With the crew Health & Safety dealt with, time for those tank tops.
Forgive my hieroglyphics. That was when I was trying to identify which of the umpteen holes etched in the kit parts were actually needed. I’m pretty sure there are other things on the tops of the tanks aside from the filler and a vent each side. I haven’t managed to identify anything conclusive from images or drawings, not even a filler lid bumper. For the time being, therefore, I shall fit only the items positively identified.
I have a set of Laurie Griffin low oval fillers, which look lovely. I need to get some shorter mushroom vents, which I’m hoping LG will have with him at the Reading show in a few days. If Masterpiece Models are there, I might sneak a peek at their small prairie to see what might be lurking on the tank tops that their researches revealed.
Why make new tank tops? I didn’t fancy trying to fill holes without leaving marks. If I’d realised the issue when the parts were still in the flat, I could have dealt with it then. Hindsight, and all that. The holes are also accompanied by slots along the outer edges, where the sub-frame was folded down earlier in the construction. Better to make a filler plate to cover everything. Anyway, time for some CAD…
Cardboard Aided Design. I began with some masking tape, applied carefully to the tops and pushed into the edges. I ran a felt pen marker round the edges, followed by carefully peeling the tape back off and resticking it down to some printer paper.
After carefully cutting the resulting shape out, I tested it and made adjustments as necessary.
With a good fit, I made a replica template for the other side of the engine.
Due to the vagaries of my construction, I couldn’t simply flip the first template over. I tried, but found it was ever so slightly different. A new template was made the same way as the first.
So far, so good. I measured and marked centres for the filler and vent locations.
A sheet of thin brass sheet was attacked with the blunt end of my marker pen, and the templates were carefully scribed round. The sheet was thin enough to be cut using a scalpel and straight edge. This, at least, alleviated the curling problem that can be encountered using snips or scissors.
Finally, a pair of new tank tops. Now all I have to do is work out the best way to fix them onto the old top surfaces.