November to December 2005

1st November 2005 - 13:45

Good day yesterday and a BIG thank you to all those who took the time to add your thoughts to our guestbook. The site took over 2000 extra hits and I watched, satisfied as page after page of encouragement poured in, and that’s without the zillion e-mails that I’m still working on – promised to reply to everyone – rod for my own back!
Our piece on BBC1 was skilfully put together by Ed the producer and wasn’t Vicky truly inspirational?

It’s a boat, not a stage prop!

I loved that one.
There were a few other classic lines with one observer describing the soon to be flying Vulcan as a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ whereas Bluebird is pure heritage. It was said with tongue in cheek and I speak for a great many people when I say I can’t wait to see that stunning machine flying again but still… it’s true, isn’t it.

Here are a few more-

I would like to record my support for full restoration.
Donald Campbell piloted a beast of a machine, not a pile of scrap…

Or what about this one?

Just popped in after reading the article on the BBC. I totally agree with what Gina wants to do and feel that the HLF do not fully understand the importance of live, working museum pieces. The Railway museum made this mistake originally when they did not fully restore the engines but left them as painted shells of little interest to anyone. Bluebird should ROAR again.

And finally;

Only a ghoul would want to only partly restore the bluebird.
She was the sleekest boat ever built a monument to the British engineers and craftsmen who built her…

It goes on and on and if you don’t believe me go have a surf through the guestbook.
Come on, HLF!

On another note, here’s a pic of Gnat fighter XM691, which believe it or not was Bluebird’s donor aircraft so here’s K7’s tail doing what it was originally designed for. Presumably all those valves, gauges and accumulators are hiding away in there too.
Thanks to Andy Wilson for sending that over along with enough Gnat info to swamp me – temporarily that is.
(I’m not sure whose copyright this picture is but if we cause offence by its use please give us a shout and we’ll ask nicely or remove it forthwith).

And while we’re on the subject of accumulators, an airline pilot called Andy Scull mailed me last night and with his kind permission I include the text for those of you as interested as me in what I called ‘hydraulic gubbins’.

I have been following the Bluebird project ever since the lift, and have been wondering when I could do something to help. I'm an airline pilot and thus familiar with the workings of aircraft hydraulic systems.

Regarding the hydraulic accumulator and the purpose of the three gauges behind the perspex panel:

I'm sure that, as a pilot, you know how a hydraulic accumulator works, so please forgive me for going over old ground for the sake of those less familiar:

A hydraulic accumulator usually consists of a cylinder, divided by a piston which, when the cylinder is empty, is free to move up and down the cylinder. Normally, one end of the cylinder contains a gas (usually nitrogen but sometimes just air) which is pressurised to several thousand pounds per square inch. The other end has a connection that admits fluid under pressure from the engine driven hydraulic pump. Thus, when there is no hydraulic pressure in the system, the piston rests on the hydraulic side, held there by the gas pressure. When the hydraulic pump is running, the pressure of the hydraulic fluid forces the piston towards the opposite end, further compressing the gas. Thus, if the pump stops pumping for any reason, there is a reservoir of hydraulic fluid under pressure which is available to ensure continued availability of essential hydraulic systems. (a non-return valve prevents all the fluid simply escaping back through the pump).

Now to the crux of the matter: For the accumulator to work properly, it is essential that the gas is maintained at the correct pressure, and occasionally recharged. In order to make checking this a quick and easy task, a remote pressure gauge which could be read from outside would seem a logical fitment. Perhaps this is the purpose of the "mystery gauge"?

Regards,

Andy Scull

Thanks Andy and if there’s anything else you can explain to us please don’t hesitate.

Bill Smith.

2nd November 2005 - 16:15

Just another quick note.
We must have prodded extra hard this time because having listened to an entertaining exchange last night on Radio 4 about our Bluebird debacle I just heard Gina sparring with the HLF’s head of bureaucracy on Radio 2.
He’s a nice guy apparently, well respected in HLF circles too, so I’m told, and a specialist in Roman brickwork…

The office of public misdirection demonstrated some deft footwork by pointing us at the fact that there is no live application currently on the desk at HLF Central whilst skilfully avoiding the fact the recently demised one was meticulously crafted by masters of the lottery bid and with HLF’s full knowledge.

“It didn’t meet our criteria!” came the cry.

Take a look at the list of what was actually sent in support of our application and tell me that so voluminous a document would be prepared by professional consultants and NOT meet with their criteria.

