25th March 2007 (click on an image to see it in a hi-res pop-up window)

Another week of munching through the outstanding tasks. The weather blew a hooligan last weekend and kept us firmly off the lake so we hid out in the workshop and discussed just how far away our piece of spaceframe can be whilst plodding through the indoor jobs.
   We’re mainly cleaning panels at the moment. They’ve all been stripped of paint, the corrosion blasted out, then treated chemically and now they’re being fettled and filled before consignment to the paint shop.
   Rob has an amazing capacity for this work. He’ll stand all day polishing – as he did with Donald’s ‘bell-end’ – until the job is perfect.

   It’s a different grade to the stuff they made the outriggers from because it didn’t have to be worked into any fancy shapes. All it had to do was be a flat sheet.
   Unfortunate events did work it into a fancy shape, however, and left us with the task of getting it flat again.
   Most of this material will gradually anneal if you’re careful with it and don’t let it get too hot. It then works nicely; heat shrinks readily back from whence it came and remains as tough as ever when it cools… but this particular piece!
   It took a whole day to get it to here and it still wasn’t perfect.

   Then we gave it to John-Dipsy who went to work on it in the paddling pool getting the paint off. These panels always look so much happier when they’re clean.

   What you might also notice here is that there seems to be a chunk missing all of a sudden and you’d be right.
   That portion of the panel was all stretched and buckled and was taking everything else with it yet the damage was very localised.
   The executive decision was taken to cut it out and deal with it as a separate piece and as soon as we did that the rest of the panel sprung flat as a board – good call, we thought.
   We’ll treat the small piece individually then weld it back into position when it’s learned to behave.

*

   We had a boatful on Sunday – the next generation of Bluebird nuts. Their collective age didn’t add up to forty but one day it will…
   We finished up early and took the little-uns for a cruise out on the lake because the sonar had chucked it.
   Well, not quite. The sonar performed flawlessly only to have our off-the-shelf computer hard-drive go mammaries-up and leave us without a system. The job stopped for a forty quid drive.
   What’s so bitterly disappointing is that the sonar this time is definitely so new you can’t buy one yet. It’s actually the only one of its type in the known universe and we’re lucky enough to be testing it for the manufacturer.
   It spent Friday in the test tank being calibrated, which is why I was unable to make the book launch but back to that in a mo’.

   Can’t divulge too much about its capabilities as it’s a commercially sensitive development except to say that rather than running line after parallel line through the wreck site then mosaicking them together all we had to do this time was drive down the middle of the lake watching the whole place unfold with the same pin-sharp resolution we’re used to.
   Then the HDD failed!
   Not to bother, we’ll fix it.
   On a happier note, see who joined us this weekend, our guest of honour – Mr Hannarack himself on his first trip out with us since May 2001.

   He was in town, along with many others, for the launch of the new book by David de Lara and Kevin Desmond at the Ruskin.
   And what a book – not the tacky paperbacks we’re used to.
   A literary slab of the richest chocolate gateau with lashings of fresh cream… Hundreds of colour pictures that dish up an insight into the life of Donald and his team during the fifties and sixties as they traveled the world breaking records.
   A beautiful tome to be cherished.

*

   In fairness the outrigger was severely mangled, in fact it was torn in half so we expected some lost metal, but now it’s repaired and ready to go but the above fragment could take no more and had to be consigned to the box. This box is six inches cubed so it ought to see the job through but we’re not promising and may have to move up to a shoe box in the fullness of time. Maybe the ‘expert’ was right all along?

   The bulkhead it’s standing on is OK though – off to the paint shop for that one.

12th March 2007 - 15:00 (click on an image to see it in a hi-res pop-up window)

(Thanks to Mr Rivet and John Getty of PDS for the pics this week)

We’re having to explore what appeared to be some of the less likely options in the lake.

    We said from the off that one day we’d return for the missing piece of frame but despite back-breaking efforts by the team, new members and old, it’s proving very elusive.

   We’ve conducted three digital-sidescan surveys with our state-of-the-art Tritech sonar and processed deadly-accurate mosaics using Coda Geosurvey.

   We’ve taken the resulting data and deployed a scanning sonar, also from Tritech’s armoury, that’s so new that I’m not sure you can even buy one yet, on each and every suspect position to confirm the targets.

   We’ve chucked two ROV’s over the side (one carrying yet another sonar) as well as several divers and we’ve lifted a small mountain of scrap.

   We could, were there sufficient interest, take visitors on an underwater tour of three plastic bottles (there were four to begin with but we lifted one today just to be rid of it) two tree branches, innumerable decaying piles of tumbleweed and a hiking boot but a five foot lump of steel is playing games with us.

   Where the hell is it hiding?

   Mind you, it helps not a jot that visibility is still in the order of a metre or so and after the explosion at the surface everything fell a hundred and fifty feet into brown gloop the likes of which I imagined unique to the planet until baby Lucy was born.

   Not being able to find something is frustrating like you’d not believe so to get away from it for a day or two and clear our clogged brains we took a glimpse at some of the more outlying parts of our project.

*

One is our little museum, which now owns Bluebird and where we’ll one day home-port her for good or die in the attempt.

    Our aim this year is to push some extra trade through the door and to this end we’ve been supplied with promotional leaflets (FOC as ever) by NB-Group.

    John Rolt over at NB has been putting some smart little flyers together for us as well as producing that beautiful calendar full of Steve Rothery’s pic’s.

   The team has also been chasing people towards the museum every weekend and Mr and Mrs Rivet designed an A4 poster that’s popped up here and there about the place. The result is a noticeable increase in the number of visitors and it’s only March.

   We’ve not expanded this promotion beyond the village either so results thus far are most encouraging.

   I think it’s beginning to dawn that the virile Donald, though not so much the philosopher or art critic, certainly had more charisma than poor, incurably impotent Ruskin (his ex chucked him out because he couldn’t get it up) and so may entice more punters through the door – but don’t forget to hang up your wet coats, which, while we’re thinking of that particular Tweedy, proves that every day is a school day on the Bluebird Project.

   I mean, did you know that tweed is made using human urine?

   I didn’t ’til Mrs Rivet told me.

   I’d simply assumed that being deathly boring people, generally speaking, the majority of Tweedies live alone and that their standards of personal hygiene inevitably slip a little.

   How was I to know their clothing is prepared for this eventuality by design?

   It’s little wonder they wanted a separate cloakroom for damp coats – I naively imagined it was for the good of our big blue boat!

*

What was I on about? Ah yes, another outstanding item is our frame; K7’s spine, in the capable hands of PDS where every week for the past month and a half we’ve hoped to roll up triumphantly with our missing piece of steelwork.

   The time came to go visit them as they’re ready to start the tricky stuff.

   Putting in place the personnel, materials, tooling and processes has taken time but the crew at PDS are one hundred percent professional and right behind the project so it’s to be done properly or not at all.

   John is very much a man after my own heart –

   ‘Yes Mr Customer, we’ll gladly move into a glass and stainless steel office with pretty girls in reception, designer furniture and original works of art on the walls if you’re happy to pay for it…’

   It seems that Rolls-Royce would rather buy top-quality components from a modest workshop in a quiet corner of Lancashire staffed by people who care about the standard of the work they turn out than pay for ornamental fountains and such.

