The main underframe assembly is designed to be soldered up with laterals connecting two laser cut quasi solebars with incorporated axleguards and inner vee hanger.
The assembly is designed to fit between solebars placed 80mm apart internally, but an LSWR drawing of a similar wagon gave the internal dimension as 6ft 3in. and I had set the curb rails and solebars accordingly.
It was necessary to cut two wider laterals to suit, after which it could be soldered up as designed.
Suspension is supplied with small coil springs, the bottom of which sit in recesses within the 'boxes.
The top of each coil spring however, is retained by a spigot cast on the underside of the otherwise cosmetic leaf spring castings. These are cast in whitemetal, which seemed a potentially weak point on which to take the suspension loads. It also meant the underframe assembly could not really be entirely independent of the body during construction, an idea I stole from Steve Cook and now very much prefer.
So for those reasons the axleguards were fitted with what will become the coil spring top retainers. These retainers were soldered on the axleguard's outside faces to act as a spacer for the whitemetal leafsprings and to give extra gluing surface on final assembly (and will be hidden by the springs).
Until that point however, the underframe can now remain independent which will make it easier to get the suspension properly set up, and to solder brake gear to the same sub- structure (All bar the outer Vee hanger and lever.)
That's the current plan, anyway.
At the moment it looks as though it may be necessary to pack the underfame from the floor by something like 1mm on assembly ( dimension from bottom of solebar to centre of brake tumbler/ nominal axle centres should scale at 18.5mm) but time enough and easy enough to adjust that later.
Next will be fettling and fiddling to get the 'boxes sitting and sliding properly, and adjustment of the suspension stops, before assembling the brake gear.
Is this too boring? It's not quite updating as each new bolt head is fitted, but it may seem like it?