HLF APPLICATION

CONTENTS PAGE

HLF Application

appendix A		Business Plan
appendix B		Architect's Drawings
appendix C		Quantity Surveyors Report
appendix D		Access Report
appendix E		Environmental Report
appendix F		Evidence of Ownership of the land on which the extension will be built
appendix G		Exhibition Works Interpretive Plan
appendix H		Independent Valuation of Bluebird
appendix I		Memorandum of Understanding between the Campbell Family Heritage Trust and the Ruskin Museum
appendix J		Naval Architect's Method Statement
appendix K		Conservation Plan
appendix L		Contingency and Inflation Justifications
appendix M		Evidence of other contributions to the project
appendix N		How we will appoint people to work on the Project
appendix O		Tender Report
appendix P		CV's of Project Managers
appendix Q		Market Research
appendix R		Photos relating to the Project
appendix S		Letters of support
appendix T		Audited accounts for year ended March 2003
appendix U		Forecast of income and spending for first year of project (compared to previous years)
appendix V		Value of non-cash contributions to the Project
appendix W		Minute Authorising Vicky Slowe to make this application and declaration
appendix X		Articles of Association
appendix Y		Education Policy
appendix Z		Equal Opportunities Policy
appendix AA		Acquisition Policy
appendix BB		Customer Care, Access and Charging Plan
appendix CC		Collections and Management Plan

4th November 2005 - 14:00

Well today I was hoping to share with everyone some of the work I’ve been doing on the restoration / conservation / preservation plans and my strenuous efforts to simultaneously placate HLF, project team and public. But yet another spanner has appeared in today’s workings of which I’ll tell you more, some other time.
This situation really is crazy when you take a step back. I mean, HLF are actually doing some fantastic things out there.
I know we bitch about them incessantly but at the end of the day the nation is soon to have a flying Vulcan. We have a Flying Scotsman too and it works again, as does the paddle steamer Waverley so I can take my daughter on board one day and show her how her granny used to visit her own granny at Dunoon.
Charles Parson’s boat, Turbinia looks great in the Newcastle Discovery Museum after the expenditure of six-million quid and Leazes Park is back to its Victorian splendour so the process clearly works – sometimes.
But in our case it’s become so wearisome I sometimes wish they’d just take their ball and go home. At least we’d be able to make a start.
Below is an article that appeared in today’s Guardian, reproduced without any permission whatsoever so I’ll most likely be shot at dawn but what the hell, it’s a beautiful piece of writing.
In my defence, I’ve mailed and asked but no reply as yet.

And there’s another thought – newspapers. Hmmmm, I wonder what the Sun readers would make of this?



The cult of the ruin has given us a restoration tragedy

Donald Campbell's Bluebird was a thing of engineering beauty. But our heritage chiefs only appreciate the wreck

Simon Jenkins
Friday November 4, 2005
The Guardian

Donald Campbell's daughter, Gina, was this week refused a government grant to restore her father's speedboat, Bluebird K7, for public display. The reason given was that it would no longer be the same boat as the mangled wreck it is now. The boat was recently raised from the bottom of Coniston Water where it has lain since its fatal crash in 1967. If bent back into shape and otherwise patched up, according to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), it would become something quite different, a restored Bluebird. Gina Campbell would be entitled to money only if she left the wreck mangled and thus "true to history". But then, of course, she would not need the money to restore it. I can sense the HLF bureaucrats dancing a little jig.
Coniston is the most exquisite of the lakes. It was here alone, said Ruskin, that England challenged Switzerland for natural beauty. He had declared that for every hundred people who could talk, there was one who could think; and for every hundred who could think, just one who could see. It was from his Brantwood turret at Coniston that Ruskin "saw".

Had he been seeing that day in 1967, Ruskin would have been appalled. The idea of someone trying noisily to smash a world water-speed record on his sublime lake would have horrified him. Ruskin loathed engines and speed. But he would have appreciated Campbell's dedication to his boat, honouring his belief in an art where "the hand, the head and the heart go together". The monomaniacal Campbell embodied his creed that "there is no wealth but life". As the boat hit its own wake, tilted upward and cartwheeled to oblivion, Ruskin would have been awestruck at Nature taking heroic revenge on Man. Either way, he and Campbell are now bonded as Coniston's most revered sons.

Hence it is to the Ruskin Museum at Coniston that Gina still wants a restored Bluebird to go. She wants it as an inspiration to the young, "shiny, bright, engineering perfect", as when her father set out to race through the 300mph barrier. It was a thing of beauty fit for purpose, as Ruskin proclaimed. Gina does not want to put on display what the HLF wants, her father's ghoulish coffin, a "historical narrative" culminating in destruction. She would rather bury the boat once more in Coniston. It would be like commemorating Princess Diana with a statue of her crashed Mercedes.