   The job cards read like a Who’s-Who of jet engines; Trent, RB 211 and Olympus to name only a handful, which is particularly reassuring as one of the difficulties with our frame repairs lies in Ken Norris’ obsessive over-engineering of everything to do with K7.

   It was almost as though he settled on a good, solid aluminium hull then decided it would be even better with what amounts to a crane jib up the middle to make it stronger. Add some extra rivets, a bit more aluminium here and there and by the way let’s have that crane jib made from 60 tons-tensile steel.

   K7’s frame comprises a material you can’t even buy anymore (something I pointed out to the Hapless Lottery Fund when the idea of building an accurate ‘interpretational model’ came up) so it’s a damn good job we sourced a sufficient quantity of the right stuff before Tyco Tubes, who bought up Accles and Pollock, sold off their existing stock and stopped making it.

   Job-one at PDS was to jig up the frame then puzzle out how to work with this exotic material.

   Bluebird’s frame was assembled to the jig used to fabricate the frame for Quicksilver and pulled down so she could creak herself straight. She proved remarkably true considering what she’s been through.

   The team at PDS then went in search of repair strategies prior to laying a cutting torch on the real deal.

   Now here’s how it ought to be done.

  What you see above is a test section of T60 box, identical to that comprising our frame with an area in the centre machined to half its original thickness then a row of holes drilled through the thinner area.

  Why?

  Because it accurately simulates the type of localized corrosion to be found here and there on the frame.

   And above is the same test piece with the simulated damage TIG welded and ready for dressing.

   Given some titivating it comes up like this – damage repaired with no loss of material or heat distortion.

   But in some places more substantial repairs may be needed. Not to worry, PDS is ahead of the game.

   If you want a small repair patch making for something just pop over to John’s place and they’ll make one up for you.

   Now that’s just showing off – but at the same time, the frame is part of the project we just don’t have to think about. It’ll be spot on.

*

   On the other hand, something we puzzle over most days, is how to get the last bits of this boat out of the grip of thick brown mud in a black-dark lake a hundred and fifty feet beneath the surface.

   We’ve tried baby ROV’s and on this score I must make a public apology because in the last diary update I moaned about the thruster through the hull problem and how a seal failure would cost the life of the entire vehicle.

   Well, they’ve fixed it, or so they tell me. At least on later machines, ours will still turn into an ornamental fish tank if that seal fails.

   And the grabber with a grip like Julian Clarey on a sledge hammer… Well they’ve not improved on that just yet but it did redeem itself slightly last weekend when I grabbed the edge of a piece of scrap and had a little go at getting it loose from the mud.

   As usual, we tugged on the ROV tether – or rather the ever-dedicated Novie did – though as he has a touch like a supertanker running aground the usual and expected thing happened. The grabber, which seems to be made of marsh-mallow, fainted and slipped off the scrap.

   Not to be cheated of our prize I quickly swam the ROV back in and grabbed it again. This time I worked the thrusters side to side as Novie exerted a few tons of delicate teasing on the tether.

   This time the scrap moved but again the glutinous mud, which is thicker than most confectionary, won the day.

   I stuffed the ROV into the gloop a third time and grabbed again; then with someone leaning on the ‘close’ button of the grabber, which is about as much use as thumping the buttons on the phone in the hope that the person you’re trying to call has got off the line at last, we had another go.

   This time the mud yielded and we raised the bar where the lifting capacity of our marsh-mallow grabber is concerned.

   Up came the biggest piece of scrap lifted remotely in the history of our project.

   They’re all grinning because that was hard-won piece.

   It’s a section of sponson top and if you look carefully to the left of Rob’s hand you’ll see that two of the paint flakes have flecks of white in them. It’s part of the lettering that used to read ‘do not stand here’ across the curved sponson fairing. We recovered the other half of it in 2001.

   It can’t go back as a sponson top but it’ll bash into a nice fairing for the inboard end of the front spar. The other bit will make the other fairing and the piece with the writing on will go into our ‘artifact-rich’ display at the museum. Reclamation of original material…

   The fact remains that if you want to lift heavy bits you need some of these…

  But what you do first is apply one of these…

   …Tritech’s latest fully-digital, broadband scanning sonar, to finding some of this…

   No, not a telly, there’s a bit of scrap on the screen and it intrigued us for three reasons.

   Firstly it seemed to be a shaft and a bearing of some sort though we couldn’t imagine what it was and this made it fascinating.

   Secondly, it was obviously connected to a section of frame and that’s what we’re after this time around.

   And finally, and for reasons we can’t begin to explain, this piece of heavy structure from deep within the boat had somehow managed to come to rest a full thirty-six metres south of the next nearest piece of wreckage. How on earth?

   It fought us for most of the weekend but yielded to our divers eventually. It’s Donald’s throttle pedal and a most poignant piece. It’s the bit that did all the damage. If only he’d been a little gentler with it we’d all have nothing to do on a weekend; at least nothing this interesting.

   Divers Sal Cartwright and Tim York after a successful dip.

   Tim is a great lad, a pal of Sally’s who hails from Yorkshire somewhere. He fitted in immediately and gave us all a good laugh by failing to heed advice from the old hands on his diving technique and crashed unceremoniously into the lakebed in a blinding plume of mud.

   He didn’t fall for it a second time.

   Novie guards another piece of battered aluminium, Bluebird’s foredeck this time, complete with that little track that the canopy roller used to fit into. That bit was small enough to shift with the grabber but for the exceptionally high quality mud it was stuck into so the divers got it instead.

   The piece below, on the other hand, is the biggest section recovered this year, it was lifted with the grabber and pulled from the thickest ooze that Coniston Water has to offer but not due to any improved grabbing prowess. It got snagged on the front of the ROV so we pulled on the tether.

   “It’s come up a foot,” someone announced as they stared at the depth reading.

   “Well keep pulling,” I said, “It might come up the other hundred and forty six.”

   And it did.

   It’s the bulkhead from the back of the cockpit and another piece that lay hauntingly close to Donald himself during the crash.

   The stripe of green chromate primer up the right hand side is where the pilot’s seat-pan was riveted to the bulkhead and on the left, that ragged piece of chromated alloy is part of the seat itself. If you look carefully there are two holes near the top edge. These are where a spanner would be inserted to tighten the bolts that held the safety harness – spooky indeed but it’ll all go back into the finished boat.

*

   And finally, for now at least, this we absolutely had to show you.

   “Where’s your obligatory silly hat?” we teased Rob one afternoon.

   Now Rob is a serious player but he’s very much a ‘make it’ rather than a ‘buy it’ sort of bloke so one day on his way past the charity shop he spotted a plastic sunflower...

   And he needed it that day too. We got blown off the water but Rob’s incongruous sunflower didn’t budge.

