Well she took to the water in her final form today, all seems well. A little teething trouble, I want to remove some of the grease in the prop shaft and replace it with a light oil, I think it is causing the motor to have to work harder because there is too much in there. Apart from that its all good. I’ll look to knock up a stand at some point, but other than that the little man now keeps asking me to take him to the pond!

You can read through all the posts about the Sea Nymph build here.

She is finished! We have yet to take her onto the water since the ’naked’ outing a few weeks back, but hopefully we’ll get a chance this weekend.

I painted her with Halfords Acrylic paints, masked up with Tamiya tape. Once everything had a few days to dry I polished up the paint and the deck with polishing compounds, coarse first and then fine.

I bought a few simple deck fittings from the Vintage Model boat company to set the deck off, these needed tidying up quite a bit with coarse sandpaper, after which I sprayed them with Tamiya primer followed by a couple of coats of silver metalic.

The decals I made using an inkjet and some clear water slide decal paper. They were given a coat of gloss acrylic and then given another coat to seal the edges once in position. The name is what he calls himself, which is nothing like his name but hey ho, who knows what a 2.75 year old is thinking ;-)

As for the people well, as I said the boat is really for my toddler and apart from Thomas the Tank Engine, Lego is his next favourite thing. And there was no way I was going to have a steam train driving the thing! I glued two 2x2 duplo blocks to the rear deck so he can chop and change the figures as he wants. I now wonder if I should have just used a entire plate of duplo for the rear deck, oh well he hasn’t complained!

Right, that’s that I think. I might post some action shots if I get a chance to take my camera when we go to the pond.

You can read through all the posts about the Sea Nymph build here.

Right, I have broken out a colour other than white!

I tend to cover my ‘planes with film or fabric and use the same for decoration, so masking and painting is not something I’m overly familiar with. However I pushed on regardless 😉 I was advised to use Tamiya masking tape for its ability to give nice edges and lo, it appears to have worked.

The line at the top of the hull isn’t perfect, it thickens slightly towards the bow on one side, and wavers ever so slightly, but in general I’m pretty pleased. After letting everything dry for a few days I’ll hit it with a gentle polishing compound.

Turning to the finishing touches, a bored day at work led me to order the fixtures you can see below, I believe cast in white metal(?). I just need to figure out what colour I should paint them and how to attach them to the deck.

You can read through all the posts about the Sea Nymph build here.

So on the day of iOS6 Apple also released the 3.4 update to Aperture and osX 10.8.2. It seems if you apply all these updates, Aperture first updates your library, and then quits every time you load it. Brilliant, gee thanks Apple. why bother with actually testing software, you wouldn’t want to dent the 100 billion you have in the bank. Anyway, apparently it is something to do with the Facebook account info held within Aperture, you can zero this out by runnning the following at the command line:

% defaults remove com.apple.Aperture AccountConfigurations

This worked for me but Aperture no longer knew about my Flickr, or Facebook accounts. At least I got my photos back. Between this and iOS6 maps, this isn’t a great week to own Apple products.

So after the primer comes the top coat. I flatted down the primer with some 1200 grit wet ’n’ dry last night and then masked up the colour separation line down the hull. I want to leave it a few days to let the white dry properly, then I’ll mask up the hull again and apply the final colour to the lower hull.

Everything will need a good polish once it has had a few days drying but I’m happy with how things look so far.

I ordered a few sheets of water slide decal paper today and the odd little deck fitting to finish her off, getting quite excited now! Have to build a display stand at some point as well I think!

You can read through all the posts about the Sea Nymph build here.

Right, I’ve made a start with the painting. Before starting to use the epoxy finishing resin I was worried it would be really hard to sand to a nice finish, but I needn’t have been concerned. This morning I sanded the entire boat with some 400 grit and the resin finish is looking fantastic. I’m begining to think maybe I should try resin on an aircraft at some point!

The decking area will be left as wood, so that had to be masked up first.

Then I gave everything a coat of primer.

I’m using Halfords acrylic spray cans for both the primer and top coat. Next step is to cut this back when it is properly dry, and if the finish is good enough push on with the top coat. Those green lego blocks are going to need more coats though.

You can read through all the posts about the Sea Nymph build here.

So now I’m back from holiday I’ve managed to make a bit of progress. The hatch at the back is built, I went for a sort of sun deck type affair rather than a seat. I have asked the misses for a little bit of sun lounger type fabric from her enormous collection to cover it with, we shall see what she comes up with. Cath Kidston most probably!

Having been on the water last week I have now removed all the electronics, ready for some gentle rubbing down with wet and dry and a few coats of paint. Hopefully I’ll manage to get to a shop on Thursday to buy a couple of cans of spray paint.

You can read through all the posts about the Sea Nymph build here.

I bought a new engine! Having long fancied a small fourstroke, I picked up this bargain at Old Warden at the weekend. Runs lovely as you can see on the video this page. Now I just have to figure out what to build for it!

Another quick video of the Sea Nymph on my fathers pool.

You can read through all the posts about the Sea Nymph build here.