As for the suggestion of one official, Tony Jones, that he might tolerate a patched-up Bluebird but only if it were still "clearly a wreck" with black sticky tape showing where the new bits start, I wonder on whose authority people issue such ludicrous diktats. If heritage is about narrative, surely Bluebird's is one of guts applied to engineering. It is about speed and design, not crashes. If the Imperial War Museum can restore (on superb display at present) the motorbike on which Lawrence of Arabia died, why not Coniston and Bluebird?

In truth, heritage ideology is in a mess. When is old not old? When is it so patched and repaired as to have become a replica? When the Queen and her admirals dined on HMS Victory last month, were they aware that barely a plank or spar saw action at Trafalgar? They were sitting in what amounts to a replica. The historic Buddhist temples of the orient are rebuilt whenever the wood needs it. You can remake the parts of a vintage car and still call it "vintage", provided all are not replaced at once. Uppark House in Sussex is still Uppark, despite being rebuilt facsimile after a fire in 1989.

These restored things still convey their essence. We marvel at the carvings of Wells or Chartres despite their being replicas, or the new bricks and beams holding up Hampton Court. We can sense the historical continuum, the genius loci. Better a replica than a wreck.

The ever-confident Victorians respected the past by bringing it to life through restoration. A Gothic church was rebuilt, its carving retooled. Medieval walls rose again. Sculpture was mended, paintings cleaned. Much of this was overdone, but to respect the past, it was not thought necessary to freeze-frame it. The present too had its contribution to make to the "narrative" of a building or object.

Ruskin and Morris reacted against this radicalism. They honoured the Georgian cult of the ruin and cried that "all restoration is a lie". That cry remains the ruling ideology of Britain's conservation establishment. They sing with the Mikado: "There's a fascination frantic/ In a ruin that's romantic;/ Do you think you are sufficiently decayed?" Any tampering with the evidence of the past is illegitimate. The past is sacred and best left in peace, even if condemned to meaninglessness and destruction.

I am sure Ruskin, if he must be called in aid, would have approved the restoration of Bluebird. He would have accepted its purposeful design, built for speed and not for crashing. Its message to the modern world lies in the beauty of what Campbell built, not the manner in which he died, let alone some Blairite moral discourse on the danger of exceeding the speed limit.

The cult of the ruin is now rampant among the regulators. In Scotland it has blighted the fate of the magnificent Tioram Castle in Moidart, once home of the Clanranald MacDonalds. A new owner wishes to make it habitable at his own expense, and admit the public to its medieval glory. No, says Historic Scotland. This cannot be. Tioram is like Bluebird, a historic ruin whose "documentary evidence" must not be distorted or destroyed.

Protesting against the Tioram decision, last month's Country Life pointed out that the restoration of Scottish castles is as much part of their "narrative" as their original construction. As recently as 1960 the Stewarts' Castle Stalker in Argyll was restored, and thus saved from ruin, by a Surrey solicitor. Only a necrophiliac could oppose such a new chapter in the story of an old building.

Such decisions are getting heritage a bad name. They treat the past as so much academic data. Officialdom has lost its nerve in policing the boundary between conservation and reuse. It has retreated behind a screen of professional dogma, handing over the past to archaeology for its private study. The public is fobbed off with "interpretation". Grants awarded by the HLF go ever more to a coterie of such neo-professionals as trainers, outreachers, inclusion experts, learning executives, website designers and general consultants. They are the triumph of spin over content.

A castle without a roof is not a castle but a ruin, useless to anyone but scholars and photographers. Yet the British state must own more ancient buildings without roofs than with them. This does not respect history, whose inclination is to keep a building in constant repair. It does not sustain a narrative, but rather cuts it dead.

Likewise with Bluebird. It was built for speed. If it is to be restored, it should evoke the heritage of speed. If they want mangled metal, the HLF's crash fetishists can go visit a junkyard.