9th March 2007 - 14:00 (click on an image to see it in a hi-res pop-up window)

Remember I mentioned how we took the latest, greatest and most fantastic sonar to the party thinking it would give us an advantage.
   Well how it works is this.
   Transducers on the towfish fire sound pulses into the water, which then travel outwards at about 1500 metres per second, strike objects on the lakebed then reflect back to be converted by boffin's software into an acoustic image of what's down there; but there's a compromise.
   The higher the frequency, the better is the resolution because of the short wavelength of the pulse.
   Maximum theoretical resolution is about one wavelength but these high frequency pulses die very quickly so range is compromised.
   Low frequencies, on the other hand, will give much greater range but lower resolution.
   What our new sonar is able to do is put several pulses in the water simultaneously at different frequencies to give the best of both worlds and this leads to the fantastically annoying problem of picking up every plastic bottle and waterlogged branch in the whole lake!
   We stayed up late to process the first batch of sidescan data.
   We use a post-processing package called Coda-Geosurvey and it's the dog's banana. It allows us to play with the data to our heart's content and produce a superbly accurate mosaic of the mud forty-one metres down. Another Rivet-family mandrel - Jenny, or 'Skinny' as I call her, sat up way past her bed time to do the maths as these young minds seem to work much faster than ours even when bed time has been and gone. Naturally, Skinny isn't remotely interested as she's not quite forty but as a special favour to her dad's mates.

And by midnight we had images like this with deadly accurate positional data to go with it.

   Think of the above as a black and white aerial photo of the lakebed with the water removed.
   The rectangular depression in the mud with the small red circle beside it is the resulting hole from when we lifted K7 in 2001. This is the lakebed in 2007.
   The larger red circle bottom left is a pile of weed clinging to the lighting rig left in place after we recovered Donald. That's where he was in relation to his boat.
   The Coroner made two rules. One was that we video everything, which we did, and the other was that we mark the site just in case who we thought was Donald actually turned out to be a drug dealer from Manchester and we had to go back for his wallet.
   Then came the tricky bit; every small piece of debris lying about down there may, or may not, be Bluebird wreckage so we have to check them all.
   Worse still, the sonar can see through the mud to an extent so what is readily visible on the images may not be visible at all to the cameras.
   We very nearly ended up having to salvage most of the cockpit twice too because the bits we lifted in 2001 came within an ace of going back into the lake.
   Remember how the Hapless Lottery lot realised a little too late that they were about to be sacked and in a fit of panic offered to fund a replica. Or an 'interpretational model' as they called it because they categorically don't fund replicas.
   Remember also that when challenged about having built their interpretational model and asked what they'd then do with the original remains of K7 they began bleating about a 'sensitive' way to display the wreck?
   I recall, around this time, sitting across the table from a high-ranking museologists - the same one, in fact, who came up with the cloakroom for wet coats idea in case the unexpected arrival of damp visitors bought on a change in humidity that destroyed K7 before our eyes - and I was trying to push the idea through his museological skull that Gina would not allow the cockpit wreckage to go on display, sensitively or otherwise.
   Now that oughtn't to be a difficult concept to grasp but this particular museologists didn't get it at all.
   "Something has to be done with it," was his argument.
   "We'll chuck it back into the lake if we have to but it's not going on display," I explained but this evinced only an incredulous expression and a fluttering of stale tweed.
   "Chuck it in the lake," spluttered our museologists. "You. you can't do that."
   The aghast expression appeared carved there.
   "Why not?" I asked shrugging. "It's not going on view for the public and it's not going to lie in a dusty cupboard for the rest of time either so it's better off back where it came from."
   The tweed collar seemed to shrink around his neck, throttling tighter as his eyes bulged and purple infused an already livid complexion.
   "You'll never get permission," he choked. "You'll need to speak with the park authority, the National Twist, Tony Blair.
   Threatening us with a more bureaucratic approach seemed to buoy the museologists's confidence - briefly.
   Oxygen began to flow again and his stunned look became one of mild smugness but his collapse into utter disbelief was sudden and complete when I interrupted to explain.
   "I don't need permission; I need my Land-Rover and my boat. I'll take the scrap out one dark night and bin it over the wall. Simple."
   A mortified pause followed as my preposterous concept ricocheted off the museological brain without engaging a single cell.
   "You can't just."
   "Yes I can and if necessary I bloody-well will. Then if you want your sensitive display you'd best hire some divers."
   "But, but that's absolutely outrageous. You cannot just."
   "What's stopping me?" I asked.
   "Well. I agree that physically it can be done but you can't just go flinging. I mean, what about the meetings and the committees and."
   "Physically will do for me," I said with a finality that resulted in huffed hands being stuffed deep amongst the tweed and not another word spoken on the matter.
   That museologists simply could not comprehend that we could, and definitely would, take those bits of wreckage back to Coniston, launch the boat and put them back where they came from.
   Nor, presumably, has he any idea how close we came to doing just that and having to lift that lot a second time.
   And therein lay another problem - how to lift what was left as all that remained was small fragments. We knew that many of the remaining bits would be lightweight so maybe we'd get by without divers this time but how to do it?

*

   Speaking of divers, here's another one.

   John (Dipsy) Barron.
   He's dived with us for many years and earned his nickname when buying toys for his kids a while back. He often pops into the workshop and happily cleans something or makes the tea.
   This time as we had only one remaining strengthener to make for the outriggers - there are about a dozen all told - so we gave him a chunk of aluminium and talked him through making a genuine bit for K7.
   First he marked off a small strip of 1.5mm thick H22 marine-grade alloy then folded it into a right angle section.

   Alain, by the way, was busy trying to dismantle and clean the various machines and getting nowhere because Dipsy kept borrowing them.
   Next, the two pieces, old and new, were clamped together and drilled full of holes.

   Then our new tin-basher spent most of the afternoon carefully fettling his work of art with an assortment of files.

   Until, there we go, another perfect doubler for one of the angles that connect the outriggers to the outer skin.
   Considering that there are twenty three frames in the boat numbered from stern to bow with a minimum of two outriggers per frame and at least two of these angle pieces per outrigger, the fact that we've only had to produce about a dozen parts so far is fair testimony to the overall condition of the boat.
   John was delighted with his handiwork and so were we.

   Alain finally got to start dismantling and cleaning Will's metal-bending machines in peace.
   As we're working with aluminium and the equipment has seen some abuse we're stripping all the components that come into contact with the alloy and putting a mirror shine on them. A scratch in the steel of the folding machine is instantly printed onto the alloy every time it's used so everything is getting a polish.

   And you can see Rob in the background there beavering away at the blasting cabinet.
   Rather thoughtlessly, we installed the cabinet at a height that suits most of us but unfortunately not Rob.
   As he's tall in a Richard Hammond sort of way, we overlooked his requirements if he's to grit blast anything so as our resident 'person of restricted growth', though he prefers 'short arse', Rob drags a plastic crate over to stand on whenever put on blasting duty.
   Great bloke is Rob.
   Then another weekend came around again and we found ourselves back on the lake.

