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Water Cans and Handbowls


pete harrison

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The BCM cans have minimal soldering throughout, often missing in vital areas to maintain water retaining capacity. As a working painter, I only decorate them if supplied by the customer, I personally wouldn't touch them with a long shaft. Having seen the prototypes produced by Rose Narrowboats, I'm more than happy to pay the extra to paint a properly made and solid can, an attitude upheld by the small queue of customers who want the quality. I'm a little surprised at the furore of disinterest from the Rose post, I doubt I'll be their only customer once production gets under way.

 

Dave

 

Having buggered about with a BCM can trying to solder it up, getting a watertight one will save a lot of time. The extra cost will be worth it!

 

Richard

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Having seen the prototypes produced by Rose Narrowboats, I'm more than happy to pay the extra to paint a properly made and solid can, an attitude upheld by the small queue of customers who want the quality. I'm a little surprised at the furore of disinterest from the Rose post, I doubt I'll be their only customer once production gets under way.

 

Dave

I'm fascinated by the idea of hand made cans. I assume that most 20th century cans were at least partially machine made, although the first ones were presumably hand made.

 

So what is involved in creating the ribs around the can without rollers. Are they made of galvanised or tinplate? How thick?

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The BCM cans have minimal soldering throughout, often missing in vital areas to maintain water retaining capacity. As a working painter, I only decorate them if supplied by the customer, I personally wouldn't touch them with a long shaft. Having seen the prototypes produced by Rose Narrowboats, I'm more than happy to pay the extra to paint a properly made and solid can, an attitude upheld by the small queue of customers who want the quality. I'm a little surprised at the furore of disinterest from the Rose post, I doubt I'll be their only customer once production gets under way.

 

Dave

 

Dave could it possibly be that many of us older codgers already have a decent can and have little need for any more? Rather than disinterest in the Rose cans.

It has been mentioned elsewhere that newer people coming onto the cut appear to have less interest in the traditions and history and more in whether the boat has a tumble drier, washing machine etc.

Edited by Ray T
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I'm fascinated by the idea of hand made cans. I assume that most 20th century cans were at least partially machine made, although the first ones were presumably hand made.

 

So what is involved in creating the ribs around the can without rollers. Are they made of galvanised or tinplate? How thick?

I have a tinsmith manufactured Water Can here in my living room, and it does not have rolled 'ribs', instead it has a 2 inch wide band attached - a feature I have seen on several old Water Cans. This Water Can has numerous details making it far superior to any modern Water Can, even if 'Ray T' did suggest it was painted by Rolf Harris captain.gif

  • Greenie 1
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I'm fascinated by the idea of hand made cans. I assume that most 20th century cans were at least partially machine made, although the first ones were presumably hand made.

 

So what is involved in creating the ribs around the can without rollers. Are they made of galvanised or tinplate? How thick?

To clarify, there is quite a bit of tooling involved (almost all of which we have made) but it is all hand powered.

 

The first batch will be made from pre-galvanised steel, but I'm planning to send the prototypes off to a galvanisers once we're done with them - we'll see what extra cost will be and what state they come back in!

 

The cans such as the one Mr Harrison has are pre-WW2, and need less tooling, but are more time consuming to make than the later ones. We may well build a few for fun though!

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I'm a little surprised at the furore of disinterest from the Rose post, I doubt I'll be their only customer once production gets under way.

 

Dave

 

No disinterest from me - I somehow missed Ros's post amongst all the stuff about how to carry a windlass.

 

Definitely interested, if production costs don't result in them being a very expensive item.

 

Will be keeping an eye on progress with interest.

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The BCM cans have minimal soldering throughout, often missing in vital areas to maintain water retaining capacity. As a working painter, I only decorate them if supplied by the customer, I personally wouldn't touch them with a long shaft. Having seen the prototypes produced by Rose Narrowboats, I'm more than happy to pay the extra to paint a properly made and solid can, an attitude upheld by the small queue of customers who want the quality. I'm a little surprised at the furore of disinterest from the Rose post, I doubt I'll be their only customer once production gets under way.

Dave

think the queue may be longer than anticipated
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  • 3 weeks later...
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  • 2 months later...

I hope nobody minds me posting this here, but we will have 2 gallon cans with bucket style handles available very soon:

 

31440401294_4976d4b397_h.jpg

 

 

Hi Alan,

 

£190 including VAT for the two gallon.

 

Regards,

 

Anthony

 

A very nice looking can Anthony, almost indistinguishable from the older ones that are so sought after these days. My one regret is that Ron Hough did not survive long enough to decorate a few, I would have been first in the queue

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I've just had an email from Rose Narrowboats with the price of £200 each...

Apologies for that - the left hand and the right hand got a little to far apart....for now they are £190.

 

 

 

A very nice looking can Anthony, almost indistinguishable from the older ones that are so sought after these days. My one regret is that Ron Hough did not survive long enough to decorate a few, I would have been first in the queue

Thanks David - that's what we were aiming for. It is a shame Ron isn't here to see (and paint them) - it was the lack of suitable items for him to paint for our chandlery that first started me thinking about making them.

  • Greenie 1
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That's a nice can , I managed to find 2 for our boat ( wanted older cans) last year but it took us almost 3 years to find suitable cans to repaint, at a price that wasn't eyewatering. Finally this year people will stop asking why our cans don't match the boat.

Price appears staggeringly high at first glance but I'm sure is simply the cost of making unusual hand made items, in a mass produced world, and some of the modern stuff is truly useless.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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