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

10th November 2005 - 15:30

Been out of the office for a few days for a bit of a break but I’m back again to find one or two small developments in the offing.
The e-mail below seems to have popped up recently as it’s been mailed to me privately a couple of times then someone was good enough to post it on the guestbook.
It seems to be another of those ‘Positioning Statements’ or something similar and was kindly supplied by Lucy Regan, an information officer at HLF central. It reads -

Thank you for your email - your comments will be noted for the future. The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) was unable to support an application from the Ruskin Museum in Cumbria in March 2005. We were asked for almost £1million of Lottery money to buy the remains of Bluebird K7, to rebuild the craft to run again at full performance standard, and to extend the Museum to house it. As our key aims are to conserve, open up and increase people's understanding and involvement in our heritage - rather than funding substantial reproductions to a high specification - we were unable to help them with this request. We absolutely agree that the Bluebird and Donald Campbell story has a special place in our history but this expensive rebuild was not for us to fund. We are still talking to the Ruskin Museum about other ways of telling this fascinating story in future.

Well, thanks for that, Lucy. Unlike many others within those hallowed halls you are at least speaking to us.
A small suggestion if we may – purely in the interests of factual correctness – where it reads,

‘- rather than funding substantial reproductions to a high specification -’

Could we have something like…

‘– rather than funding what our good offices would have you believe to be a substantial reproduction despite the applicant’s overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and considering that as no one from HLF or indeed any of our appointed representatives have EVER actually seen Bluebird, we remain far from qualified to pass judgement –‘

There, that’s more like it and on another note…
I received a message from Steve Rothery of Marillion to say that they’re playing the Middlesbrough Empire on Friday 18th and did I want to go along as a guest of the band? Daft question!
Remember the song that started the whole Bluebird Project? ‘Out Of This World’ from the album ‘Afraid of Sunlight’. (http://www.marillion.com/music/lyrics/aos.htm#ootw) I responded at once to say it would be a pleasure to which Steve replied by asking if I’d like to bring a few other folk along.
So, if a few of you keen Bluebirders want to travel to Middlesbrough next Friday I’m sure we can arrange to have a few beers then enjoy the gig… Mail me privately if you’re interested.
And finally.
Andy Wilson, chief Scottish aircraft ferret has been scavenging about for Gnat parts – more volunteer involvement. His short diary piece is below. Cheers, Andy.

1967-I was 14 and watching tv,(2 channels!) I remember Reginald Bosanquet reading the news in perfect BBC English telling us that Donald Campbell, the world speed record holder had just been killed on Lake Coniston in his Hydroplane Bluebird K7.It was like being told that Dan Dare or any of my other boyhood heroes had just died.
Many years Later- I watched with interest on the same news,the recovery of K7 from Lake Coniston,the only thought which ran through my head was "How they going to fix that"?
I was about to find out!
Sitting at the computer one day, doing my usual search for Lambretta scooter parts, I dialled in the word Bluebird onto Google-and the magic animation appeared- a wee k7 running across the screen!
So I left a message in the guestbook and bookmarked the site,visiting now and again and reading all about the trials and tribulations of the various scenarios appearing there.Then one fine sunny day(I'm kidding myself here- I'm in Scotland!) I innocently emailed a Mr Smith to ask him a bit more about K7-and got bit by the bug! Bill was speaking about K7's engine and the hunt for her number- well- couldn't take much to find that out surely?-days later I had the numbers down to a block of 5 which may or may not have been fitted to k7.In the process I also discovered that K7 was fitted with a lot of parts from a Folland Gnat-hmmm- I was never lucky (or unlucky ) enough to be posted to an operational Gnat equipped squadron but hang on- I seem to have seen one in a computer site somewhere-had a look and bingo!- not only found a Gnat- found them all! including a section on the very Gnat Donald had "obtained" to refit k7!-XM691.No problem I thought, just get on to the RAF and ask them about it"-Ohhhh no!- not that easy pal-"said the RAF- "XM691 wasn't one of ours- it was the first prototype Gnat after the Folland Midge and as such belonged to the Ministry of Supply!"
Oh well- back to the drawing board!- after another bum numbing session on the computer-I finally found what was needed-a Photograph of XM691 in flight, complete with a very familiar tail- K7'S!
Right- got that- now go find a tail to use as a template for the restoration! Aww Geee thanks Bill-anything else?-A Unicorn or mebbe Lord Lucan riding Shergar? och not really a problem I thought, surely someones got a tail section off a Gnat?-I know- HAL in India!, they built them till 1994!- they'll have one off a HAL Ajeet- and yes they did have one, problem being that it wouldn't fit!
Och well drawing board again!- hang on whats this?- a Gnat nosecone in a furniture shop- mmm looks nice wonder where the rest is?- nothing else for it- ring the bloke and ask him!Oh you mean the fuselage and wings lying in Essex?-Yes yes yes!- ok are you thinking of disposing of it?- Think Andy- tell him about what it's for!- throwaway line- "Well actually it's needed to fix up Bluebird."
"Whaaaaaaaaat you mean THAT Bluebird?"- "Yup!"- "oh well in that case certainly"-EH? I think we just obtained a jet fighter!- my wife will murder me! "Ok- I'll get the guy who heads the project to call you and arrange the rest"-At last- we got bits! and Bill's got another storage problem!-and the Gnat (XS100) is the exact same type of Gnat as XM691-a T1 prototype so all the bits are the same,said he confidently!-so with a bit of luck we now have a braking system, another Orpheus engine and glory of glories the tail's still on it! Phoned Bill and let him know-Great!-"Oh bye the way Andy fancy writing a piece for the Diary?"-oh well suppose so- wonder what my title should be?-aaahhh!-got it!
PROJECT FERRET!