*

   Predator set out for the crash site in flat calm, misty conditions. (Thanks to Mrs Rivet for this stunning image)

   We'd decided to try a new ploy on the last awkward bits of K7's front end.
   We've owned a small, commercially available ROV since our original mission in 2001 and despite putting many hours on it and trying to fall in love with the thing we keep concluding that it's an unreliable, maintenance-intensive, poorly conceived little beast.
   It's a superbly weak design in that the down-thruster motor is mounted within the main hull with a seal to the outside so if you lose the seal you flood the entire vehicle at outrageous cost and inconvenience.
   I know of only one person to own one of these and not have it fill with water at one time or another.
   Ours has filled twice!
   We've messed with our vehicle over the years, redesigned the thrusters to give them sufficient power to actually get out of its own way and considered various solutions to the thruster though the hull problem yet it remains a twitchy and contrary piece of machinery that can just about carry a camera underwater if you nurture and cajole it.
   One day we'll get a few spare moments and design something to get the job done properly.
   However, our negative conclusions, we were assured by the manufacturer, were due to us having an early example of the machine and that all we need do was invest several thousands of pounds in upgrades and all our problems would go away.
   Not true as it transpired. A good pal of ours also owns one of these and his is the very latest and beyond.
   It's smart enough to include uprated thrusters, on-board sonar as well as fore and aft looking cameras but to our disappointment we found it even twitchier than ours, top-heavy with all the extra kit it has to carry and it still has the down-thruster connected through the hull. When will they learn?
   One thing it did boast, however, was a small grabber; a manipulator that could be opened and closed with the flick of a switch.
   This, we hoped, would obviate the need for divers this time around and speed things up immensely.
   Er. no.
   To our painful dismay the thing proved incapable of pulling the skin off a rice pudding and would, I suspect, produce little more than mild pleasure were someone to place its jaws either side of their wedding vegetables and hit the 'close' button.
   It did, however, successfully lift some very light pieces in the hands of our mystery ROV pilot and one larger section by dint of becoming entangled with it rather than any worthwhile lifting ability.

   This wasn't just about recovering bits of scrap either we were also providing a platform to test a brand new acoustic navigation system masterminded by our camera-shy, guest ROV Pilot. This piece of equipment is so brilliantly clever it could overlay the real-time position of the vehicle onto a sidescan mosaic that we'd prepared earlier and proved most impressive.
   The gubbins to make this possible is still in prototype stage but does it work.
   Then the scrap began to arrive.

   Quite what a lad of eight can find interesting about a buckled sponson former from a jet-powered hydroplane lost in an horrific accident forty years ago then recovered by underwater robots one can't hope to comprehend.
   Doesn't he have any TV to watch?
   Yet despite recovering several pieces of this kind of size and weight our missing spaceframe section remained elusive at the end of another weekend.
   Next time we'd bring some divers and do the job properly.

2nd March 2007 - 15:00 (click on an image to see it in a hi-res pop-up window)

The rope pulled tight, a straight polypropylene line descending from sunlight to blackness through one hundred and fifty feet of cold water. But what hung on the end of it?
   We'd find out soon enough because with the divers safely back aboard and the ROV on station to watch over proceedings the time had come to haul whatever fragment of K7 we'd located this time back into the sunlight after more than forty years beneath the water.

*

Having taken K7 completely to bits - and that was always a necessity no matter whatever else happened to her - we're now in the gratifying position of watching our pile of cleaned and painted panels growing daily, seeing long-seized pumps spinning back to life - and glowering at our frame with a big chunk still missing from the left hand cockpit wall.
   We'd finally arrived at the point where we must return to the lake in search of the remaining pieces of our big blue boat.
   The order of play went something like.

      * 1997, mad divers go looking for the wreck because it's there.
      * October 2000, Gina asks if we can locate her dad.
      * January 2001, we obtain her permission to recover cockpit wreckage to aid this process.
      * February 2001, decision taken to lift the main hull.
      * May 2001, Donald located - job wrapped up.


   But in all the confusion we'd left part of the cockpit behind and so we promised to return in search of it when the time came.
   Treatment of the cockpit would become an aspect of our project that bamboozled the HL-effers. No surprise there.
   They babbled on about joining a 'replica' cockpit to the original hull without ever having a clue or getting their heads around the fact that this was never our intention.
   The cockpit is part of the main frame with a double thickness floor beneath, a big spar through the middle and some light alloy skins to keep the water out.
   Supporting the skins is a multitude of formers, outriggers and small strengtheners that allow the outer surfaces to maintain their shape whilst clinging securely to the frame in all but a high-speed accident.
   Out of this conglomeration the only parts we need to fabricate from new are some replacement outer skins as even some of the originals are still useable.
   So it's hardly going to be a replica, is it?
   Another safe haven of the Hapless Lottery Fund when under attack was the old 'value for money' chestnut so I'm sure they'll be delighted to learn that we've at last found something to do that's truly disastrous in that department.
   Oh yes - our latest exercise ought to be roughly equivalent to standing in windblown rain ripping up twenties but worry not, the volunteers did it all for fun and for free!
   We finally went back to the lake for the bits we'd left behind in 2001. And by the way, thanks to the Rivet family for most of these pics.

   For the first time since May 2001 we launched our trusty survey boat, Predator into Coniston Water and went in search of 'scrap'.
   We called the smashed pieces of K7 'scrap' from the outset to the abject horror of our speed-freak observers, Novie and Paul, but they came around to our irreverent ways eventually.
   After all, it does look like scrap.
   We knew there wasn't much left but every shard of torn metal can either show us how it was put together or, better still, be re-incorporated into the finished boat.
   But this time, with many new faces and a few older originals, we discovered an additional problem that we'd never even considered.
   You see, an 'expert', hired, respected and paid for way back when to advise on the viability of our project clearly explained in writing that what we're doing was a waste of time and money because no one under the age of forty would be especially interested.
   Remember this from our first failed lottery bid in 2005, it arrived on the same shovel as the loss of original fabric nonsense.
   Using a food analogy here, if I may, what follows is a back-street prawn curry after fifteen pints of lager.

   Almost everyone in the UK who is aged over 40 will know the story [of Bluebird] and be familiar with the footage; on the other hand most people under 40 are unfamiliar with the events and, when told of them, often evince little interest...

   .followed by the inevitable bubbly rumbling in the guts.

   'The question that arises, therefore, is whether the undoubted national enthusiasm for speed records, and for Campbell in particular, that characterised the 1950's and 1960's, really represents a significant aspect of national heritage.
   If it is the case that interest in the story will further diminish over time, then the Bluebird Project would not be value for money in HLF terms, despite its undoubted romantic appeal.'

   .and finally, a too-late crippled gallop to the pot followed by a hot torrent of male bovine excrement.
   
   'There is no doubt that the story of Donald Campbell and Bluebird is a dramatic, romantic and tragic one that is still alive and vivid for the local population of Coniston. It will probably remain so for a longer period in the Lake District than in the rest of the UK. Despite this, the project is not one that can be strongly recommended since the history of water speed records does not represent a major aspect of the national heritage and this significance will probably decrease for future generations.'

   Oh to be an 'expert'.
   The bloody Romans would've decreased in significance too if not for publicly funded holes all over Northumberland from which their discarded junk is avidly collected by manic archaeologists!
   I don't know anyone who remembers the Romans and yet interest persists in those leather-skirted blokes of old.
   Never mind. but because 'experts' presumably have greater insight and wisdom than us mere mortals our new difficulty then lay in how to break the devastating news to the kids that they weren't supposed to be interested when surrounded by Peli-Cases bursting with kit. All this gear with more KPI (Knobs Per Inch) than any X-Box 360 and in the name of a real-life treasure hunt too.
   Not a black and white photograph on the wall of the Bluebird Café as some would have K7 consigned for all eternity - this was to be the real deal.
   'Mrs Rivet and her little mandrels', as Tony Dargavel so eloquently put it, arrived ready for adventure as did Rob's missus and Rachel with our little one.

