mickoo
Western Thunderer
Mick, I'm going to guess here, on the first attempt with the beading you filled half off and then attempted to bend it to the right profile, as you've found that wont work.Thanks for the advice fellas, I'll give that ago I think
Before I can make good the motion bracket area I needed to be sure the fit underneath the footplate was snug as otherwise it just wouldn't look right. So I set about fitting the two huge lumps of pewter (footplate + Smoke box/boiler/firebox ) together and this was where the fun started. To say they need some fettling is understating things. The footplate has a mind of it's bloody own! I wanted to make the boiler removable to aid painting but the footplate can't maintain it's own form under it's own weight, so sadly this is not an option, the two have to be permanently fixed. So I got on with that and found I needed to also fit the cab in the process.
And so to fit the cab I needed to fit the roof because the higher temperature solder would mean I couldn't fit it afterwards. The more I looked at the prototype the more I realised that the rear beading just wasn't good enough. I remember @mickoo having a crack at this with his A3 and I've nicked the idea. So 1mm soft copper wire was used and filled to half round using some suitable N/S sheet as a jig. First attempt;
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Great, I thought. I thought wrong, no chance of manipulating the wire once it's filled, it just wants to bend the way physics intended and that's no good! So the second attempt was formed first and then filled down;
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Much better. Once this was fitted and the cab roof was in place I was ready to push on. I then found, having straightened the footplate as best I can that the rear of the firebox needed some work, a quick bench grab shot;View attachment 111576
Far from ideal !! Anyway I have not got the main structure together and the chimney tacked in place until i'm 100% happy with the position. I do like the Thompson budget sheet metal chimney on this class!
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You'll see from the above shots and certainly the following shot that there's still lots of cleaning up to do of the pewter but at least the basic shape is coming together and this will allow me to pick the work up on the frames again;
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Incidentally this is how the whole side of the footplate arrives, the feed pips are a real pain to clean up and make a tidy job of.
Cheers
Mick
The trick is to solder the long upright on first and stop just short of the first bend, then bend the beading in situ around a drill shank for something; on the County tender I found the end of a pair of tweezers had roughly the right radius.
It will try to twist and may even do so, but the trick is to form the bend and then flatten the twist with a pair of flat nose pliers. The problem with copper is that it marks very easily and using the pliers can add a flat surface to the half round part. Once the first curve is done you just repeat around the rest.
The stuff I've linked to has to be used the same way, solder the longest and straightest part first, then work in the curves.
Either way, the correct beading makes all the difference and well worth the effort
Looking at that footplate and the work ahead, I can't help but think you'd be better off working a new one up from sheet brass , it probably won't take much longer time wise either.