News of yet more glacial progress, fellow Westerners, as today saw me finally fix the overlay to the tank former top.
Now this probably shouldn’t have taken all day, but unfortunately, it did.
What I was contemplating, and in hindsight what I shoulda done, was to sweat the two together. But in my defence, I really wasn’t sure how the overlay would fare under the duress of all the heat required, so I bottled it and opted to solder round the edges. Which takes forever. Especially when you can’t just run a single seam down each edge as there are notches that must be kept clear for such additions as rear coalplates, so it was on with a series of tacks, trying to be as neat as possible without flooding all those beautiful little rivets with metal glue. Yes they can be dealt with as advised by
@mickoo with wick, but with a month or so to be delivered on a slow boat from China.......
I started by cleaning both parts as thoroughly as possible with a glass fibre brush:
Now, as I mentioned to
@Phil O in response to his recent post kindly advising the use of wooden clothes pegs for the task at hand, I had a stash of these all ready and waiting in a cupboard beneath the kitchen sink. As is usually the case with items not stashed away in a secure store, they’d walked, and after a fruitless search of adjacent kitchen cupboard, garage and airing cupboard I sort of gave up the ghost and opted for the plazzy variety languishing in the tin my wife leaves outside in the garden. Funnily enough, when dried after an overnight soaking, they dealt with the job quite adequately. Incidentally, you will notice a handful of locking tweezers which I’d bought specifically for this sort of thing, but after recent issues with other metal implements acting as unwanted heat sinks, I decided to let them lie.
The pegs in action:
In an effort to make the process of soldering round the edges a little easier, I decided to turn the piece over and fix the overlay via the gaps left by the removal of the coal plate brackets:
A shoe box lid provides the right angle of attack and the good ol’ metal bars showing yet another ideal use a stop.
Another chance also to view the front bits that were folded round the top and fixed. Yuk! Next time, I would remove both of these pieces, fold them off the job and then fix them separately. Mick advised me that the best filler for any gaps in these brass kits is ‘more solder’ although IMHO, it would help immensely if I could avoid a gap in the first place. This is not a criticism of the kit itself which is measured to perfection; I just found it difficult to form in one piece as designed: my failing not the kit which would prove straightforward in the hands of a competent builder.
I turned the kit over to discover no cockling or distortion present. It would have indeed stood the rigours of ‘sweating’. Next time. I started soldering it on using that lolly ice stick again (this would not only hold down the overlay whilst being soldered but would also protect the rivets from excess solder). Then I came to my senses and realised that turning turtle would do the same thing. Pretty obvious really. For the intelligenza.
View attachment 125709 View attachment 125710
Talking of shell-like creatures, my dear friend Olive was allowed a restricted return to the garden following a concentrated course of antiseptic cream and antibiotics:
The rest of this post has gone down as an ‘Edit’ following an accidental operation of the ‘Reply’ button due to the page updating very slowly. I’ve also experienced instances of the site crashing whilst trying to complete. I wonder if anybody else has experienced such difficulties- or perhaps is just yours truly the slow-coach?
The results:
Until the wick arrives, I’ve tried to draw the excess solder away from the rivets which should also make it more accessible for the wick.
I really was careful - although it doesn’t show - with solder or amount of solder to be exact.
To that end, I broke out my new 1mm but replacement for the smaller CS model Antex. Problem was, the bit wouldn’t come off. As I didn’t fancy breaking the element, I just had to continue with the 2mm already attached. The tiniest amounts of solder were used to seal the joint and fill the gap where required using a method advised by
@oldravendale, but the task was made more difficult by the iron being too light for the job (the surface of the solder resembled the shell of fruit of a horse chestnut tree!). So, back out came the big guy requiring real dexterity by yours truly with the solder to prevent a massive lump of the stuff accidentally attaching itself to the face of the bit.
So there we are, Westerners, not an awful lot to show and not the neatest of job’s, but we continue to live n learn.
Chow for now.
Jonte