A two week break has given me time to ponder a couple of tricky areas regarding the Bury goods and this weekend has seen some progress, the most obvious being the smokebox and boiler.

I toyed with the idea of producing the smokebox as one cast lump to provide a bit of tractive weight and to balance the weight of the turned copper firebox. However, since this is a one-off scratch build I felt that might be a waste of mould space and also I was too impatient to go through that process when I only need one.

Therefore, I cut a front from 12thou brass sheet and then soldered one length around it from one flat side, around the circular top half and down the other side. This was then laminated with a sheet of thin brass foil with rivet detail pushed out from behind. To do this I use a natty little homemade tool made from an old plastic scalpel handle and a cog from an old mantle clock. This cog was clamped in a nut and bolt through the centre, secured in the lathe (a drill chuck will do), and sharpened with a file. Once fitted to the handle in makes a sort of pin roller. Run along a straight edge it’s ideal for creating long lines of evenly spaced rivets in styrene or thin brass foil.

Once this laminate was soldered in place I formed the distinctive Bury smokebox door surround (which were originally polished brass) and a couple of brass washers were conveniently exactly the right size for the cylinder covers so they got soldered on as well.

The boiler with its lagging strips was rolled from flat sheet first scored with lots of evenly spaced lines to represent the gaps between the strips. It was a bit of a pain keeping this round as I rolled it as it kept wanting to kink along the scored lines but we got there in the end.

A quick test assembly and photo before calling it a day.