgphoto.jpg mersey-63.jpg

    Clearly, the paint job needed to be a lot better but I was new to carving wood at that stage and in a hurry to finish them in time for the events. I enjoy carving old wood into something like this and, keeping with a maritime theme, would like to progress to something bigger in the future, along the lines of pond skiffs such as we saw in Paris a few years ago. They take a bit more work on the hull as they need to float and have a degree of stability.

    I'm also keen to identify other types of vessels to carve that are less 'specialised'. I love sailing vessels, but the masts and rigging make them a little less straightforward.

    The pictures of my models and the Mersey Class lifeboat are mine. The pictures of the Tamar lifeboat for comparison are linked to URLS provided by Google Image search and, to the best of my knowledge, not subject to copyright that would be infringed by linking them here.

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  3. #2
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    Default

    Nice little models. Why not have a go at a scale model lifeboat there are plans out there for most of the UK ones.

  4. #3
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    Thumbs up

    Like it!!

    There was an interestin g program by Kevin McLeod on ABC TV where a couple
    converted an old lifeboat shed into a home. Your post brought it to mind.

  5. #4
    crowie's Avatar
    crowie is online now Life's Good, Enjoy each new day & try to encourage
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    G'Day "DRMS",
    I've only seen this sort of Lifeboat on TV once or twice with there quick launch slide.
    I think you've done a top job on reproducing the boats; paint work looks good to me.
    What is the sizes of the two boats, please?
    Anyways, a job well done,
    Cheers, crowie

  6. #5
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    Hi Crowie,

    Thanks for the feedback and positive comments, and to the others above.

    The RNLI is an amazing organisation, designing extremely high-performance vessels and relying soley on charitable donations. Some boats are slipway launched, some are carriage launched and recovered after each rescue, the Mersey being an example.

    The size of the real vessels is indicated by the hull number in metres. The Mersey is 12 metres long, the Tamar is 16 metres long. The toy ones are broadly in scale with each other, with the Tamar being about 17cm long and the Mersey 13cm. There was no intention to build them to scale as I had already made one before I started the other, I just tried to give a rough sense of proportion.

    Digger, I have thought of a model lifeboat with more detail, but my problem is I am extremely good at thinking of projects and considerably less good at starting or realising them )

    Thanks all.

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