   What was once the exclusive province of single, depressed blokes with a collective death-wish and subconscious desires to impress their mates by drowning or freezing on a weekend had become a cheery family affair except for kids who are supposed to be going cold-turkey when separated from their Play Stations.
   That said we couldn't seem to convince them that we weren't up to something exciting.

   I mean. little lads and ROV's go together like ham and pickle...
   Meet young Robert Aldred, or Boggart as his mum calls him getting acquainted with a small swimming robot.
   And here's Rob Ford's three year-old granddaughter who knows that Bluebird crashed and now her granddad is putting it back together again. It's a lost cause trying to persuade the kids that this really isn't their sort of thing.
   They're totally enthralled.

   Opting to deal with this glitch later we cracked on and chucked our latest sonar towfish at Novie to spanner onto the end of the cable. He seemed glad to be back in action.

   And so it wasn't long before we were side-scanning again.

   Great fun!

*

But that's not the whole story.
   We've not neglected the knife and fork work in the workshop just because we've been on a jolly to Coniston.
   The latest challenge is to deal with some of the smaller pieces of K7's structure where there's simply too much corrosion to slap in a spoonful of filler, sand it smooth then have the paint-shop bury our sins.
   How to deal with this?

   This is a curved support, and there are quite a few of them, from between the outriggers and the outer skin of the boat.
   It's simply unacceptable to put such a heavily damaged component back and expect the finished result to be safe.
   What to do?
   OK, start by chopping a length of marine-grade alloy as supplied by Dean at ThyssenKrupp on the guillotine loaned by Will Grime.
   Then use Will's folding brake to turn it into a ninety-seven degree angle section (that's what the drawing says we needed on this occasion)
   We then whack it with our magical hammer - as we are wont to do - and repeat as necessary.
   Lo-and-behold, lots of new twiddly bits to secure K7's outer skins in perfect safety.

   But you didn't really think we'd simply chuck the damaged bits in the bin, did you?
   Not a chance.
   'Loss of original fabric' is about as popular around here as paedophilia!
   You see, it's exactly the same amount of work to replicate these items as it is to make a strengthener that fits precisely inside the corroded part thus saving the original from the skip and ensuring its reinstatement in the finished craft albeit with a shiny, new bedfellow along for the ride.

   There you go - pay attention museologists - no loss, etc.
   Fully reversible in case our grandchildren ever want to see a wrecked boat and we'll even paint the replacement parts an obviously different colour in accordance with the teachings of conservator-Chris so that future students of K7 don't get confused.
   'Conserveering' at it's best.

*

Meanwhile, back at the lake and our unending battle between electronics and water.
   The sonar system we have now is way beyond anything we were using back in 2001 and this, we hoped, would be a major advantage.
   This was not to prove the case but more of that later.
   Sidescan is truly a black art.
   The fish must be flown in perfect straight lines at constant speed and uniform altitude.
   Then you need to know precisely where the boat is, where it's been and where it's going next.
   A mental 3-D model of the lakebed topography is essential too along with a damn good idea of where the fish is relative to it because in this case it's wandering about in the dark 80m behind the boat and only 4m clear of the mud.
   Then you need someone on the winch who can read the signs and manage the fish height and a sonar operator who can continually play with the settings to wring the very best data from an extremely dynamic situation.
   It was a knackered crew that hauled Predator out of the water that evening and retired to Graeme's house to examine the digital treasure safely stored on the sonar computer's hard drive.

   Tomorrow we'd find out if more scrap had been revealed.

9th February 2007 - 12:00 (click on an image to see it in a hi-res pop-up window)

You're going to like this.
   If you've followed the chaotic story of K7 over the past few years and read these pages regularly then chances are this'll put a big smile on your face.
   Just to recap - back in 2000 we'd been playing with the idea of finding Bluebird for some time and so were asked to try and find Donald too; he'd been missing for a good while and though we believed it possible we were not totally confident of success.
   Lifting the smashed cockpit was sure to offer up clues to his whereabouts and the discovery that it was preserved in astonishingly good condition led to the decision to lift everything else.
   K7 rose into daylight on the 8th March 2001 before a global audience - crapping myself that day, I was - then was tucked away whilst her future was decided.
   November 01, Gina decides we're to rebuild the old boat.
   September 06 we make a start. The bit in between left nothing but frustration and anger for all involved because we knew things.
   Like, for example, that people under the age of forty would be interested despite an 'expert' asserting otherwise.
   I'm under forty (just) for flippety-blink's sake!! (Just one of the replacement words I've invented for use in place of those I'd usually use whilst my daughter is learning to speak.)
   We knew we wouldn't lose original material either.
   We could look into the nooks and crannies of K7's innards and visualise what the archaeologists couldn't - cleaned and painted panels - if only they'd let us loose.
   "Show me which bits we'll have to chuck away," I challenged a specialist in Roman toilets one afternoon.
   No answer, as usual.
   Well here's your answer.

   Remember this image from the strip-down? Here you can see all the small outrigger panels that supported the outer skin. And in close-up.

   Now we could look at this and see that all it really needs is cleaning and painting.
   If it wasn't cleaned and painted it would ultimately turn to white powder and be lost forever but archaeologists know that a Roman toilet buried in the ground when Julius Caesar was a boy can then be dugup again in the do-gooder-age without significant deterioration. They then simply apply this to anything else that's been buried for a while and bleat about conservation.
   Metallurgy and materials science would be a different discipline if the same applied to this stuff and conservation in this case means stripping, corrosion removal and repainting. Our mate Chris taught us that, now he is an expert.
   So back to the action.
   Chemmetal-Trevor's paint-stripping bath is one of the most impressive things we've ever seen and continues to remove all kinds of paint with no addition of any new chemicals or maintenance of any sort whatsoever.
   Our blasting cabinet works brilliantly on the end of our hybrid petrol/electric compressor and the filler and paints supplied by the guys at Indestructible Paints Ltd are equally staggering.
   All in all, a great recipe.
   And so, with the stripping and blasting out of the way the outriggers looked like this.

   What you see here is the bare metal. The darker areas are surface corrosion but as it's only in the order of a few tenths of a millimetre deep, Indestructible's filler copes with it easily. (Below)

   Now comes the clever bit.
   With the filler sanded and smooth we took the finished parts along to Bill and Debbie at Bettablast.
   Bill is permanently frustrated by customers who want the quickest job for the least amount of money then complain when the paint comes off a week later.
   What seems to infuriate him even more is losing customers to companies who duly deliver this falsely economical option then having to pick up the pieces when the customer comes back with a peeling, rusty job and the need to throw good money after bad.
   You wouldn't skimp on welding or fabrication so why skimp on protecting your investment with the most thorough surface preparation and appropriate coatings?
   Bluebird K7 will be done right and that's that.
   No expense spared - though Bill, like everyone else, is working for free on this job - so our big blue boat is going to be spot-on.

