It’s been a bit of a ‘bits-&-pieces’ week since my last posting.

The first job was cutting, rolling and fitting the cab roof, followed by the cab floor.

This was followed by a day on the lathes, turning the chimney, dome, whistle, two by safety valves and the smoke box door.

The master for the boiler back-head, originally for a J6 was modified and a new RTV mould made. Twenty-four hours later, the mould, now fully cured was used to cast a J10 white-metal back-head which was a good bit deeper than the J6 one and which will provide some additional weight at the loco’s rear end.

I always find making splasher enclosures a tedious, time consuming job but this too is now accomplished. The splasher fronts are in 0.018” nickel-silver and were made by cutting segments off circles. It’s making the circles that I find tedious.

I first cut three rectangles of the sheet N-S and snip them to be approximately circular but larger than the required diameter. These rough discs are then clamped together with a 6BA nut and bolt and some large diameter washers. The bolt is chucked in the lathe and very gentle cuts taken until true circles of the required diameter are achieved.

The tops of the splashers are 0.010” N-S rolled to a curvature slightly tighter than the splasher top. The edge of this sheet forms the splasher beading by virtue of sticking thin card ~(about 0.008”) to the outer face of the splasher front and soldering the top to the front on the inner side and around the top edge of the front. Remove the card and the top projects about 0.008” beyond the front. That equates to a 5/8” beading!

I find this all very fiddly and time consuming but the end result does offer satisfaction.

These notes are being written before I have taken any photographs so I’m off now to see what I can do in that department.

I'm back.

I wish I could take decent photographs! I’m too lazy or too old to go for lessons or what ever and I’ve never got beyond using the camera in auto mode. Still, here are today’s efforts: -

The first shows the bits and pieces in three rows. Top row & left to right; chimney; dome; two safety valves and the whistle. Second row: smoke box door and back-head. And third row is all about the splashers. First is the remains of a disc that has had two segments cut from its circumference to make splasher fronts. Next is a full disc ~(always make more than you need!), followed by two completed splashers viewed from above and then two viewed from the side. The triangle is a disc that lost three segments and it is above a fifth splasher which will be cut to provide the tiny splashers at the cab’s spectacle plate.

The second pic. is an attempt to ‘blow up’ the safety valves and the whistle. The latter looks to be very tall but it has dimensions taken from a Bayer-Peacock drawing from which I took many details when using the study rooms at NRM a few years ago. It could be wrong for a J10 because I was at that visit researching a J39! But I can always claim that it got swapped at a visit to Gorton Tank.

It might be looking some where near finished next week.