18th November 2005 - 13:30

I had another delicious dream on Monday in which I floated silently through the marble and glass atrium of HLF Central and then upwards, straightening my tie confidently in the mirrored lift before coming to a halt in front of the reception desk at which I addressed the smiling receptionist and requested an audience with the chief bureaucrat.
    “Certainly,” came the reply. “Won’t be a moment.”
   Amazingly, the official in question materialised almost immediately and ushered me into their inner sanctum.
    “We’ll use this office,” I was told whilst being shown to what was clearly the most salubrious spot in the suite; nine floors above the street with an awe-inspiring view over the bold construction projects that currently dominate Manchester’s skyline.
    “Coffee?”
    “Er… yes please.”
    “Chocolate biscuit?”
   This was too much… and yet, in my dream odd things continued to happen - the laptop fired up first time and to my continuing amazement, PowerPoint didn’t hang whilst trying to display the video clip of Bluebird breaking free of the mud.
   But then in true dream-like fashion - and not unexpectedly - I found that the harder I tried to run with this blissful scenario the slower I seemed to move.
   I felt every thrust of sound engineering practice parried by deft museological common sense and ethical know-how until the realisation dawned that here was being driven a hard bargain by a worthy adversary.
   Hmmm.
    “Can I weld that to this then?” I tried without much hope.
    “Nope, you’ll destroy it’s history...”
    “Bugger! Well can I bolt a clamp around there and spanner a piece of bar onto it then get some nails and…”
   Clamps seemed to evince slightly less suspicion though nails were definitely out, yet not once did I hear a single piece of jargon or the dreaded ‘possibly’. Could this be the same bureaucrat or were the biscuits drugged?
   I decided it had to be the biscuits when I awoke two whole hours later (sort of), to find myself speeding north on the M6 and the staggering realisation that HLF had very graciously,

a. Allowed me into the building in the first place without hurling me from a ninth floor window.
b. Given me the opportunity to present a mass of pictures and data - let it never be said again that they don’t have all the facts after what I made them sit through!
c. Fed me on dodgy chocolate biscuits.

      Even more worrying was an absence of that overwhelming desire to close the northbound M6 with a satisfying act of road-rage such as I’d felt after every previous meeting.
   Then I realised that there’d never been a meeting quite like it.
   Fair enough, I’d been thoroughly beaten up at the negotiating table but that wasn’t unusual only this time I felt nothing but positive vibes.
   It had to be those biscuits!

   I ruminated on the above as I made my bemused way to Barrow – what a place to get to – then asked around town until someone pointed me at the Police station.
   There I stood at the desk with a patient group and sympathised with an elderly gentleman who’d come to pay a fine on behalf of his son.
   The poor old guy weighed over at least a grand then asked the officer on the desk if they could possibly arrange to hang the boy to save him having to do it.
    “His mother still thinks he’s a baby,” he explained apologetically to the queue that’d quietly formed behind him.
   I stood listening and wondered if I’d soon wake up.
   The Coroner, Mr Ian Smith, knew exactly why I’d arrived unannounced in Barrow and after wheeling a trolley down narrow passages of polished, green linoleum and metal window frames I was soon on my way again with a large plastic box in which Coniston lake-water sloshed sinisterly.
   For inside lay Donald’s recovered items of clothing destined for the skilled ministrations of a textile conservator and ultimate display.
   I stole a guilty peek four years after I first saw them to discover the crossed union-jacks of the breast pocket glaring defiantly back at me from the blue fabric.

   If you look carefully, the Bluebird emblem can just be seen between the flags.

*

If Monday was a dream then Tuesday was a nightmare though not in any bad way – it’s more that it lacked any dream-like qualities at all.
   Having returned from Manchester bursting with great ideas I then collected Chris Knapp from Newcastle train station and hurried back to the factory with him to see whether any of them were even feasible.
   Chris Knapp? I hear you ask.

