Entry posted by Beardybloke
2,601 views
With Blanche languishing in disgrace, in a box, wrapped in lead and buried under 6ft of rebarred concrete beneath the patio (bet the archaeologists will have a field day with that one) a slightly more Beardybloke-proof method of attaining a working Penrhyn ‘Lady’ was sought.
With the Parkside Dundas Charles/Blanche/Linda kit being re-released complete with a handbuilt RTR Mike Chinnery chassis to replace the near-impossible-to-source wheeled coffee grinder that is the Ibertren ‘Cuckoo’ chassis, there wasn’t much contest. The kit was ordered, with a meagre contribution coming from the proceeds of my pre-house move clear-out of some older stock (well, that was my excuse, anyway) and I sat on the doorstep, eagerly awaiting its arrival.
6 months later, and to the accompaniment of a very numb backside, the kit arrived! I should say at this point that the 6 month wait was explained well in advance, and was perfectly understandable – the chassis is handbuilt, and at the time there was quite a demand for the kits. The last time that I looked on the website the lead time is down to about 3 months and I’m having to seriously resist a replacement for Blanche …
Opening the box presented me with an array of crisp-looking whitemetal castings with only a couple of baffling mystery bits; a sheet of etched parts; a plastic tender chassis complete with wheels; some brass rod and handrail knobs; and a very professional looking chassis. I wish that I could put etched kits together even half as well as this beauty has been assembled:
A thorough reading of the well-detailed and illustrated instructions followed, to ensure that I didn’t solder things up in such a way that left it impossible to carry out subsequent steps, or to solder the wrong bit on backwards and upside down. As I’ve learned from the NWNGR Fairlie, mistakes are harder to correct when soldering whitemetal compared to brass!
At this point, the Single Fairlie was soldered up into a passable representation of a box shape and construction had paused whilst awaiting a chassis from Dapol. Buoyed with confidence, I marched boldly on with Linda. Pride, as they say, comes before a fall. Soldering the rear buffer beam as well as the tender drawbar and associated pin went without a hitch and the cab front was attached reasonably well to the cab floor. The firebox was a little more problematic – probably a symptom of the iron being too cold or of me not being quick enough before the heat was dissipated by the rapidly growing chunk of metal on my workbench – so the soldering wasn’t the best, and in the event turned out to be rather brittle. The ‘boiler’ underside was soldered to the underneath of the tank, again, successfully. I can obviously manage to solder flat things, it’s apparently where there’s a corner that it all goes a bit Pete Tong…
…and Pete Tong it went. (You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?)
Having soldered the tank to the cab front with a little difficulty (I found it quite difficult to get the soldering iron inside the tank to solder it up, and I suspect that it was still operating at too low a temperature) I noticed that the tank wasn’t quite in the right place – it was rotated clockwise by about 5 – 10° when you looked at it head on. Now, whilst you wouldn’t see it from a galloping horse in the dead of night, if you happened to look at the loco dead on it would look as though it was running on some highly superelevated track and the cab had some kind of strange gyroscopic system to keep it constantly upright (to protect the driver’s brew from spillage? I reckon there’s a project in there somewhere…). Me being me, I wasn’t going to live with this, so I started to desolder it.
I mentioned in the first instalment of the Moel Siabod saga that the melting point of low melt solder increases once it’s been fused to whitemetal – don’t ask me the specifics, I’m not a metallurgist, but I suspect it’s something to do with alloying and the changing molecular composition of the materials at the join – but I tried to desolder the tank anyway. It didn’t work (remember, I still think that the temperature of the iron was too low) so I foolishly added some more solder in an attempt to get the original stuff to flow. Unsurprisingly, it still didn’t work, and now there was about 3 cubic feet of solder in the space where the motor should fit under the tank.
Increasingly desperate, the standard soldering iron came out. I should mention at this point that this can be quite dangerous depending on the type of low-melt solder that you’re using, as the higher temperature can produce some fairly nasty gasses – I believe that the Carrs 100° stuff that I’ve been using isn’t quite as bad, though it should still be used in a very well ventilated area. A rather hotter soldering iron was applied with some success – the tank separated from the cab! The former was filled with solder on the inside, but had not lost structural integrity in any place – I was in luck.
Until I looked at the cab front. The crisply-cast whistle and spectacle plate detail was buried under the other half of the solder, which had flowed rather too easily when the normal iron was applied. Just as importantly, so was the locating lip for the tank and I wouldn’t be able to clean up the solder with confidence as I could quite easily file away the lip that was buried under there somewhere.
Luckily for me, Parkside have an extremely good after-sales service and will replace any damaged part of the kit if you return said part along with the appropriate P&P. The sorry remains of the cab were removed from the footplate and the badly-soldered firebox was removed at the same time. I was almost back to square one.
Today’s lesson? More solder is very, very rarely the answer, especially if you’re trying to desolder something…
-
3
7 Comments
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now