53' Feadship

Still at it as time allows.

I have up-dated the list of older Feadships maintained at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feadship

I got an interesting email from the daughter of a feadship designer:

Hello,

I was reviewing your Feadship history website and noticed the inclusion of "Dutch Treat" in your listing of boats built by Feadship. "Dutch Treat" was designed my late father, Naval Architect Al Mason. Her design was commissioned by Arnold Moyer, then of Buffalo, N.Y.

There is a famous story about the sturdiness of the steel construction of "Dutch Treat." Her owner was sailing her back from the Bermuda area when they ran into a severe gale off the Carolinas. Not being very seasoned sailors, they locked down the boat and called for the Coast Guard to rescue them. "Dutch Treat" washed ashore at Cape Hatteras with minimal damage. It cost the owner almost as much to buy her back from the salvagers as it did to have her built in the first place. The owner commented afterward that in the future, he would simply lock himself below deck and let "Dutch Treat" deal with the weather on her own.

Seattle boat designer Bob Perry was one of "Dutch Treat's" subsequent owners. The last I heard of her she was in the Annapolis area in terrible condition -- no one loved her anymore.

Sincerely,
Anita C. Mason
[Al Mason's daughter]

I have been in contact with Huib de Vries several times, he has been very helpful and eventually located quite a bit of data about "Brigand" including notes regarding its delivery, sea trials and sent me high res scans of several original brochures containing her which can be seen at http://www.frybrid.com/feadshiphistory.htm

To date I have repalced 64 sq ft of steel below the waterline, removed the teak on the gangways and foredeck to find rusty tissue paper where the steel had been. Cut it out and replaced it, prepped the original teak decking by hand to go back in place, taken apart and complately rebuilt the windlass, stripped the entire house and refinished the teak with 15 coats of varnish, converted the electrical system from 32vdc to 24vdc, rebuilt the genset, replaced all the injectors, starters and alternators on both motors, replaced the ceiling in the gally and staterooms, repaired and repainted the coach roof, gutted the bilge system and replaced it with individual bilge pumps, painted the hull to the rails, refinished and rebuilt the transom, made reproductions of the railing hinges and latches in stainless, built a swim step....

The project goes on.

For the past year I have been working on the Brigand and have learned a great deal about her. Built in 1952 she was Hull #7 build by Feadship and is apparently the oldest Feadship afloat. I have gotten several emails from both Henk DeVries and Huib DeVries the family archivist, the have been kind enough to send me build and delivery notes and a brochure with photos of the sea trials and information about her construction.
I had her hauled and spent 4 months replacing steel below the water line, 64 sq ft in all, which involved cutting out thin metal by referring to the radio ultrasound, then cutting metal out until I reached metal of the original thickness, making panels and fitting them, then carefully and slowly stitch welding them in to avoid distortion. I removed the teak from the gangways and found the steel below to be a complete loss. The original design called for all deck drains to drain into pipes which exit the hull at the waterline, this was to prevent streaks on the sides but created several issues. While sitting mussels blocked the drains at the bottom, rain then filled the pipes and flooded the side decks, the teak expanded pushing the caulk from the joints and water sat on the steel under the teak, even when the drains were cleared there still would have been water trapped in this area as the drains were at the level of the surface of the deck, not the steel deck below. I replaced all the steel under the gangways with ¼” plate and treated both sides with rust preventative coating, then cleaned and restored the teak and bedded it in 4200, caulked with modern caulk and changed the original design so that the level of the drain was at the deck not the teak surface.

She went back into the water and upon reaching her slip I built a huge shrink wrap tent over a PVC framework and began working again. The foredeck was removed, actually it came up like a zipper. Originally the steel deck was coated and faired with coal tar, over this two layers of Irish felt were laid, over this the teak (1 ¼” Burmese, probably carried from the forest on elephants), the teak was then back fastened from below. Over the years of neglect the calking gave up and was spot repaired with everything from black silicone sealer and tub and tile calk to JB Weld. This of course leaked and allowed water to sit on the steel. Steel will expand 20 times its size as it decays, forms oxides and acids and disintegrates, the pressure can reach 18,000 psi and in the case of the Brigand deck, this force pushed the teak upward off the fasteners. Each board had a row of carrot shaped cavities in the back and the deck below had a corresponding cone of iron oxide which had been a fastener, this worked to my advantage as the deck planks pulled up easily and were salvageable. When I pulled the deck up I found black scale (Rust in low oxygen is black) which I picked up with a dustpan revealing a deck of tissue paper thick steel.

