More comedy kit building today - more problems found. The title should definitely be updated to "The Comedy of Building an Ace Kits K".
The build sounds very much like your SECR H Class, Jon, although the side frames of the tender do at least appear symmetrical. In fact they've been etched as mirror images so should be identical. Which is more than can be said for the spacers, Rob and below you'll see why I decided to make new ones, although even these may still need beefing up with a bit of shim.
The saga continues:
I was back in the work shop yesterday still debating whether to cut new frame stretchers or not. My mind was made up by this:
Not entirely easy to see but on viewing afresh I felt there was something not quite right about the stretchers. I laid them on top of one another. On studying them I confirmed that the centre holes are not in the centre. Neither are the tabs identical on each. So only one option, and hence the reason for the proposed change of title. There now follows some comedy hacking about of random bits of metal.
I also rechecked the side frames and found that the slots for the stretchers are not identical sizes. Neither do they match any of the random tabs on the stretchers.
So, with the mellow tones of Mark Lanegan on the diesel CD player (don't ask, but if interested look him up on U Tube. Can't have steam radio on this erudite site, can we?) I set to work.
I found some .5mm nickel silver strip of about the correct width - enough to make half a dozen spacers. I need only four, but will use the others as vertical spacers as all the kit caters for is horizontal ones. I chopped it in to the six pieces needed and sweated them all together. The sides were filed back to be level and then the ends squared off.
An application of felt tip pen was made to the surface and it was marked out with a scriber for cutting out and the centre was punched ready for drilling. The centre was then drilled on my drill press - at this point it's not important what size as I'm fully expecting to have to make my own arrangements for attaching the tender chassis to the body, and I'll probably use 8BA screws through the chassis and soldered nuts on the footplate - I can enlarge the hole when I'm ready.
Here's the hacked about stack of spacers/stretchers, all drilled to a common centre.
A few moments with the gas torch and they were separated in to their individual - and now identical - pieces. And that was it for yesterday.
Today was side frame day. The internal side frames have already featured in my first posting, so here they are after hacking out for the insulated sprung hornblocks. You can see the marking up, again using a spirit permanent marker on the surface before marking out. There was no cut out marking on the frames as supplied so, with much trepidation I went ahead and followed the instructions with the new style Slaters insulated hornblocks - you know, the ones I said I'd never use! (Sorry Steph, but I had a set to use up, and this seemed an appropriate project as everything else is experimental!)
Before cutting out the slots using a piercing saw I set up the jig with the normal bearings in the bearing holes to give me the correct spacings.
And oh - I'm so proud. Look, it all fits on the pins perfectly. You'll note that I especially cleaned up the bench for this photo.
Tomorrow I'll solder up the new spacers/stretchers and glue in the hornblocks. While the Devcon 24-hour dries I'll start splitting the axles and shorting out the wheels.
In summary and putting all joking aside the standard of the kit so far is truly appalling. I don't remember ever seeing a kit previously with so many errors in such a small number of components. All I can say is "Richard - you wuz quite correct!"
But what a challenge.
Brian
) I've actually started the dreaded Ace Kits "K". In my normal fashion, and just to get a sense of the designer's intentions, I've started with the tender. Internal frame sides have been cut from the fret with their spacers. And low and behold, six parts so far and two cock ups (or should that be cocks up?) In fact, if you multiply the errors by the number of pieces/joints involved it's a total of twelve in just six parts! See below (and please forgive the crappy photos).
