Thursday, April 26, 2007

Brass Prop


brass prop
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.
The perceived wisdom in the model boat world is that brass propellers are better than whitemetal ones. Therefore a sensible upgrade for my Puffer would be to get rid of the prop that came with the kit and fit something shiny.

In theory this is an easy job. Unscrew the unwanted prop and then replace it.

Why is nothing that easy ? To effect the change I had to take the motor out so the shaft would move back a bit so I could work between the hull & rudder. Because the nut at the motor end of the shaft was rusted on and the one at the prop end didn’t seem to want to come all the way off it was a really struggle.

Eventually I managed the job. To make sure it stays put the prop has a little bit of superglue on the threads. This should stop it unscrewing. I know that doing the nut hard up against it is supposed to do this but I’ve had things go wrong before and with the price of brass propellers these days I don’t want it to descend to Davy Jones Juniors locker at the boat pond !

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