The following morning I arrived to find the black lace deck bright red. I cut all the steel back to the gutters where it was original thickness, the joists (16” on center) below were in perfect condition, coated with rust preventative and I installed new deck in 32” strips from 3/16” steel plate, stitch welded in place. The teak deck planks are currently going back down bedded in 4200 beginning with the king plank.

During the past winter I removed all the varnish from the house with a Bosch heat gun (great tool) and a Pro-prep scraper, sanded endlessly and repaired seams and edges. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find good teak of the same color as the original teak used on the Brigand and I have become familiar with every vendor in the area and have several sample pieces I take with me to select the correct color. For what teak now commands I could have laminated $5 bills with epoxy and built the house more cost effectively, teak is currently better than $26 per board foot and 6/4 is difficult to find without heartwood. I have applied 15 coats of Epifanes varnish and when the painting is done several final coats will be applied.


Here you can see the original lines of the back of the wheel house.

Here you can see the modified enclosed wheel house - photo taken during ultrasounding before purchase.

The Brigand had large windows in the salon which could be rolled up or down with cranks, these had long since deteriorated and the windows sealed in place with varnish and sealer. I removed the mechanisms and freed the glass, removed the window felt and varnished the track. I found new window felt through an automotive supplier and had a friend in the Hot Rod business make custom power window regulators to fit the glass, in place of the original crank, now missing, I will install a simple vintage style toggle switch, momentary two position with a neutral central position which will raise and lower the windows.

At some point the beautiful original lines of the Brigand were changed, the rear of the wheel house was boxed in and large sliding glass windows installed and the change was far from flattering. She had sweeping classic lines front to back and at the back of the wheelhouse she became a large cracker box. Using drawings and photos supplied by Feadship I decided to restore her lines to original. I sent the original line drawing from Feadship to a friend John Barnett of JQB Ltd. http://www.jqbltd.com/ who used measurments from the Brigand to scale the drawing to life size, he then printed a full size drawing of the rear of the wheel house and from this I was able to pattern pieces to restore the original lines. I cut out the added material while the wheel house roof was supported and installed replacement teak rear window frames, made patterns and ordered tempered glass.

The master stateroom was originally fitted with two single beds, this was modified to fit a queen bed and a bench, storage and book shelves. I replaced the injectors and reset the racks on the 671 Detroit’s, removed the single bilge pump and installed 5 separate pumps, replaced the ceramic and Bakelite fuse panel with a Blue Seas unit, switched the systems from 32vdc to 24vdc, replaced the solid core cotton insulated, lead sheathed wire with modern boat cable and removed the acoustic ceiling tiles in the stateroom, salon and galley with hardboard and teak.

The windlass posed an entire set of issues, the motor has long since become a mass of corrosion and the first time I had tried to use it, the fuse immediately blew, when I tried to free the wildcat by loosening the wheel, the wildcat would not move until I hit it with a wrench, gobs of broken clutch material fell on the deck and the wildcat screamed until the anchor hit bottom. At 140lbs and with 26’ of 3/8” chain pulling the anchor by hand meant that I could not tie my shoes for a week. The Windlass was an Albina #4 and research showed that Albina had closed its doors in 1980, I found references to many vessels fitted with Albina’s but little information. I pulled the unit and found that one of the cast iron mounting ears was broken, the motor needed replacement but other than that she was in great shape. I stripped it into component parts and sand blasted the chassis, brazed the broken ear back on and had everything powder coated white except the chain and line wildcats which I found had been galvanized under the paint and the wheel which turned out to be bronze. I replaced all the stainless and bronze fasteners, reassembled the chassis to the point where I needed to replace the clutch. Searching for weeks through the internet I found a post on a sailing newsgroup from a man in Norway about Albina, it seems that his Albina needed work and after years of asking around he discovered that a small company in Portland, Oregon named RC Plath had bought all the tooling when Albina closed and still produces these beautiful units today. A call or two and I was in touch with the owner “Ron” who turned out to be the nicest guy, I sent him my clutch parts and they came back good as new. The motors are no longer available in 24vdc but he directed me to an inexpensive 120vac unit which will run perfectly off the Mastervolt 5500 watt inverter I installed.