   Chris is head of conservation at Imperial War Museum Duxford and with 129 aircraft, dozens of priceless aero engines, a sizeable assemblage of rare vehicles plus a few missiles and other flying things to take care of I reckon he knows his onions. HLF asked us to invite an expert onto our team so we did.
   He lectures in ‘industrial conservation’ doesn’t suffer fools at all and seems to know absolutely everyone who’s anyone in the museum world.
   Chris has been fundamental to Bluebird’s care from a time before the first rivet was returned to the surface and remains the first person I call when a worrying white flake appears or something falls off the old girl.
   This time he travelled from Cambridge to take a proper look and tell us how to use spanners on the boat without breaking museological guidelines or offending the purists with their cotton buds and rubber spoons. What an education!
   Plug-inserts, tensioned steel cables, cherry-lock fasteners and industrial adhesive all went on the shopping list along with glass-bristle brushes, ‘Deoxydyne’ corrosion remover, cotton wool balls, de-ionised water and an especially gentle detergent for use on delicate paintwork that I later discovered was to be found in baby products.

   So here am I with a baby daughter in the house and sudden requirement for cotton buds and baby shampoo in unheard of quantities to mend Bluebird – I feel trouble ahead when bath time comes around.

*

   Wednesday involved obtaining answers to those late-night questions that had popped into my whirring brain as I counted flakes of blue paint long after the last sheep had fallen asleep. And as a further feasibility test was needed we’d invited John Getty from PDS to come over and have a crack at some of the problems.
   With him this time came his daughter, Annette who took notes and showed John no mercy when it came to deciding exactly who had left the camera behind.

   John, like me, sees a bit of wrecked metal as something to weld, cut and hit with a hammer but he had to hurtle up the same vertical learning curve as I had the day before when confronted with Chris’ novel, conservation-led proposal for sticking structure back together without the aid of a welding torch. It’ll be as strong as welded joints without ever getting warm. Clever bods sometimes – these museumologists.

   What I’m hoping we can do shortly – and as a result of these meetings – is to begin the first phase of work on the boat, this being mainly conservation of the rear end as it’s all stuff that needs to be done anyway even if Bluebird spends the rest of time in my factory.
   With a little luck and a tail wind I’ll be calling for volunteers – people who can spend a few days up here, learn the techniques then soldier on with our boat getting her into shape to accept her new front end.
   There’s more to follow shortly but in the meantime, if you want to commit to spending some time working with us in the near future please mail me quietly and even if you don’t, leave us a message on the guestbook so we know what you’re thinking.

Bill Smith.

25th November 2005 - 16:00

Not much going on with Bluebird this week except the endless rounds of telephone calls and e-mails to try and pull everything together.
   December first we committed to having the Lottery bid back in shape and so far we’re on target. My stuff is all done apart from having to discuss some bits and bobs with Jura, who in turn have their ducks in a row. Vicky has some number-crunching left to do but we’re about there.

*

We’ve firmed up our conservator training with Chris too so that’ll be happening on 5th and 6th of December – ought to be interesting.
   But this brings with it the sticky problem of what we can and can’t do to the boat because, as we now seem to have a plan, (not that we didn’t have one all along), we’re caught in yet another minefield.
   HLF clearly stipulate that we can’t start work on the boat, the logic seeming to be that as we don’t yet have a successful bid and still may have to go it alone if the committee discover an insoluble problem, they don’t want us wielding spanners in case it results in massive expenditure that we then try to pin on them.
   Fair enough, can’t argue with that, but if we do volunteer work strictly on the basis that the work was necessary whatever the outcome and we’ve at least done more good than harm…
   Because the things we want to do are merely essential stabilisation work to hang onto as much of the original paint as possible. There seemed little point in spending thousands of man-hours before, (or perhaps ‘Euro-person-hours’ for the PC brigade), on conserving flakes destined for the back of a cupboard somewhere but that was then...
   So here’s the question – as we’ve now undertaken to conserve something that has been gradually destroying itself for the past four years, can we not voluntarily prevent another six months of inevitable deterioration while we wait to see what happens next with the rest of the project?
   I’ll let you know what the answer is when I get it.

*

Another thing of interest – well it would have been had it not become something of a flop. We sneaked back to Coniston over the weekend with the intention of flying our new super-duper sidescan sonar through the Bluebird site in search of that missing spaceframe member and Donald’s instrument panel. Even the searching hat came out of retirement for the afternoon!

