No oil painting

With the cabin side rails being of Oriko, a very oily wood, painting seems to be an annual task. After taking advice from Jim off Chertsey this could be the last time for a while, fingers crossed!
Jim recommended washing down with an Acetone base fluid immediately before applying a Sikkens special primer.
After hours of rubbing down then cleaning with acetone base panel wipe I applied a coat of the primer. It's like painting on glue, but you could see it soaking into the grain, unlike the other stuff that just sat there then peeled off.

After a second coat it looks more like a good base for further coats of under coat and top coat. We will see!

Been here before

Well you'll be pleased to hear I got the motor running ok, after clouds of black smoke and lots of fuel priming it finally set off. A bit lumpy to start with but when it warmed up it all smoothed out. Pumped some diesel in the day tank today and looks a bit aqueous, might have to do a little tank draining. This could be the root of my problems.
On to today's job and as the title suggests, I've been here before. Last year the boarder paint came off with water ingress and the frost. It did it again this year!
This time I thought I'd get vicious and get the blow lamp out and burn the lot off.

As soon as the blow lamp got close to the paint it started to bubble up and fry. Yes fry, spitting and cracking. The only thing I can put it down to is the oil in the wood. Iroko is very oily wood apprently and this must be the reaction. I just hope now I've scorched it a bit the paint just might take this time.

Bad start to the year

Not the start I was looking for, in fact, it didn't start at all. Now the ice as gone and the temperature is back in the plus numbers I thought I'd give Dove's motor a turn. After flattening the batteries and burning out the starter motor, I decided to look elsewhere for the problem. First choice, injectors. took them out, had a look, not very good so took them to a friend of a friend. They were sorted in a couple days and only a tenner each too. The starter motor was a different story though, complete re-build £165!!!!plus VAT!!!!! This is definitely not a good start to the year.
After re-fitting all the bits, still no go, so what now? The only thing left is compression. After removing the air intake and turning the engine over, I noticed smoke coming from the intake valve, that means more valve grinding. I've only just done Achilles, I hate valve grinding.
On removing the heads it wasn't that bad with carbon but valve seats aren't too clever, quite a bit of pitting. Yesterday I spent a full day valve grinding and today re-assembled everything. The head gaskets are made from 10 thou copper sheet, these have to be annealed, very carefully I might say. If I melted these it would have really made my day.

After the re-assembly and priming the fuel system it's time to push the button....nothing, blast or words to that effect.
WHAT NOW!!!!

The Robin

Well the Robin turned up, must have got breakfast down the cafe.
later we went for a walk to see what was happening, got some cracking pictures of frosty trees with sun shining through.

and BW breaking ice the easy way, get rid of the water, I bet that was noisy when it collapsed

Frosteeeeee!

Still can't get motivated, I'm afraid my joints just don't work in sub-zero conditions.
The frost this morning was quite dramatic and canal is now completely solid, we don't even rock about now.
The frost is now growing like a fungus, everything is just white, never seen my strings that white.

It's that cold our Robin hasn't been for breakfast yet!

Winter Brrrrrr

I see Chertsey has had a rethink on winter, well, I haven't.
We planned to have an outing today with a friend of ours, but as you can see the canal has gone rather hard

We don't seem to have had as much snow as everybody else but it's bloody cold, so all stoves fired up.

I'm supposed to be doing some work on Dove but I just can't get motivated, I'll try again tomorrow.

1945

While in Gas Street last night I was having a tour round Google Earth and found that the time clock allowed me to go back to 1945.
You can see clearly the duplicated locks at Smethwick. After hunting round I found quite a few canals that are no longer here, such as, the Toll End, the canal that extended out from the Cambrian Wharf and lots of arms now filled in.
The other interesting place to visit in 1945 is London, seeing all the docks full of ships.