Completly as predicted, things have slwed down rather on the Joffre build. This is not to say that I havn't been spending ages on it (which I have), but just that I am now dowm to the fiddly bits. A slight critisism of this kit is that others would probably have included lost wax brass castings for some of these bits but here we have lots of etched parts. Is certainly fun putting these together but is very time consumeing. So her is the reversing lever;

Some of these bits are seriously small (althoghy the 2mm finesacle people might not think so!) and when it calls for 1.5mm lengths of tube I start to get worried. Got it worked out though. Firstly I cut a slightly oversized length with the fret saw (see later), and a very fine blade. I then set the back end of a suitably sized drill in the small vice useing the depth gauge on the calipers. The piece of tube was then pced over this and filled until it was obviouse steel was getting in the way;

Now, one thing that has always bugged me is that being right handed the thumb screws on the fret saw always seem to get in the way so suddenly had the brain wave of swapping them to the other side. Only have before shot but sure you can work out what I did1

So here is the valve gland and despite my complaints it looks pretty good for something I have have done!

I have a pretty big collection of valve gear bits all filled off and mounted on a piece of card with double sided tape so hopefully the next bit won't take too long.