The coach roof is of canvas over felt and in several places the canvas had cracked, in others water had gotten in and rotted the felt and in two small areas rot had created small and isolated soft spots. I treated all of these areas by cutting away a small eye of canvas, flooding the area with CPES, then filling with epoxy and wood flour by injecting it under the canvas with syringes until level, sanding fairing, sanding, sanding, priming and more sanding… The result has been worth it, the canvas roofs are fair but still look like canvas, much more attractive to my eye for a vintage vessel than simply fiber glassing the whole thing.

I am heading back to the tent today to continue whittling away at the project, laying deck planks, sanding the coach roof, painting, pulling wires, etc, etc. If all goes well I will take her to the San Juan Islands for Christmas although it is more likely that it will be spring before the tent (one of the painters I hired for a week dubbed the tent the “House of Pain” above the door in sharpie) comes off. I will post again as progress continues.

Unfortunately for time but fortunately for my wallet, I can not afford to pay to have the work done and am doing it myself. It is making the project much longer but I am an anus and good help is hard to find. I made the decision to do the work when I went to 3 yards to get a quote on pulling the teak from the gangways (22" x 13') along each side of the house. The lowest quote was $13,000.00 to remove the teak and put it back in place, this would not include replacement of the metal below the teak. It took me 3 hours to remove the teak, I replaced the deck plate, treated the steel and it took an hour poer side to put the teak back down, another hour per side to calk it. Call me crazy but $1,800.00 an hour seems a little dear to me.

In all honesty I can not imaging what a restoration like this would cost were one to pay to have it done, just the lay days in the yard were killing me at $56 a day, I was there until midnight cutting and welding to get her back in the water. When I finished the work in the aft stateroom I went through 2 "marine" painters before it was finished. The first guy spent 16 hours "working" and the walls were not yet primed or fair, the second guy made it a day before i told him that I needed to see progress or see him leaving, he left 30 minutes later. I called a contractor friend and asked for a contact with a good painter, he gave me the number of a Bosnian fellow who had done several jobs for him. I called and explained that I had a 12' x 12' room with less wall space than a small bathroom and wanted it fair and glossy. When we met I explained that the "Bathroom" was in fact the stateroom on a boat, that I had painted cars for nearly 30 years and worked as a painter while in school and did not wish to pay extra simply becasue the room was floating. He quoted me $600 including materials and was done in 2 days leaving walls as smooth as glass.

I have found this to be true of almost every aspect of marine projects. Personally I see little difference between a home project, an automotive project or a boat project. I use tinned wire when I make wiring harnesses for vintage bikes but somehow it is less than half the cost of "Marine wire" even though it conmes from the same vendor and is in fact the same wire!

Well the reconstruction of the wheelhouse has been completed, special thanks to Huib de Vries who managed to find an original Feadship brochure showing the sea trail photos of the Brigand, I used these photos to complete the restoration.

Yesterday I finished rebuilding the two crank operated windows just aft of the gangway doors on Brigand, the mechanism was beyond repair and the windows had long since been sealed closed with silicone and varnish. I removed the mechanism, removed the window channel and glass, replaced the window channel with modern felt lined channel and had new safety glass cut to fit. I then located a company who makes power window actuators for hot rods and had them make me two actuators. It took some time and fabrication to get them in and working but now they are again operational and the interior of the house appears as original with the exception of the window cranks being replaced with brass toggle switches to actuate the windows.

Rewiring is continuing with the salon, galley and main stateroom completed, the forecastle, guest stateroom, heads and companionway still remain. It is painstaking work as the wiring was run before the interior was finished and is of solid core wire, cotton insulated and sheathed in lead. I have to cut it out one or two feet at a time in some places, it others it will be cut to the point where it is no longer accessible and the remains left in place. Running the new wiring is fast and simple in comparison.

The original fuse panel was of Bakelite with screw in fuses and no breakers of any kind, it was located in a small panel just forward of the starboard gangway door at the base of the wall before the stairs leading to the galley. I removed this entire panel of walnut and teak and rebuilt it moving it outward 8" and installing glass fronted opening doors behind which will sit the modern breaker panel. The old unit had to be cut out with a sawzall as it was installed before any interior trim or walls were in place.