   Dave Coxon at the boating centre kindly allowed us to use one of those electric hire boats as an improvised survey ship and Capt. Connacher did his usual spaghetti-like wiring job until the Tupperware-Navy vessel became a worrying blend of battery driven fibreglass, condensation and state of the art computer technology.

   Then off we sailed to shoot some images of the lakebed with a view to processing them into a mosaic with the all-new geosurvey package in which I’ve just invested. This worked fairly well though without the winch, hauling the towfish up and down was a chore and by using a boat that developed about half a horsepower we had no way of accelerating the fish out of danger with a blip on the throttle either as it repeatedly plunged towards the undulating topography that is the bed of Coniston Water.
   But by far the biggest problem was that the fish we tried to use is the baby one that we normally employ in rivers and canals, and despite having 100m of cable, we couldn’t get it anywhere near the 43m depth at which Bluebird used to lie.
   And so for an afternoon spent in freezing conditions all we had to show were some nice shots of the jetty pilings and a handful of targets that may turn out to be gangland murder victims – oh, and don’t forget the dreaded tumbleweed!

9th December 2005 - 14:30

Much to tell but no time… The team came back together this week – loyal bunch that they are – to attend our training course in the ways of an industrial conservator. Chris journeyed north once more to put us through two rigorous days of how to put a boat back together without destroying its history.

What an odd subject.
Let me explain, remember the HLF ‘expert’ moaning about ‘considerable loss of original fabric’ and the need for a ‘conservation-led approach’?
Well we have the rear two thirds of Bluebird’s frame in good order and most of the remaining third in a slightly flat-packed condition, but at least it’s here.
Now I imagined that the best way forward was to take the original front frame and weld it – using the correct processes and materials – to the original back frame thus putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again. No loss of original fabric there.
Wrong! If we weld it we’ve destroyed its history, apparently, and the correct answer is to make a completely new front from scratch despite the fact that the original cockpit will now end up hidden forever or most likely returned to the lake because it can’t go on display. Told you it was odd.
I’m assured that paint is sacrificial too – at Duxford they stripped the wing of a B52 with the shot-blasting equivalent of a fire hose while volunteers shovelled blasting media the machine with the zeal of crazed stokers.
But our paint is different in that it has to stay – at least that which hasn’t been lifted by corrosion does. So we have to pick and scrape and chemically clean leaving what blue paint still adheres in place whilst applying a ‘recognised conservation technique’ to the bare metal thus revealed.
Any guesses as to what technique we favour? Yep… blue paint – silver for the inside. You can drill out nuts, bolts and rivets though, or worse still, grind the heads off them in a shower of sparks, as these are ‘proprietary fasteners’ with nothing to teach us because the poor things have no history even if Donald was the last man on the other end of the screwdriver.
I argued that a weld had to be a proprietary fastener too and I think I won that one, which means I probably added a grain to the quicksand of museum ethics.
Because, you see, it’s a fantastic subject this museumology. It has so many ethics that it has none at all. It’s like religion. If you want to cut the heads off innocent aid-workers or give your last crust to old Mrs Miggins down the lane you need only read the right books and align yourself with those of a similar persuasion and I love it!

And now here’s one for the anoraks. All this scraping and scratching has revealed some odd things. Anyone know what these D-shaped inserts are for or what part of K7’s illustrious history they relate to?

And another thing – all this ‘advanced engineering… rocketry, what have you’ presumably accounts for the half a ton of body filler in the tail section alone.

And finally... Orpheus revealed.

19th December 2005 - 10:00

Those of you who’ve been following this mad journey from the off will remember the days of mud-sucking with the vacuum from hell. For those who’ve joined us since, you can find images of our mud-spattered selves in the archive from April 2001 onwards if you want a laugh.
The problem that plagued us back then was that we never quite got into all the corners despite inserting more pipes and suction tubes than you’d see on the Casualty Christmas-special so some of the dreaded stuff got left behind.
We were warned this fine sediment would set solid but it hasn’t. It’s dried and shrunk into feather-light grey blocks more reminiscent of loft insulation than concrete and it disperses the finest, choking dust at the lightest touch.
Not only can this stuff blind a diver, (as it frequently did), but it seems equally deadly in its airborne form.
We’ve been stripping out the section between the front of the engine and the bulkhead immediately behind the main fuel tank, to get it clean and assess what has to be done in there – the dust is horrendous.

Off came the start system after a week or two of daily-administered penetrating oil and gentle persuasion on the fasteners with a host of spanners I thought I’d never wield again. We slung it on top of the air-intakes – well, rested it there very carefully – because it was too heavy and awkward for only two people to manhandle.

