Nuts

I said – “The next bits are the 8BA nuts to secure the body to the chassis. Must remember to open out the holes to take the bolts BEFORE soldering on the nuts.”

Then I changed my mind. Instead of opening out the hole to clearance I opened the holes to the tapping size approximately with a broach – this way you can centre up the nut more closely and then run a tap through it to allow the bolt to go through. I have been equipping with tools over the past few years – blame Guy Williams and Iain Rice, or at least their books, for the guidance. A set of even numbered BA taps found its way into the collection.

Storage

Which brings me to another aside – all the drills, taps, burrs, piercing saw blades and various other things were either getting into a mess in the drawer and/or were getting mixed up, and the plastic bags holding them were quickly getting tatty. So storage was the answer. Conventional tool storage is both expensive and takes up space – and is meant for tools with a load more meat on them than we commonly employ. So it was a case of searching for something – and we came up with plastic test tubes with stoppers – four inch for the drills and taps, six inch for piercing saw blades. Lab quality test tubes aren’t necessary – the ones used for shots are quite good enough – and I was surprised to find some of them in the wedding sections. I’ve heard of shotgun weddings but ...

Cheap test tubes, definitely not laboratory quality - plastic with stoppers. Drills, taps, piercing saw blades, Dremel burrs and that sort of thing. All in a handy storage rack

So the nuts are soldered on – held in position whilst soldering with a cocktail stick. The 25w iron was taking a bit of time so it was a cast of zapping with the torch rather than waiting for a larger iron. There’s a fair bit of brass round where the nut goes and it needed to heat up quickly. One charred cocktail stick later (the stick having two ends) and then run a tap through the nut and footplate and you have somewhere to bolt the body to the chassis. The nut needs to be well soldered as it becomes covered with the body bits and is inaccessible later, hence the zapping with heat not risking a dry joint.

Now flux and steel don’t go together very well, so cleaning and oiling the tap afterwards is a must. A wash in the usual alkaline cleaning fluid completes this part of the job.

Strengthening the bufferbeams

And then, after reading the comments by Buffalo in the previous blog about strengthening the joint between the bufferbeams and the footplate with angle behind them, thought I would. K&S 1/16 inch square tube, the equivalent angle not being available from the model shop I tried second, the first being in a “never open” phase when I drove past on the way to or from work.

So a couple of 30mm long bits of said square tube, tinned on two adjacent faces, front buffer beam first. That took two and a half hours because I cocked up the clamping and things started springing apart. The back buffer beam reinforcing tube went on first time.

Then it’s back in the alkali kitchen cleaner to get rid of the acid.

Above the footplate

Now we’re off the first page of the instructions. The next two paragraphs cover the first stage of making it look like a 45xx, a total of eleven parts and as many bends that are necessary which I’ll total as they’re done. It does tell you to solder down all joints for strength as they’re bent.

The body is has a framework and an overlay, the overlays carrying the detail. Tank framework – folds 4 – tank sides and into the cab. Bunker – folds 5. Oops, wait a minute – the last two aren’t fold lines – they’re cut lines if you’re modelling one of the short bunker versions, so should have been folds – 3. Some 45xx did retain a shorter bunker through to the end, but this isn’t one of them. So when your fold that you shouldn’t have done breaks off and you have to patch it, you’ll know just how I feel.

And while you’re doing all this, the bends made where bends shouldn’t be made appear. Having a School of Jewellery in the University leads to Jewellery Tool Suppliers, so a small anvil and soft faced and planishing hammers have become part of the armoury.

Gentle tapping with the correct tools hides a lot of cock-ups.

After these two parts are folded and soldered they’re fixed to the footplate. However looking forward the tank overlays do just that, overlay, so a tinning of the relevant surfaces is in order before fixing to the footplate, because after joining bits of brass together the heat sink is so much larger and so the thing heats up more slowly.

In all this the amount of heat required is quite large so the blowtorch is put to good use. Firing up the 40W iron is also quite a good plan. And in all this the most time consuming aspect is clamping the work together so that it doesn’t move. That and making sure the clamps are heatproof and you don’t solder them to the kit. (Again, ask me how I know!)

So after a number of attempts both the tank and bunker formers are in place.

And we’re not even at the end of the first paragraph of this page yet – so far for the tank and bunker it’s been three and a quarter lines of instructions.

And back in the cleaner.

One thing I don’t have at the moment is an ultrasonic cleaner. Maybe that should be the next thing I invest in.

So this is where we are for the moment. The cab interior is next. Fortunately photos from the web give a clue how it should look.

Cab floor next, which will end this instruction paragraph. And that’ll be for the next blog entry.