I dropped the Dorades, nav lights, bow light, binnacle and other bits at the chrome shop last week and expect to have them back on 4 to 5 weeks. While waiting I have begun the task of trying to design a method to conceal the modern navigation equipment on the bridge. My current thought is to mount a single screen multi-display like those offered by Raymarine into a wooden box like a silverware case. When closed it will simply be a nice box, when opened the screen will fold up into view revealing the chart plotter, depth sounder, GPS, etc. I located a "Sailor" VHF radio similar to these images complete with the handset.

http://www.lightshiptherapies.net/Sailor radio.jpg
http://www.panbo.com/Sailor_20Radio_20Gary_20Wood_20Panbo_small.jpg

They were from Denmark and are still sought after by cruisers because of their durability, I actually found an advertisement from the 80's featuring this radio with an elephant standing on it! The company was absorbed by Thrane and Thrane and still makes the Sailor brand but now focuses solely on commercial applications. It has all the channels I need, dual watch and functions perfectly. It will be mounted on the port side of the wheelhouse.

In the salon there was originally a radio set just at the steps down to the master stateroom, when I found Brigand this spot was occupied by a small color TV.

The brochure image is here http://www.frybrid.com/images/deckhouse1.jpg
In this image you can also see the area of the settee forward that had been clearanced for the window crank.

and what she looked like when I found her here http://www.frybrid.com/images/brigsalon.jpg

The television was disposed of immediately and I was able to locate several very nice older tube radios made by Hallicrafters that were not working including an S-40B like this one
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~postr/bapix/Hal_S40B.jpg
I carefully removed the faces from the radios and mounted them on a board hinged on the right to be fitted into this space. The dials will light and the volume knob will control volume but this will only be a door and behind it will be a modern stereo unit with CD and Mp3, and a modern VHF unit with distress/GPS feature. I may attempt to utilize some of the other controls on the faceplate to control the modern stereo equipment but I will leave that for a winter weekend in the garage, for now it looks period, fills a hole and hides the modern gear.

The windlass is finally finished, after a lengthy restoration, thermal plastic coating, adapting a 1hp 115vac sealed wash down motor to the windlass and building an adaptor so that the old motor housing could be mounted hiding the new motor, she looks exactly as she did when new but is completely modern inside. Hopefully I will find the time this week to mount her on the foredeck.

The Teak decking has gone back down on the gangways and is going down on the foredeck, each stick was surfaced and edged, cleaned and repaired by hand. The steel under the deck replaced and now that the weather is cooperating and is warm enough for the adhesive to kick, I am laying 6 planks at a time from the center outward, each one bedded in adhesive to the deck and weighed down with 400lbs of lead for three days. When each course of 6 is done the gaps are taped and filled with caulking compound and another 6 go down. I spoke to some of the workers who replaced the decks on the "Ice Bear" a more modern much longer Feadship that had the deck rebuilt. They had vacuum bagged the deck down with 3M 5200 but it was very time consuming, I elected to use PL construction adhesive which has almost the exact same chemical makeup as 5200 but kicks in 3 days rather than 7. The test piece I put down could not be removed with hammers and I broke a prybar trying to break it free, eventually the teak had to be chiseled from the deck and the remaining wood and adhesive sanded off.

I will keep updating my site as I can not post images here.

David,

I have to respectfully disagree. When I bought Brigand she had all modern electronics and you could barely see from the wheelhouse. 42 mile radar (mounted 12' above the sea an object at 42 miles would need to be 2100 ft tall to be seen at that distance with the unit mounted at 12') Loran, Hailer, GPS, Digital Compass, Depth sounder that would show Nomo's navel, 2 VHF units, Chart plotter, etc. I plugged nearly 100 holes in the teak of the wheelhouse sides and pulled 200ft of wire.

As much as I love gadgets (The interior of my work truck looks like a 747, my office has 4 computer monitors on the same computer) let's be honest about what is needed and how the boat will be used. I have no intention of round the world cruising, Brigand will travel throughout the Puget Sound, North through the inside passage to Alaska and if everything works out South to Cabo San Lucas to spend a year in the Sea of Cortez. I have done most of these trips in a Kayak with a GPS (with the exception of the run south along the coast to Cabo).