   That's why Monday morning found one of Bettablast's ovens mostly full of Bluebird bits.
   (Ignore the orange things; they're nothing to do with us)
   The panels are that golden green colour because they're already painted with chromate primer and hung in the oven to bring the material up to temperature.
   It says on the box that the powder-coat needs ten minutes at two-hundred degrees C or whatever to cure properly. What it doesn't say is that this is the required temperature of the substrate to which the paint must adhere so if you shove a slab of freshly-painted material into the oven and leave it for ten minutes you'll be lucky if it reaches temperature let alone spends the full time cooking as it should.
   Remember - false economy.
   Nothing spared here. The panels were brought right up to temperature then plucked from the oven whilst hot.

   .hung up and painted.

   .then returned to the oven to stove for the requisite ten minutes.
   Think about this for a moment. If we keep pushing panels through this process - and we will - we'll eventually arrive at the last one.
   Then if PDS put the frame back together - which they will - and we keep sticking the finished parts back onto it.

   Right, this is not history destroyed or new material. It's the same old K7 we pulled from the lake in 2001 simply cleaned, painted and guaranteed to last forever.
   I'm not going to say any more except to thank Bill and Debbie at Bettablast for a proper job - again - and to invite you all to feast your eyes.

8th February 2007 - 14:30 (click on an image to see it in a hi-res pop-up window)

Plenty happening here but none of it particularly thrilling to the casual observer.
   Mostly we're cleaning up panels so when the time comes to put 'em back we're working with spotless-clean material.
   It's possible to get them mostly clean with a simple soaking in Rob's paddling pool - well at least until someone's enthusiasm resulted in a puncture of our pond liner. Rob's busy fixing it as we speak.
   Oddly, the chemical doesn't lift the paint off the floor.
   Then the fun begins as eradicating the last corrosion strongholds comes down to manually picking them out with a hardened-steel spike then brushing acid into the hole to finish it off. A painstaking and thoroughly boring job so seats were improvised and the boys set-to.

   Meanwhile, 'The Rivet' did what he does best and drilled all afternoon. Most of K7 is stripped now but we'd saved this bit until thoroughly up to speed with dismantling the more damaged parts of the boat.
   It's the floor from directly under Bluebird's nose. The first section to strike the water and where the so-called 'dragons teeth' or flow directors were fixed.
   Dave spent a whole day getting them loose. We'll decide how to treat the floor when it's completely taken apart.
   It sustained surprisingly little damage but will still need some remedial tin-bashing.

   One or two of the bulkheads took a tweak in the crash too.
   What seems to have happened is that the cockpit floor, including the bit above, which was knocked off in one piece was of a different construction to that beneath the engine compartment in that it had an inner skin for Donald to rest his feet on. This meant that much of it was assembled using blind rivets - pop-rivet sort of things, which aren't as strong as the solid rivets used further back.
   When K7 smacked into the lake surface the inner and outer skins, which sandwich an inch-thick layer of corrugations, parted company and went in opposite directions. The inner skin was driven upwards with the corrugations still attached while the outer skin went down and backwards.
   This violent process continued until it reached the start of the solid rivets just aft of the main spar where the solids refused to yield whereupon the water found another way and blasted upwards, splitting the corrugations across the width of the boat, then into the bay abaft the fuel tank where all sorts of havoc ensued.
   More metal-bashing was required as a result and thereby created another museological conundrum.
   I can hear them now.

   "You can't straighten that, you'll destroy history!"
   How I'd love to see the Titanic in all her glory. to pace her luxurious corridors. But that's out of the question.
   So much history exists only as images.
   Therefore, and bearing this in mind whilst considering our bent pieces of alloy, it's easy to justify (another cornerstone of the museologists's credo) straightening the bends.
   Destroy history. We'll take its picture so its previous form is preserved forever as an image.
   Putting the bent panel back in the hole isn't an option because this is a rebuild and making a new one would result in the dreaded LOOF (Loss Of Original Fabric) so we went 'conserveering' again and took the paint off to see what we had.

   Then we whacked it with a hammer.

   What an improvement. Still needs that split welding up and some finishing but you can see that it's now good enough to go back into the finished boat.
   This one responded equally well. It's a half-height bulkhead from immediately aft of the main spar.

   We took dozens of photos from all angles to record its condition as a result of the crash then battered this one flat too.

   Well, we didn't so much ding them flat as carefully set everything up with clamps and blocks of wood in a hundred different ways in order to gently warm the metal and push the bends out in a precisely controlled fashion.
   Then followed many hours with rubber mallets, wooden slappers, a polished steel dolly and a panel-beater's sandbag to bring them to where they are now.
   There's some final fettling to do when the frame returns but now we have two more bits of original Bluebird awaiting inclusion in the reassembly process that would otherwise have been relegated boring museum exhibits had the Tweedies taken hold.
   What we've also properly confirmed, and those clueless 'experts' are really going to have their parade urinated on this time, is that there are literally dozens of structural panels from the cockpit and even some exterior skins from up there that can be similarly reworked then included in the rebuild.
   We'd long suspected this was the case but until we could drill rivets to get at them and assess their suitability for recycling it was difficult to be certain.
   What this means is that we're able to rescue trashed components from the very heart of the crash damaged area... Show you how that works next time.
   Most of the bulkheads are now ready to go.

   And I hope the Tweedie who abused their position as an 'expert' to have our project rejected on the basis that we'd lose all that original material is looking on and learning.
   Most of these components need no more than a coat of paint and new rivets to put them back.
   But here's the important part. Take a squint at the large rectangle of cardboard they're lying on and have a guess at what's under it.

*

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, lived a diver whose grandparents were shipwrecked in an atrocious act of war and went to the bottom of the ocean with eight hundred of their fellows, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struma.
   This diver, knowing that our team was fairly handy at locating lost ships, asked our advice on the best way to look for the wreck.
   As things turned out the ship wasn't located by the resulting expedition but the diver in question also worked for a large supplier of aluminium and was kind enough to negotiate a free of charge deal on our behalf for all the sheet alloy we would need to rebuild K7.
   Five years later, and with our offer of free material having failed completely to impress the Haemorrhoid Lotion Fund, I looked up the architect of this deal only to find that he'd long since left the company and now resided at 'whereabouts unknown'.
   Coincidentally, on the same day, I also received an invitation to a party. An invite I receive every year from another diver whose company we enjoyed on the 2003 Britannic expedition.
   Sadly I couldn't make the bash and mailed to politely decline only to discover that someone else couldn't be there either because he'd ended up in Fiji and so had copied us all in on his decision not to attend.
   Yep - you guessed it - the man with the alloy sheet connections.
   After a five year absence he popped up the same day I went looking for materials to build this boat.
   Spooky, or what?
   Within twenty-four hours he'd put me in touch with his old boss who introduced me to a bloke called Dean Melling who immediately agreed that our project was worth supporting.
   Thanks to Dean and Thyssenkrupp Materials for immediately becoming our supplier of aluminium and that's what's under the large rectangle of cardboard in the workshop - brand, spanking new marine-grade aluminium. The modern equivalent of Bluebird's original 'Birmabright' skins.
   Now we can make all those fiddly little strengtheners to ensure maximum strength whilst returning all of K7's original panels to their proper place in the hull.

