There's more to be done with Fort Valley, but with our winter season nearly upon us I've had to concentrate on household projects so I don't suffer any guilt this winter at the bench.
There's lighting, interior furniture, and several additional details to be done all the while contemplating the next project and what would compliment this build.
Having thought it over and Fort Valley being primarily a harbor tug, it seems appropriate that she have a "stick lighter" to shuttle around a busy waterfront. Googling "Stick Lighter" will net a host of pictures of long BBQ lighters, fire starters, and appliances to remove the stigma of using everyday common matches to start a fire.
In the maritime context a "stick lighter" is merely a barge (lighter) to offload ships in the stream which is virtually self sufficient sans propulsion power (although this was also common.) The "stick" was a colloquial term for the mast, boom, and associate equipment. These were sometimes steam powered, carried a small three man crew, and in an RC model will allow a modest amount of animation. A lot of possibilities for a tug/lighter combination....

In the mean time, here's a few photo's of Fort Valley's latest outing.

A little preamble here.......when seeing a boat at night with the deck lights on it's seldom a stark white light illuminating a vast area unless it's a light on a work boat and even then the work deck seems to be surrounded by an aura making the area out of the light even darker. Seeing the deck lights on a ship or boat a little distance off appears to be a lighted area, then a darker space in between the lights, then brighter, then darker, then brighter and so forth as one scans down the deck. I don't recall seeing a deck evenly lit all along it's length. Another aspect of deck lights (to me anyway,) is they're seldom white. Most of what I recall were an off-white leaning towards a pale yellow. This may have been atmosphere, the globes the lights were in, or perhaps my fuzzy focus, but my mind's-eye sees them as off-white a little, and not terribly bright.

I suppose all of the fore-going was to excuse or explain my rational for how I'm approaching the deck lights on "Fort Valley". These lights are for the observer ashore so they didn't have to be so bright as to actually light up an area. I also didn't want a lot of power being used for the system with the attendant heat of an incandescent bulb so elected to go with LED chips. Using these posed another issue as they have a strong focal point and I wanted the lights to be more diffused. The answer here seems to be using a piece of 5mm acrylic rod lightly sanded to make the "globe" opaque. A chip light glued to the top provides a glow that from a short distance provides a suitable amount of light that isn't over powering. I'll run these off 6V and a Pico switch through the receiver.

Building one or two of these isn't much of an issue, but build 18-20 and having them come out looking somewhat like the previous one is the tedium part.
I've built six to date, (the first five being fails,) but think I have a system now that may work and keep them relatively the same.

I hear someone saying "you could have ordered some printed cages and painted them...." Yes, I could, but that would have been against my masochistic nature. 😉

The following photos are the progression of building one unit. The only thing not included is the base. Another attribute of the nano chip is the small hole required in the deckhouse to pass the chip through. once the chip is passed through it is glued to the top of the acrylic rod with fabric glue. This glue is flexible, waterproof, and if the need arises can be cut with a razor blade unlike CA. It takes a little longer to cure, but worth the extra time IMHO.

The procedure: pre-determined lengths of "cage wire". Wire bent to shape, then installed in jig. Top ring installed, then spacer slid into place to allow the lower ring to be consistent. CA is sufficient for these pieces as they're tucked up under the upper deck and are frail enough that soldering isn't necessary.
Once I get them all built and installed I'll follow up here.....

Everything outside is put away for the winter, it's beginning to get chilly again, so much so I've enjoyed some fires in the wood stove recently. There's some ice on the pond so sailing is certainly done for the season.

I was going to start the deck lights, but got side-tracked into furnishing the pilot house. The first thing was to panel the interior walls. The next was to create the helm. This is pretty straight forward in the building aspect, but an added dimension is the helm turning in sync with the rudder.
I mentioned in a previous post that I didn't want any wires that had to be tended to when the deckhouse was removed/replaced. This is due to the hull having to be ballasted waterborne and the possibility of things not going well while connecting everything is very real. There's voltage provided to the house through a couple of contacts that make when the cabin is installed on the hull for the smoker, and a small receiver (also bound to the transmitter) installed in the house allows the helm to operate in sync with the rudder making a "wye" cable for the rudder/helm unnecessary.