IMHO I need a good compass and Brigand has one, a GPS, Depth sounder, chart plotter, possibly radar and a good radio with a back-up. With the exception of the radio all these instruments are available in a single LCD display, a display which will easily fit into a box and can easily be closed when not in use both protecting the unit and the aesthetic of the vessel.

Many of the classic yachts I have been on look like a beautiful jewelry box full of black and white plastic and personally I think it is gear addiction more than function, the 42 mile radar being a perfect example. What I am going to do on this vessel is leave port, make safe passage to my destination, dock or anchor and enjoy being on the water with my family. I do not need to convince myself that I am flying a fighter plane with heads-up displays and computer guided laser refracting chrome rudder stabilizers.

While the Sailor radio is not period, it is close and is not offensive, it is a modern radio internally and is still a sought after unit known for its durability.

In all honesty, which would look better on my helm?

This:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WRrTjmtpY5c/S0zH4Psk9CI/AAAAAAAAAgA/knmz-0zk8SU/s400/RT144B+-+small.jpg

or this:
http://www.marineradiosreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Marine-VHF-Radio.jpg

Brigand will never be this:
http://www.marinetelecom.net/yacht-pictures/onemoretoy/onemoretoy-4.jpg

or this:
http://www.mimlitch.com/photogallery/I45 photos/Pilothouse Instruments.jpg

but she could be this again:
http://www.frybrid.com/images/wheel.jpg

And be completely functional and safe.

Do you have examples? I have placed several pieces on the bridge and they all look like pimples. No matter what I di, this simply looked out of place on the teak bridge on either side of the chrome compass binnicle.

http://www.navis.gr/navaids/images/sounder3.jpg

Here was the wheelhouse when I found her
http://www.frybrid.com/images/whlhse2.jpg
http://www.frybrid.com/images/brigcont.jpg
http://www.frybrid.com/images/brigcont2.jpg

In the first image you will notice a large Radar unit just STBD of the binnicle and a covered digital compass just port of it as well as the hedious plastic intercom phone STBD of the wheel.

In the next you will notice that at some point Brigand was converted to Westinghouse air shifters, the engine start buttons were replaced with door bell buttons and the engine stop buttons replaced with smaller buttons and large washers.



In the third you can see a GPS, VHF and Chart plotter, out of shot below were Loran and another GPS, above and center was a hailer and a very large Sitek depth sounder. Notice if you will the vines of coiax and power cables running up the window devider and across the beams, the roof of the house was criss-crossed with runs of wire and coax and every vertical member looked as if it was being overgrown with climbing electrical vines.

Today all this equipment can be put into a single LCD display like the Raymarine C-Series
http://eurotekmarine.com/Shop/images/114.tn.lg.jpg
with one display offering Weather radio, satellite radio, Chartplotter, GPS, sounder/fishfinder and instrument data display. This display will fit easily into a box like this
http://slimages.macys.com/is/image/MCY/products/4/optimized/141664_fpx.tif?wid=300&fmt=jpeg&qlt=100
When in use it can be open and when not in use, closed.

I get an onobstructed view from the help, no wires snaking up every beam and no huge plastic boxes in my wheelhouse.

Redoing the Brigand site, planning on getting its own URL when I have the time to set it up.

Posted more photos, info on the windlass rebuild, fuel system, power windows, wheelhouse restoration, etc.

http://www.frybrid.com/brigand.htm

Brigand is almost 60 years old and a lot of people have added things so it is very difficult for me to tell you what was original. I can tell you that nothing is grounded to the hull, it appears that the bakelite fuse panel just inside the salon was the central point and that the batteries etc all grounded through that fixture. The starters have grounds that are not via the engines but are seperate electrical cables going back to the batteries, the shafts are independantly grounded to the hull as are the transmissions and engines but none of the electrical system is. The subject of bonding grounds is complex and still in many ways a matter of opinion.

Brigand is fitted with a capacitance discharge system "CAPAC" which uses a reference anode to measure the hull potencial, then compensates for it by feeding DC voltage into the water via 4 cathodes on the hull stopping any galvanic corrosion.