*

The kindness of people towards this project seems to know no bounds and pops up from the most obscure places. One day a message appeared on our guestbook suggesting that we ought to contact the sender regarding borrowing some kit.
   We badly need to set up a sheet-metal shop with a guillotine, folding brake, rolls and a hundred and one other items and this threatened to dent our funds severely.
   That was until an architect by the name of Will Grime called up to say that he had everything we needed gently rusting in his shed, and would we like to borrow it until such times as our blue boat is fixed?

   We didn't need asking twice!
   Dave and I hired a van and dashed up to the Scottish borders before Will could change his mind. No worries there, he's a delightful chap and was pleased to be of assistance.
   We stuffed about six tons of machinery into the van then wheezed back to Tyneside where our long-suffering mate, Colin stayed back late on a Friday afternoon to help us unload our priceless cargo in fading light with his hydraulic crane.

   We now have our eyes on the unit next door to Bluebird's workshop where we can create a dedicated sheet-metal shop alongside the existing assembly shop and we'll shine up Will's kit and keep it in good order until he needs it back.

25th January 2007 - 14:30 (click on an image to see it in a hi-res pop-up window)

Fuel pumps aren't the only thing that's been happening; there's loads more besides.
   The workshop has been improved, for example.
   Look at this beastie of a compressor.

   Most of it lay abandoned in our yard for a couple of years. It was petrol driven originally but the motor was knackered.
   Alain dragged it indoors and took it under his wing one afternoon as running several air drills, sanders, bubbles for the paint stripping baths and a blasting cabinet was murdering the small compressor we already had.
   Off came the rusted remains of the petrol engine to be replaced with a 5hp, three-phase induction motor.
   He changed the oil in the compressor and gave the thing a good clean up.
   Next, Tony Dargavel set about it as he's an expert with three-phase elastic-trickery and arranged things so that it switches off before it explodes then on again when the pressure drops.
   Suddenly we had all the compressed air we could wish for.
   Alain is currently working on an attachment that will stamp a thumb print into his forehead thus saving him the job of going home to get one.

   Unfortunately, he's not properly worked that bit out yet but the fusion reactor he built from the leftover parts is now supplying power for most of Northumberland.
   Meanwhile, Rob's paddling pool is finished and functioning.
   He stuffed a bit of spare pond liner from the garden shed into the bottom, bashed in a fistful of nails then whipped up a bucket team to fill it.

   It wasn't long before the bulkheads were stripping according to one of 'Chemmetal Trevor's' charms.

   And pleased to report, they're all in first-class condition. In fact, most of them are immaculate.

   All of the outriggers are now stripped and blasted too (above). There's some mild tin-bashing to perform on some of them and a touch of filler to go in here and there but many of them are already away for painting.
   Indestructible Paints sent us some chromate primer so the panels are getting a very thorough job in Bettablast's paint shop.
   Chromate primer is to surface coating what butter, cream and full-fat cheese are to dieting but it's absolutely the best thing for the job (as are butter, cream and full-fat cheese).
   It's what Donald used so we're using it too.
   We couldn't resist sticking a few panels back onto the frame either, just to see what they'd look like.

   Until the boys pointed out that it all had to come apart again - I'd have built the whole thing back up otherwise. Looks nice though, doesn't it.
   If you look at the right-hand edge of the vertical panel you can see that it's a little worse for wear. That's partly because of the rivets being replaced a dozen times and partly due to corrosion. We'll make a small plate to go behind it to pick up the rivets and put the strength back. More of that when we get onto it.

   Good news is that we don't have the frame anymore.

   True to his word - and in reassuring contrast to all the spineless hangers-on we've suffered over the years - John Getty rolled up just as he promised back in 2002 and took our frame away to PDS.
   Next time you see K7's frame in our workshop she'll have her front reattached.

   There she goes. We'll be visiting John's place as work progresses and reporting on the forthcoming metal cutting.
   Now then, what else? Ah yes, Donald's bell-end.

   Having completed his paddling pool, Rob seemed to suffer withdrawal symptoms for a while. Well, a day or so.
   Then we found that he'd raked a chunk of irritating scrap from under the blast cabinet and was polishing it furiously.
   The inlet from Orpheus number 711 had taken on the role of trip-hazard in chief whilst lying about the workshop floor since we'd pulled the engine and really deserved better.
   Rob took it upon himself to shine it up and add it to the museum collection.
   The plan was to get it there for the weekend of the 4th as a gathering was planned in the village.
   "What's it called?" someone immediately asked of Rob's engine part.
   "Not sure - what about Donald's bell-end?" came one suggestion, based entirely on its appearance.
   And so it stuck as Rob persevered with his polishing. He seemed to take to it in a surprisingly natural way.

   Over the ensuing days, Donald's 'bell-end' was shone 'til it gleamed and then mounted on a wooden plinth, which Rob fastened to the wall in the museum.
   Vicky must be getting used to us by now as Rob's request for a hacksaw to savage off what remained of the lighting track after we'd hung the fin a year earlier resulted in little more than a shrug - and a hacksaw, which Novie conjured from somewhere so Rob could go to work installing his masterpiece.

   The finished result is stunning.

   Is there another museum in the UK with a display of DMC / K7 artifacts to match what's now on display in Coniston?
   Rob's mission did have an unexpected and comical side effect, however.
   We received a call a day or so later to let us know that the enhanced display had been well received and to thank the team for their efforts. and to innocently let us know that the 'bell-end' looked really good up there!

*

Did we mention that we did this on Saturday the 6th? It was a busy day as things turned out too because between putting the fixings into the wall and hanging the engine intake we all gathered next door in the Coniston institute where I gladly accepted one of the speaking slots to explain a bit about what we're doing with our heap of scrap.

   It seemed to be well received and hopefully answered many questions for those in attendance.
   Then it was beer o'clock and off to the sixties evening arranged by the speed-freaks. What a great night out!
   Novie Lennon arrived with Yoko.

   As well as this lot.

   They're all crackers and a great evening was had by all - this is what it's all about - not the 'respect, dignity, Donald's-dead thing. He no doubt would have thoroughly enjoyed this bash and ended up as inebriated as the rest of us...
   Notice Hannarack in his yellow hair and those crazy Cobb brothers. We all had a laugh and so it'll be back to the hilarity of workshop for the team next week.
   Keep tuning in.

16th January 2007 - 16:30 (click on an image to see it in a hi-res pop-up window)

Happy New Year!
There's some catching up to do with the diary so expect a few extra entries. Here's the first.

   Picture the scene - Bluebird is to run today - nothing dangerous, a few jet-powered pirouettes on the lake followed maybe by a gentle stretch upto her points to show what this retired dancer could once do.
   You've brought the family, the kids stare in fidgety anticipation; the older folks reminisce about the good old days.
   Security around the launch site it tight but K7's sleek form is easily visible across the lake from the eastern shore. Traffic everywhere, police in quiet command of the road and yet nothing seems to be happening. Through your binoculars, Bluebird's engine cover remains off as the volunteer handling team scurry back and forth to their temporary workshop constructed of scaffold and blue sheeting.

