Me again, fellow Westerners. Well, I’ve not quite given up. Yet.
While I was still relatively in the swing of things after yesterday’s cutting and forming, rather than make a start on another bending saga as suggested in my previous, I decided to cut out and form the REAL tender sides/end from the kit.
On this occasion however, apart from one or two, most of the tabs were too ‘tight’ to the etch to use the scissors due to this being a busier etch containing more parts, so I dug out a fairly blunt scalpel from the box and successfully removed the part with this, cutting on the end of the tab nearest the fret to keep the forces away from the part to be removed, utilising an ordinary modellers mat to cut it on. Incidentally, I thought I would be dicing with death here, suspecting the surface might be a tad too flexible to adequately support the piece while cutting, but thankfully this was not the case. I mention all this for the benefit (?) of any newbies that might be reading this and thinking of taking the plunge; I realise I’m teaching my grannies here.
Ironically, it was too hard in places such that one or two dried up lumps of adhesive or whatever marked the surface of the brass with a couple of dimples. This really is flimsy stuff.
Note to me for future reference: next time, buy a new mat and keep solely for the purpose of kit-building!
Removed and tidied up as per yesterday’s post. Note the second scribed line near the base. Guess which divvy got the etch the wrong way up when marking! Hopefully nobody will notice the feint line showing on the outside...
Now here’s a novelty, and please spare my blushes after I tell you what I was up to. After annealing the metal yesterday on my test piece, you may or may not recall I employed my new flame thrower for the task, not only to play about with it, but also to try and be a little more accurate with the heat (the flame on the range tended to be indiscrete with previous test pieces, rendering the whole surface of each, well, a little too flimsy). Despite this however, the rest of the part was also undesirably bendy, so I though I’d rig up a heat sink - remember those jaw extensions?
Well, they were useless for this job too. They sucked up all the heat which I came to realise when I tried to bend the part in the jig. Rock-solid. Rather then persist and lose the ‘true-ness’ of the edge, I dismantled the jig and reheated it with the Proxxon, simply holding it with an old pair of pliers as I’d done countless times before on the stove. Only this time, when an area of the part went purple-ish, I moved on to an adjacent section and repeated until the whole edge was thus treated, the idea being to minimalise the conduction of heat across the whole of the surface of the brass piece. Not sure if this is good practice or not though, but the annealing has done its job this time.
The part was returned to the jig and formed as previously with fingers and thumbs. And then steel rule. And more steel rule. Now I know I’ve been harping on about this flare, and feel as though I’ve been a little ungrateful to all my benevolent friends on here who’ve tried to help and reassure me, but that last bit of flare was still galling me.
As this was the last throw of the dice - like life, there is only one go at this - I threw caution to the wind and grabbed
@adrian ‘s pin hammer, and like the first Bronze-age man, I sat tapping and deflecting and tapping a bit more, not really having a clue what I was doing, until I made that darned little beaded bit at the top submit into cooperating. At least I think I did. Perhaps I’m just trying a little too hard to convince myself, but according to Martin’s gauges the top has gone a little flatter and finally seems to fit a little better at the top.
Even so and if that is indeed the case, like all things in life, there’s a pay-off: the harsher treatment of the ‘worked’ top may have lost the smoothness of its predecessors and taken up the patina of that Ford Cortina Father Ted had borrowed for the raffle, after he tried to knock at a dent, but I suppose it affords it a more artisan appearance, and ultimately, workman-like is always what I hanker after.
Yeah okay, if you say so, Jonte.
Anyway. Just before I go, I couldn’t help noticing two sets of three indentations on the inside of the tender rear. Checking the instructions, as I feared, they were rivets that needed embossing from behind; something to do with the rear steps. I’d been dreading this, but I couldn’t recall there being anything about embossing the tender sides/end, so thought I was safe for now. Adam recently responded to a query I asked about firming these things in the absence of an appropriate tool, and it transpired that a blunt pair of compasses was the order of the day, which I have; but couldn’t bothered going inside to get them, so lazily reached into my tool box resting by my feet and selected a sharpish screw. This, I reckoned, would be easier to handle with its flat head and short body - shorter than a pair of compasses any road - especially seeing as this was my first attempt.
Not a bad attempt on the practice etch, so I turned to the actual part. Ouch!
The step to the left of the picture shows a hole just beneath the set of rivets. Turns out that the piece of wood I’d been using as a work surface was battle scarred with drill holes and chips out of it, causing the screw to slip out of the embossed dimple on’t back.
Note to self: new work surface for each new kit-build.
I’ve tidied up the surface for now while on the flat with a couple of files. If it requires further work, I’ll try and address it with some solder ‘filler’ from the rear when I eventually get the iron out.
Not easy this is it?
The sun’s beginning to break, so perhaps I can work outside without my coat on like this morning.
The vagaries of the weather, hey, fellow Westerners?
Right, now to try and work out a jig for creating the two bends between the rear and the sides.
jonte
Edit: second to last photo out of sequence; apologies.