I have looked at the photos of Gladys II currently for sale in Ca. I would definitely have her hauled and untrasounded before even considering the purchase of a steel boat. That said, care should be taken in the selection of the ultrasound technician as well and be sure that he is familiar with the construction of the vessel. In an ideal world steel is a fine material for boat building but this assumes that app proper methods of protection have been taken, proper preparation, proper coatings and proper Zink or CAPAC systems installed.

The design used on these vessels was state of the art in the time they were built, by today’s standards I am not so sure although fishing boats are still built this way in many places. Welding a pipe to the hull is a great way to make a thru hull IMHO, however if the pipe is threaded and a steel valve screwed onto it, they fuse together and the valve rusts. If a bronze valve is used the bronze, being more noble, will cause the threads to be slowly eaten away, the same is true of stainless and stainless is only rust resistant if exposed to 02, so if the water in the valve is stagnant, the stainless will suffer crevice cavitation and fail. The only proper way to do it that I have found is to weld a pipe to the hull with a flange on the inside face, a gasket of plastic is placed on the flange and a bronze three piece valve installed onto the flange with bolts. This way there are no unprotected threads, the pipe and flange as well as the hull can be coated inside and out and the gasket prevents the valve from destroying the coatings and is… a gasket. If the valve needs to be serviced it can be removed without fear of the threaded pipe snapping off at the weakened threads – don’t ask me how I know that this can happen, but I will tell you that EVERY thru hull on my boat now has a properly sized cedar plug tied to it with fishing line.

Gladys also appears to still be fitted with the old 6-71 naturals, 2 stroke engines, called “Low Deck” engines because they use a head gasket like a car engine rather than individual gaskets on each cylinder. These engines are no longer allowed to be used in California in commercial vessels as they do not meet EPA requirements and parts are getting to be hard to find. I have the same engines and am in the process of rebuilding them since mine are worn out. These engines were produced from 1938 until about 2000 and are very common but each year the number of mechanics who know anything about them decreases. In-frame rebuilds run about $15K but there is only about $2K in parts. I recently went by a friend’s shop who had three 6-71’s he was taking apart. It took me about 2 hours to remove all 6 cylinder liners, pistons and rods. I figure I can do an in-frame replacement of cylinder liners, rings, pistons, rods and main bearings in a day and have just made my bilge clean enough to eat off and am pulling the oil pans tomorrow to begin that process.

If Gladys II has been properly cared for and protected she should be fine but I would inspect every thru hull, ultrasound her and have the engines inspected.

Wow, no idea in your area. Here in Washington a hual is about $17 a foot, laydays are $1 a foot not including the day they pull her and the day they splash her. My ultrasound was about $900. You can expect to pay about $100 an hour to have a tech look over the engines. The 6-71 has the advantage, being a 2 stroke, of being able to pull the air box covers and turn the engine by hand to inspect each ring for free movement by pushing on it and of rotating the piston below the ports which gives a view of the cylinder wall where you can inspect for vertical scratches indicating wear or the presence of cross hatching indicating good cylinders. A compression check will tell you quite a bit. If the engines start cold - without preheating - and do not smoke like a train then they are probably pretty good. Gladys II has a lot more room in the engine room than Brigand but unless you are a mechanic yourself, rebuilding will be very expensive.

Gladys II can not be chartered, according to the Jones Act which prohibits foreign built vessels from commercial use in US waters. In addition the Coast Guard requirements would completely change the boat, rail height is now required to be around 30" I believe, etc. Even Bareboat charters are risky with foreign built boats, so if that is in any way part of your intention, forget it.

The only way I can see to inspect the thru hulls is to take them apart, what you have is a threaded pipe screwed into a valve, the threads are cutting half way through the pipe, the threads are no coated in any way and if the valve is a more noble metal they will eat the steel.

I had one break apart in my hand where the valve attached to the threaded pipe, another broke off when I tried to close the valve and a third cracked at the threads when I replaced the valve, all happened when she was in the water (I am moored inside the Locks in Fresh water). The valve replacement was not bad as I had plugged the hole from outside with a plastic bag filled with rags before removing the valve, still I had to cut and weld new pipe in place and install a new valve with water leaking in. The other two I plugged with cedar and had to have her pulled again, luckily the yard manager is a friend and pulled her right as they closed for the night and splashed right when they opened allowing me to weld until midnight, apply coatings and get out of the slings without being charged. In hindsight I should have done them all right then but was unsure of the best method at the time.