Found a few bits like this. If you’re lucky it’s stamped NAAFI too. Often the plates had a very intricate NAAFI logo on the other side on the rim.

I found a similar item on Cramond island a couple of years ago:

Revolting would be equally apt I think.

In short, a pop music combo called The Black Crowes has recently announced that they are splitting up. The Black Crowes are American yet the music they play borrows, stylistically, from British bands from the ’60s and ’70s. The Black Crowes are most famous for their version of the Otis Redding song ‘Hard to Handle’. On another Internet forum, I commented that I didn’t enjoy the cover as I felt it lacked the dynamics and swing of the original. In an uncalled for manner I was verbally abused by several American posters who took exception to the fact that a Scot had the audacity to criticise an American band. This made me realise that Americans are, at times, insecure about their heritage and try instead to hide behind an overzealous nationalistic pride to compensate. I hadn’t brought nationalism into the discussion, and I never singled out the Black Crowes expressly for being American.

In other news, I’m made angry by fuzzy concept of karma being cited increasingly as a real phenomenon. I keep reading things like “don’t worry, that dude has got some negative karma coming his way soon enough”. I disagree, but I’m surprised that western culture has latched on to such a tenuous quasi-spiritual concept. By my reckoning, Jimmy Savile should have had a karma credit stretching far into the red, but he was never made to pay for his actions in his own life time. Karma instead appears to be a nice way of not having to take any action. If I witnessed somebody running a red light and nearly hitting a small child, it would be easier for me to wish negative karma upon them than to actually take down their plate and report them for dangerous driving. This way I have staved off being proactive in any way but I still imagine that some form of justice will arise.

An even thornier issue; if I encounter somebody who has racked up a lot of negative karma, do I start acting negatively towards them because of this? Will other people not see me punishing an individual for no clear reason? Does that influence my karma balance? Does my karma balance increase positively if I punish more of those with a negative balance? Is it possible for a negative karma’d individual to get positive karma once they have crossed a certain threshold or do people avoid them and make it difficult for them to do good deeds?

Its all ********, frankly.

Hats off to another TDPRI’r. I’m over there under the alias Manolete, though haven’t posted much as of late. I asked about epoxy finishes over there as well, but I was given a fairly useless list of suggestions such as obscure products only available in select regions of America, only available in massive bulk or the usual suspects; ‘just use Nitro’. I’m surprised that guy that finished those gawdy lap steels in tru oil didn’t show up, as he seems to have an open-door policy on any finish related thread over there.

The last time I plucked up courage on TDPRI, (and this did make me angry, mods!), was to point out that I considered the Black Crowes’ cover of Hard to Handle to be overrated, lacking the deft touch and light-footed swagger of the original. Cue a bunch of angry Americans saying bad things about Scottish Music, purely because I stated in my user profile that I live in Edinburgh. The obvious irony here is that 1) The Black Crowes had to team up with Jimmy Page to mend their flagging career in the ’90s and 2) their sound and image is heavily reliant on those of the first wave of British hard rock bands to reach the shores of America in the ’70s. Uriah Heep, the Stones, The Faces, Mott the Hoople and co should all feel fairly flattered at this point. Also, the blues they so desire was only given an electric voice because of British musicians, and the Black Crowes have had to rely on a borrowed sound and aesthetic, and a gaggle of lackluster covers, to make any commercial success. The dictionary definition of disingenuous, in my opinion. Still, The Grateful Dead somehow forged a career in the US playing and singing out of tune and out of time with each other and somehow sold out baseball stadiums and the like. Make of that what you will.

Some Americans, on the Internet at least, appear very touchy as soon as any of their sacred cows (crowes?) are criticised by anybody not from the States. The mere fact that I had credible arguments against the sustained existence of the Black Crowes was enough for them to drag their usual brand of xenophobia into the fray rather than actually having an intellectual discussion on the matter. For the record, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Nazareth and Big Country are but three original, innovative bands to come out of Scotland. I suppose they don’t hold a candle to such virtuoso luminaries as Reo Speedwagon and Grand Funk Railroad, but you make do with what you have, y’ ken? :stupid:

I didn’t realise I was surrounded by finishers. :angel:

Reckless Rat, you touch upon a couple of useful things here. I came across Z-poxy, but I’ve only seen it cited as a grain filler or sealer. I saw a set of custom basses that had had Z-poxy treatment, but the builder still sprayed clear over the epoxy. I’ve used cyanoacrylate as a finishing medium once or twice on fretless bass guitar necks. It works really well, but I wouldn’t trust it over a colour coat.

I’ve also dabbled with Tru-Oil, but I wouldn’t use it as a clear coat over colour coats. The instruments I’m working on don’t warrant a clear coat. One is a Thunderbird II project I’ve built up from a re-worked Epiphone body. For practical reasons, such as my filling and relocating of the pickup routes, repair of damage from the previous owner and filling of the original bridge mounts, I’ve had to make it a pleasant Eau de Nil colour. My second project is a Rickenbacker copy that I’m converting into a Chris Squire style instrument in cream. Stripping the body of both instruments revealed veneer covering multi-part basswood bodies.

I’m actually a fan of hard, plastic finishes. Nitro is, to me, defunct car paint and not worth the grief. Yes it is easier for a home builder to use, but companies like Manchester Guitar Tech seem to intentionally keep the pigment count low, so you have to buy multiple cans for each stage of the process. 2K has the potential to do a lot of damage, but it seems to set rock hard in the space of a day or so.

Pics you say? I only have a few of the Thunderbird, and only in the previous colour I sprayed it with (which reacted badly to Rustins Plastic Coating and had to go in the bin). I made the pickup ring out of the lid of a Hammond enclosure and several hours with a dremel and multiple files. The pickup is an original ’70s Wide Range Humbucker out of a Telecaster bass. Seth Lover had a hand in the design, so I hope it sounds good! I had to solder on a new coax cable, which was scary.

Like all good stories, there appears to be an easy and a complicated solution, based upon what I’ve read. Is the cockpit section at Brooklands off of XR219, or another? It sounds like parts of XR219, once removed from Foulness, were heisted out of the scrappies contrary to the official story (be it that there was nothing left at Foulness to scrap or that Hanningfield metals got to it). Given the range of photos available from Hanningfield metals over the years, do any contain conclusive evidence of XR219?

I’ve noticed that a similar thread of rumour and conspiracy surrounds the Avro Arrow. Somebody’s brother’s flight instructor once saw half an Arrow in the back of a hangar in the ’80s etc etc…

I guess the silly/obvious question is, where are they now?

I’m bumping an old thread.

Firstly, Bing maps appears to have the most up to date imagery of the area mentioned in the previous pages and there is nothing left at all. Even on Google maps there are unidentified piles of junk;

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=sm22fnh2bk95&lvl=19&sty=b&eo=0&q=shoeburyness&form=LMLTCC

Following on from previous posts, am I right in thinking there was TSR-2 remains on the island until the ’90s? If so, were any of these recovered and saved? It would be a shame if such material made it all the way through the ’90s and then ended up scrapped after all. Also, this thread highlights the fact that the chap from Foulness on the TSR-2 documentary downplayed the quantity of TSR-2 material left on site. I recall he says words to the effect of ‘only having a few small bits left’, whereas the images in this thread from 1993 suggest quite a lot of the airframe(s) remained on site.