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And here we go again. Four years & 3000 miles after I presented the original Misfit floaty boat, I'm back with another one. Here's a link to the original which had to be left behind when I left Riyadh due to size & weight restrictions. I did strip certain key parts from the original and I will include most of them in this one. Now back in the mid eighties I found myself (& family) posted to RAF Laarbruch. We had a spare bedroom so obviously I had to build a model railway (bear with me here). With an interest in the Luftwaffe it had to be a WW2 airfield. Meantime I'd acquired a NOVO Shell Welder tanker ship model (probably from a Pound shop) so I upscaled it to 1/72nd and added a dockside to the airfield, as you do. I've wanted to redo the subject for a while & was looking at boat kits, but then remembered I still had the Welder. And here it is. With a 1/35th Dockyard matey giving it the once over. He is not impressed by the paintjob nor that most of the new superstructure is actually cardboard. When I stripped it down I found part of an Airfix Phantom box! Here's matey, still in the hold tutting to himself. The model has spent decades in various attics so is a bit dusty! Fast forward a bit (lots) and here is the remains of the hull. As can be seen, I've cut out parts of it. It's not much prettier underneath either. To brighten things up, here we see salvaged parts from the original Misfit. The A/C unit from the roof of the wheelhouse went off to a krieger walker build a while ago so I have to replace that. Here we have a side view. The hull cutout has been boxed in with plastic card (this time) and there is another hunk of it on the upper side. The crosshatched area shows me where I can fit the supports at the dockside. Here's the other end. More crosshatching (all will be revealed) and look, all that old paint has gone. Top view of the sharp end. Boxed in and paint sanded down. Under the boxed in part is a void. This corresponds with the crosshatch on the side. So I can drill a hole and inert a support rod easily. The blunt end. And it's all as above. These bulkheads/decks are not yet glued into place. As a break from you trying to figure out WTH I'm doing, here's a picture of a box of bits. Some or all will be used in this build. Yes, ping pong balls. At the top are bits from a Dapol signal gantry, bottom right, the red things are I beams (girders) for a model railway. These, and the gantry, I bought last week in Swineshead* (near Boston). Sorry, the picture isn't very sharp. *(Granary models) Here's something different. A block of wood. Next to a small brewery in Sheffield is a woodshop that makes the frames for staircases. They have scrap wood, I have a woodburner at home. A polite request & bingo. (saves them chucking it away). Now the floaty boat need a dock and the dock needs something to sit on. So this block of wood was saved. On the wood are three plastic things. A certain company that sells flatpack furniture (Four letters, starts with I) supplies these to cover the metal brackets used to attach shelving to your wall. Behind all this malarkey, it can be seen on the hull that the hold has been boxed in and floored. Again, not glued yet. The boat will be alongside (nautical term) this way around, if you were wondering. Now between the three brown bits I've cut down some ancient Airfix station platform bits as a fill in method. And the light brown bit standing at the back has been cut to fit. This will be the dock wall. It's actually a Faller station platform. Like the Airfix one, it's 30 plus years old. Another piece of the same will go on top of it to form the dock walk/roadway. The TET bottle shows the size of this endeavour. A closeup of the Airfix platform parts. The left end. The end of the Faller platform will probably be cut to conform with the Airfix one, like the other end. Obviously this would not be the entire dock, it's just a 'slice' of it but that bit will, I think, look better cut to fit. Here's a close up of the right end. The end piece curves around and looks better for it I feel. What I've done at the ends will also make them stronger. The boat supports will go into the wall around here. Although there will be additional structure 'behind the scenes' to help with weight support. If all goes well, as with the original misfit build, the viewer will not be able to see any supports. None of these bits are glued into place as yet. Things may yet change. The beauty of scratchbuilding! And that is where we are at the moment after a couple of months of snatched time building this beastie. The finish will be sometime next year at this rate! Ah well, slowly and carefully makes things better? Besides, with the Winter, it gets a bit chilly in the manshed despite the heater & insulation. I find I can ponder on the build as I drive around at work, so planning goes on even if no physical work gets done. As always, comments and queries are always welcome Thanks for looking, Pete