1. Platform and wheel axle supports.

2. Chain drive to a small servo under the platform.

3. Underside of platform.

4. Hank proving scale.

5. Set into wheelhouse to establish weathering
effects.

Managed to get a couple more items built to fill in the pilothouse, although they're not permanently affixed.

The "lazy bench" is mahogany with a cushion fashioned out of some soft pine. The piping around the edge is a piece of waxed thread glued on after the "butt depressions' were sanded in. It was then sealed and painted.

The steam heat is plastruct parts cut, modified, and glued together. The valve wheels are costume jewelry parts picked up from a crafts store, edges bent, glued on and painted. The piping itself was primed, painted with a silver chrome paint, then covered in a matte clear to simulate galvanizing.

The chart table, stool, jacket hook rack, binocular box, clock, barometer, and telegraph are on the bench.

A couple more items to add to the pilot house.

The chart table, a view from the outside, another view inside from the port forward window, the pilot stool.

.....and already it's February. The cold days are long, but the weeks seem to be moving faster and faster. It must be the age thing old people talk about.😊

I've added a couple details to Fort Valley.
The deck boxes were a place where all the "stuff" went. These lockers are on the 01 deck on either side of the stack.
As you see, there's deck equipment and parts in the stbd locker and there's a crew member sanding and repainting the port one. He is being careful of the deck with a drop cloth and was careful to put his paint can and brush on it before he incurred the Mate's wrath.

In images #'s 1,2, and 3, it doesn't appear so, but the boxes are identical in size.

Image #4, is the stbd locker with bosun's stores.

Images #5 through 8 are the port locker being repainted. The deck hand in these photos has had some "plastic surgery" and is yet to be completed with the proper shirt and trousers.

When I worked on the rivers every once in a while an old boat would pass by and there'd be the faintest hint of orange color at the top of the stack at night. If there was any exhaust smoke at all this would have a hue to it as well, although the color was invisible during the daylight hours. Of course this was years ago and the current rules and regulations would probably prevent anything remotely close to this happening today.

I decided to try and duplicate the look of a coal fire deep in the bowels of the boiler whose fringes just barely lit the exhaust in the stack.

Having a light (LED) too close to the top of the stack produced a too bright light. Having it at the base didn't provide enough. My solution was to mount two lights port and stbd in the stack base, and mount a couple of acrylic rods on top of them terminating a couple of inches below the top rim of the stack. The rods were lightly (🙄) sanded and rounded on top to diffuse the light making it softer and much less directional.

The mounting "hardware" is just a lash-up of available piece/parts to accomplish the desired end result.

1. The base with the LED's. The black taped cylinders are "light traps". These are just tubes that fit over the LED and stabilize the bottom of the acrylic rod over the chips.

2. One side lifted to demonstrate the "trap" effect.

3. Both traps engaged.

4.&5. Off, and On.

6. Light showing from the top of the stack. If the light proves too bright a turn of tape, a lower voltage, or both may be used.

The actual smoke discharge is through an aluminum tube that exits an inch or so above the tips of the rods which hopefully 🤞 will keep the ends of the rods from sooting up.

This is an overdue semi wrap-up of the scratch built tug Fort Valley. As things "to do" occur to me, they may be added, but with the float season approaching I thought I better tie up all the lose ends and make ready for the better weather.

The lighting may be enhanced next building season with a few interior lights, and more "required" nav. lights, but unless FV is towing a barge, the towing lights wouldn't be exhibited, so at the moment these lights aren't necessary. The deck lights, normal running lights, pilot house lights, and the last post's stack lights are all installed and operational.

A separate control board was designed for installation in the deck house with it's own receiver for these circuits which precludes any need for an umbilical cord from the hull to the house. (The rationale for this was mentioned in an earlier post.)

Several crew members have been modified with "plastic surgery", "told off" (assigned tasks) and are busy checking gear in the small boat, scraping and painting, and stowing gear.