The inlet trunk fought against removal – but only briefly – though it did spite us with our first snapped bolt…

I’d entertained ambitious hopes of stripping the old girl without snapping anything but she put paid to that on Monday.
Next came the batteries – they were a real bitch to shift – mainly because the bolts are all inaccessible and trying to get a spanner on them releases yet more dust whilst head-down in the dingy hull.

So now we’re down to the floor in said compartment and it’s sparkling – cleaned out anyway – if for no other reason than to exact revenge on the dust!

One result of stripping the gubbins from forward of the engine is that the three gauges have been removed for bagging and tagging. They’re past redemption, (I think), as is the bracket that once held them so here’s a challenge for whoever wants to take it on.
Who wants to make its replacement?
If anyone genuinely wants to replicate an important piece of Bluebird and has the necessary skills I’ll supply the drawing and pics for you to work from.
We’ll record the fact that the new part is new and hopefully incorporate it in the finished boat, (but must ask our conservator in residence for the final word).
You’ll be able to take your kids to the museum, point it out and proudly say.
“I made that bit.”

*

On another note, we’re having a couple of days in the workshop between Christmas and New Year - it’s that time of year when I’m usually sick of food, beer and relatives and would rather be doing anything than sit about.
We have to get Bluebird’s workshop into some kind of order. Disarm the death-traps of accumulated junk, sweep the floor – that sort of thing.
So to this end we have a few folk coming over with dustpans and brushes but one issue that needs taking care of is the lighting.
No problem moving about in there normally or seeing what you’re up to but when it comes to working on delicate paint or hanging upside down in a dust-cloud…
To the rescue came Mark Forster of ECS Wholesale Electrical Distributors in Leeds who has not only enrolled to come up and do the occasional day with us but who also very kindly supplied us with a whole bunch of brand-new light fittings for the soon to be refurbished workshop.
Thanks, Mark.
Having adequate lighting will make one hell of a difference!

Bill Smith.

20th December 2005 - 14:30

I don’t think there’s a vacuum cleaner in the world that can catch this dust – not even Mr Dyson’s cyclonic whatnot with more suck than a wild night in Amsterdam can do it. But after a couple of days on the blunt end of a Hoover things were looking acceptably clean in K7’s inner corners.
Then we messed it up again.
First to go was that mass of squished metal that once was the air-intakes. Unfortunately the only way to shift it was with brute force and ignorance as it was never designed to be carefully dismantled after being forcibly wrapped around the back of the main spar. Using our proven method of pulling on battered aluminium – mole-grips and a rope – we took hold on an overhead beam and used a chain pull to exert a little heave on a damaged section down out if sight so as not to compromise the bit that everyone recognises…

…until it finally came free…

…leaving the way clear for Alain to report on what was in the resulting hole. There was nothing but mud – yes, more mud – and bent metal.

Next to go was the fuel tank. It was badly crushed by water pressure as K7 sank and we thought initially that it was trapped in there by the deformation. That was until I tried to jiggle it free and discovered to my consternation that it was almost full to the top with jetfuel and water. After siphoning out the liquid it proved light as a feather.

Not so simple were the engine mounts, which we imagined to be made of steel like the bedplates to which they’re bolted.
But no – someone, for reasons unknown, made them out of aluminium then bolted them down with steel bolts.

So with, lots of heat and a hammer…

Followed by more heat, a bigger hammer and a ton-and-a-half of pull from above…

We finally got the caps off.

She’s now ready to have the engine removed.

Bill.

23rd December 2005 - 12:00

Christmas 2005

From the jaws of failure… At least that’s the hope.
It’s been an exciting twelve months to say the least with all our shenanigans over the lottery bid followed by the determined scramble to pull it all back together.
Thanks to Vicky at the Ruskin and Paul up at Jura for once more throwing themselves into the fray and, of course, the chief bureaucrat at HLF Central whom I sadly cannot name and thank in person for working with us towards the middle ground. We’re talking about one of the good-guys here.
Thanks to Gina & Co for trusting us all this time and to the multitudes of people who’ve supported us in the trenches.
Hopefully this time next year, and under Chris’ expert guidance, we’ll be looking at pictures of K7 taking shape and in the meantime we’ve a workshop to paint, light and equip so keep dropping by the site.
And if the food, beer and boredom get to you over the holidays you can always look us up, stop merely talking about K7 and swapping cigarette cards, and come up here and get your hands dirty.

Merry Christmas.
Bill