*

On our side of the lake frustration is running high, if only that damn low-pressure boost pump would stop dripping jetfuel we'd be able to get on with the job.
   The team finally strip it from the tank and tear it down onto a sheet of blue paper towel, the array of shims, washers and seals is bewildering. If only someone had taken the time to set it up properly in the first place we'd not have lost the whole day messing with it. Someone fires up the generator and switches on the lights as daylight begins to fade.
   "Anyone want a brew?"

*

That's why K7's second LP fuel pump (not the one expertly prepared by Kearsley) was stripped all over Rachel's kitchen last weekend - in the hope that it'll work perfectly when required.
   Then, having spread itself magically across the new worktops, pieces then began to migrate onto the dining room table too.
   It says in the manual that 'cleanliness is of the utmost importance' so Rachel's kitchen seemed the perfect environment.
   Remember how the pump looked when it came out of the mud.

   It's the slightly green bit bolted into the base of the auxiliary fuel tank.
   But then, like everything, else it cleaned up nicely.
   However, that's only half of the story. As a pure conservation exercise we could've reassembled it from there and been most pleased with its appearance. It would be about as useless as an archaeologist in an engineering shop though...
   I had endless arguments with the Hapless Lottery Fund and the Tweedies on the subject of reassembling things to short of working condition.
   Oh, by the way, and departing on a slight tangent here. I was asked this week what, exactly, a 'Tweedie' is.
   It's a name I invented for those tweed-clad museum types who live their lives in the same semi-darkness their precious collections require and who seem to view the public, for whom museums exist, don't forget, as ill-informed simpletons.
   The public vociferously ask to see a rebuilt Bluebird yet the Tweedies tell us that's not what's best for us. It's time they switched the lights off altogether.
   Anyway, back to the argument. I'd mention something about connecting up Bluebird's airspeed indicator or similar only for some know-it-all bureaucrat to say,
   "Why d'you have to connect that up? After all, you're not going to use it."
   I'd go through it all again.
   "If the ASI is going to be on the dashboard what excuse do we have for not connecting it up?" I'd ask fairly. "Which piece of the system would you have us leave out? And how do you know it'll never be used?"
   Neither the Hopelessly Lamentable Fund nor the Tweedies ever provided an answer to any of the above.
   The same thing went for the fuel pipes, compressed air bottles, hydraulic lines, steering gear, you name it.
   Instead they'd argue,
   "Putting it all back together doesn't represent value for money - we're not paying for it."
   "Fine," I'd reply, "we'll do it ourselves; you just get on and build us a museum." Sadly, we came to realise that they'd never get organised in our lifetime.
   So - here's the latest chapter in the Bluebird Project guide to forward-thinking museology and another excerpted proposal from our lottery application - such a shame no one bothered to give it a read.
   This is what the second pump looked like when removed from the tank.

   But you'll recall that when stripped and cleaned it came up like this.

   The rusty staining on the black-anodised alloy mostly came off but some remains as any attempt to shift it results in losing the alloy. I wasn't completely happy about leaving it but until someone can show us how to make it go away, it'll have to stay.
   It seems inert enough, however, so the bits above are ready go back together and here is where the argument would have begun all over again.
   Had we got into bed with the bureaucrats we'd now have had a politically appointed museologists as well as a clutch of HL-effers (They're the Hopeless Lottery lot) standing over us (well, perhaps not in Rachel's kitchen) panicking about how to treat this pump.
   "First thing's first," I'd begin. "Those studs are knackered so we need to fit some new ones."

   It's at that point that they'd get their underwear in a tangle but remember it was the museologists who said that nuts, bolts, screws and rivets are all proprietary fasteners. Chuck away as many as you like, they told us, so I gave the pump body a quick simmer in a saucepan of water.

   (Got into mild trouble for this)
   .to heat the alloy whilst leaving the steel studs almost cold.
   Aluminium soaks up heat and expands in a completely different way to steel so it soon freed itself from the studs.
   Next - out with the TIG gloves and a pair of grips.
   Rachel though I constructed that island for her to prepare food on. Wrong. who else has an indoor workbench eighteen inches above the beer fridge? The rags never seem to get dirty either.

   Out with the old studs and in with the new ones - much better.

   "I hope that's clean," Rachel said in warning tones whilst examining her violated saucepan in search of the tiniest excuse to unleash her outrage.
   Everything has been in the ultrasound bath," I assured her. "It's spotless."
   My reassurances were immediately followed by a spurt of long-trapped kerosene from beneath the threads of a replacement stud as it was tightened in.
   Big trouble that time!
   Guess where the new bits came from, by the way. Same place as this little lot of treasure.

   Yep - our old mate, Martin at Kearsley. What a gem. I mean, where on Earth would we ever get such things otherwise?
   Oh, by the way, museologists, as we've so far successfully added welds to the list of 'proprietary' bits I'd like also to include gaskets, shims, o-rings, filter screens, Dowty seals and locking washers.
   Back to the job. We do have the proper rebuild manual for the pump but it's still something of a head-scratcher as it's obviously supposed to complement the in-depth training course I've never attended.
   This results in some of the more obvious procedures - like which way to route the motor wiring - being not that obvious at all.
   No worries, the motor casing went neatly together after a few attempts and then came the really tricky bit.

   Top is the assembled motor, the clamping ring is red because it was heavily rusted so I gave it a quick ali-oxide blast then took it over to Bill and Debbie at Bettablast and asked if they could powder coat it the first colour they had in the gun. Never thought it would come back red but never mind. It's suitably protected against corrosion now and you can't see it when the filter screen goes on anyway.
   Paint is proprietary too, by the way, and sacrificial. You can join the old paint society or whatever it's called if you're really keen on the stuff - just what I've been told by the industrial museologists.
   Back to the pic'. Bottom left is the pump impeller; next is a set of shims to set the height of the impeller on the motor shaft. Then there's the 'vapour assister assembly', which includes a carbon face-seal that's 'rare as rocking horse manure' and which was scored during disassembly due to everything being seized to buggery! It needed some TLC.
   Then there are more shims to set the preload of the carbon seal against a stainless steel bellows at the base of the shaft.
   I'll not bore you with the details suffice to say that by the time the carbon seal was lapped-in and everything measured-up inside of tolerance - and we're talking within a hundredth of a millimetre here - the impeller / seal / shim arrangement had been on and off with the regularity of a lady of ill-repute's undergarments!

   So far - so good. I powered it up to bed-in the seal then stripped it again and re-shimmed it for the sake of perfection.
   Next, a sparkly-new gasket, which the manual said should be sealed with 'Blue Hylomar'.
   Anyone remember sticking their Mini engine back together with Blue Hylomar? The spotty, pierced youth in the car accessory shop certainly didn't, though he was well versed on exhaust tailpipes with roughly the diameter of Maxwell House coffee tins and iridescent pink seatbelt covers...
   I found some Hylomar eventually - yes, they still make it.

   A few more twiddly bits installed and nuts tightened onto the new studs.

   .she's almost ready to go.
   Spanner on the last odds and ends and here's a beautifully conserved pump that'll also move fuel in the prescribed manner.

   So tell me, museologists, what's wrong with the above? No loss of original fabric except for proprietary bits and it works too!
   It needs a bit of wire-locking here and there but it's going for a function test so I'll take care of that when it comes back.
   Right - what's next?