I anticipate building a Whitehall-type small boat and will add it to the 01 deck in the future. Although the dory seems a little atypical, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary in a workboat venue being seaworthy and inexpensive to replace.

I've included a few photos of how I create a "tarp" boat cover that I hope may be helpful.

The photos:

1. & 2.
A couple of interim images taken early last summer.

3. Through 8.
The line handling boat. The tarp is created using tissue paper of the type found in a new shirt box. This is cut to roughly the finished size leaving ample for hanging over the cap rails of the boat. A strong back is made to support the paper down the middle, then the paper is put in place and dampened to create the desired rough shape. When the paper is dried, it's sprayed with a matte finish from a rattle can. While this is still wet, the "tarp" is given it's final shape. (The paper is very fragile at this point) Once the matte finish is dry the paper is strong enough to support a couple coats of acrylic artist colors mixed up by the droplet and just enough water to create a wash. The underside is deliberately darker because of the outside "fading" from "sun exposer".

9.&10
A deckhand is checking the equipment in the dory.

11.
Here we have the heaving line fastened to the messenger, which is in turn fastened to the light hawser, all of which is laid out on the drying grates.

12.&13.
Another deckhand is scraping, sanding, and painting an 01 deck storage box. There are two of these one port and one stbd. The paint brush and paint can is made up of scrap cut-offs. The bos'n insisted on the drop cloth.

14.
The ubiquitous swab rack with a splayed swab, scrub brush, and broom.

15.&16
An oil drum, with a hand pump and measuring can.

17.&18.
The owner on a day trip, and another angle into the pilot house.

19.
A deckhand laying out the bow line. Under the grating in the square hatch are the switches to activate the main and auxiliary electrical circuits.

20.
"Cap" keeping an eye on things.

21. Through 24.
General deck lighting.

25.&26
The panel made up to control the lighting and maybe future auxiliary systems. This consists of a couple of voltage reducers and a set of Pico switches which are controlled by the transmitter through
an additional receiver incorporated in the panel.
The panel actually lives in the deckhouse on a couple of shoulders built in for the purpose. Power to the panel is delivered through the clips seen on the forward coaming edge.

27.
Although a little too bright in this image, (The camera seems to exaggerate the ambient light,) the stack lighting is prevalent although not as intense as it appears.

Fort Valley has been a fun build. Thank you for your patience through the "Never ending story".😀

Finally had a chance to put the tug overboard for some extended running today. The weather was breezy with occasional gusts, but not so bad as to stir up too much wave action. Having recently scaled all of the components (hull, deckhouse, and added ballast,) it was discovered the complete unit weighs in at 61lbs 4oz. and being relatively heavy the boat was very stable.

I wasn't able to get any videos, but did manage a few stills...

This "chapter" is a follow-up on a modification I've done to the tug. At first it was just an experiment and I didn't know if I'd keep the mod or not, but find I lean towards the new system more than the one I described in the build narrative.
The previous smoker was a standard heated coil using a type of light oil as the smoke producer. It worked fine, produced an ample amount of smoke, and was relatively compact. One time the boat was a long way off when I realized it had run dry. I had no recourse but to run the boat back with fingers crossed that the element didn't burn out or worse. This concerned me and after a couple of conversations about it led me to install a switch on an open channel to isolate the unit if necessary.
I have since installed a water vapor "smoker" from Denes Design.
This vapor is essentially "cold steam" that DD has developed a control module for and provides several different modes of operation that includes vapor density, pulse length or continual. It can follow the ESC's RPM and operates on plain water. There's no heat, no oil, no mess, and the worst that may happen is a few drops of water may end up in the bilge if condensate from the stack runs back.
Topped up with water the unit weighs three-four ounces more than the oil based smoker I had installed, but for this tug that weight doesn't impact the stability even though the unit is mounted under the deckhouse roof. In a conventional mounting in the hull it wouldn't be an issue at all.
I don't recall the price of the oil per ounce, but do know a gallon of distilled water in this area is $3.00 USD - enough for most of an entire season.

I don't know if the video will come up, but I've also posted a couple of stills with the unit operating.