Blog- Beardybloke's 009 Workbench - Progress... and an almighty c*ck-up

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Progress has been made on Blanche, but I've suffered something of a setback. I shall start at the beginning, and build up in a not-so-dramatic fashion until it all falls to pieces (though thankfully not quite literally). First of all though, a comedy photo of me and my Land Rover to give an excuse for my lack of updates:

 

 

The last update was at the point where the rods had been placed cosmetically over the cranks... all well and good? No, not really... the bushes were also rather wider than the holes in the connecting rods and the washers, and this made the washers impractical as they couldn't be opened out enough... easily, anyway. So, a cunning plan ensued - I'd make some more washers myself! The nickel fret from the chassis provided the material of a convenient width:

 

 

The pointy contraption that can be seen in the lower right part of the photo is a cutting broach - I acquired a set as recommended in the Backwoods instructions, and now have no idea how I ever coped without them - they're far better at opening out holes than files and craft knives... not surprising really, given that's their design purpose! The washers were then trimmed to a rough size (as my side cutters are very, very knackered I made sure that there was plenty of space around the holes that could then be trimmed to size:

 

 

The rods were then opened out - the photo below shows just how thin the metal is at the top and bottom... I suspect that either these aren't the intended bushes, or there's been something of a cock-up in the design process

 

 

So, with rods opened out and washers filed down and fitted in place, I was ready to fit the bosses to the cranks - which I did with a deft flick of the soldering iron. Sorted! Well, no. There were a couple of tight spots - namely, where the cranks on each side were at their rearmost point of travel. I'm not sure if that's a case of my poor efforts at quartering, or if it is a case of the rods being slightly out-of-length, or the bosses being off centre. It seemed to be too much of a problem to fix by tweaking... but then, disaster struck! (I told you that it wouldn't be dramatic )

 

 

So... now I have to make a new connecting rod and when I do, I'm still going to have the problem of the tight spot. I don't think that it's an issue with the compensating beams as it's at 90???? to their motion, but I could really, really do with some help here

 

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