A quick up date, funnel now Red & Black & the w/h has it's first coat of beige.

Fred

So far I this build is going better than I would have thought.
I have now fitted a smoke stack to the galley, I made this from a drinking straw, and the deck hatch cover is tissue covered which I then used diluted PVA to give it that rippled look, I then painted it with a mix of cockpit green and satin black

Quick update, I have now painted the hull, I used 1/8" pin stripe car tape to make the dividing line between the black and red of the hull, I also used 13a wire to make the piping from the fresh water tank to the galley.

Hi One & All
Now two months down the ling I think it is time for an update.
Looking at the rudder, just how many ways are there to make a rudder work? For the Puffer that I am building, I feel that the control rod running over the deck will work fine for this boat. Now when I move onto the 1/24 Puffer then the rod over the deck is not the ideal route to go down, at 1/24 scale I will look at the chain route that means making some of the parts, or I will need to find the parts from an outside source.

I thought it would be a good idea to have some form of working derrick, after looking at photos on the internet I decided to try making one,it’s very crude and oversized, it works for me and looks right, the steam winch only moved the boom up & down and the same goes for the cargo hook, to get the cargo onto the quay the boom had to be moved by the ropes that are fixed to the boom and pulled by the dockyard staff,
Fred

Hi One & All
I have now fixed all the rope work on the puffer only took four hours, I now still have to find or make the hook, on the plans it shows the boom fixed to the front of the wheelhouse, but I went for the cross beams type of support.

Hi One & All
when I started this build I tried to work out just were all the bits should go, one of was the battery, I had a 6 volt stick so I thought that this would be O.K, now that I have come to the point of test tank (bath) testing in went the battery, puffer into test tank, all O.K no leaks (good job I am not in Wales) so now would be a good time to test the motor out in water, Rudder working -checked, motor working- dead, all out of the water, the only other 6 volt battery I have is an SLA one, all worked fine with that so it looks as if the 6 volt stick is not up to the job,
I do not have room for a 7.4 volt stick so what do I do now?
As I was thinking it over I decided to have some fun with the T72 tank, then it hit me, (must take care when playing with the tank) the tank has a 7.4 battery would it be the right size? yes it was so out off the tank and into the Puffer, yes all works so new battery ordered.

Hi One & All
So the new battery has arrived and it fits, only thing is with my sausage fingers I just could not get it into the boat, I now have made a new motor mount and battery box so that it all now fits, also looks a lot better than before.
Fred
P/S set the Hobbywing 10/60 ESC for LiPo

So yesterday (19/05/24) I fitted one of the seuthe smoke units into the puffer, it was so poor I think that I would have got more smoke out of a chocolate pipe than I got out of the unit, next I tried to fit the smoke unit from a heng long tank, it will work just to much work to get it to fit. so for now it looks as if it's a no smoke for this puffer.

Hi
After spending all afternoon yesterday trying to fit the tank smoke unit into the puffer, it looks as if it's back to plan "A".
I took the tank unit to pieces, the smoke part went under the wheelhouse and the blower in the bow's run some piping from the blower to the smoke unit, that worked but could not get the ESC and RX into the hull with out replacing the battery, moved the ESC & RX up higher onto a platform, could not fit the hatch cover, as I said it's back to plan "A" for now, I was never going to have smoke until some one said will it have smoke and no I will definitely will not be fitting lights.