Category Archives: Metalsmith Ransomes and Rapier 70′ Turntable

The build of a Metalsmith turntable kit.

All in a day’s work – or rather a day off work

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A couple of days off work has seen a lot more progress on this. Having made up all the supports and cleaned up/opened out the stanchion castings ready for the rails last night, today saw them fitted and the handrails too.

It was all quite straightforward apart from having packed the tops of the supports that fit under the winding platform so that the winding platform, was at the same height as the deck. I realised that my hand rail whould then come out at a different height from the rest at that point.

After a bit of head scratching I soldered a thin strip of scrap etch along the outside edge where there was no support (the supports not coming out that far from the deck)

I then drilled through for the base of the stanchion and opened out the copper clad to sink the stanchion base into it and bring them back to the level of the rest.

Giving this..

I still need to fasten the guide wheels on but that’s a job for tomorrow.

Support and Guidance, if you will for give the pun…

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I spent yesterday and part of today putting together the support frames/guide wheels that allow the bridge to rotate. This has been the hardest bit of the build so far and that wasn’t hard so much as fiddly. It took a few goes to get the end U sections soldered square across the I beams with the right width at either end and that’s despite having a template to bolt across it. The instructions suggest assembling this on a piece of glass which I did I still ended up stripping the wheels/bearings back of one of these to give it a further rub down to ensure that the guide wheels rotate freely.

Then most fiddly of all was getting all the 16ba screws/nuts on – all 48 of them. The instructions suggest having the nuts uppermost as being most prototypical.

How I managed this was to feed a couple of 16ba screws through from below. I used some short pieces of coffee stirrer wedged in to hold them in place while I fit the brass bearing in place over it. You need to be careful that you pair these up correctly of they don’t fit – guess who had to take some of and start again to discover this……

Not having any 16ba nut runners I folded a loop on a piece of brass wire that passed through the nut. I used this to pick up and place the nut and then prodded,/tightened the nut onto the protruding thread with a cocktail stick finally tightening with a pair of pliers.

Which gave me these.

I also managed to get all the handrail/walkway support brackets folded and soldered up. The next job is to clean up all the cast brass handrail pillars and then open out the holes in the brackets to accept these.

The clear plastic plates are to insulate the guide wheels from the bridge

Something to renew the modelling mojo

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A lot has been going on at work recently which has reduced my modelling mojo with regard to the 06 (and modelling in general) . So I decided that I might try something different and that something being my Metalsmith turntable kit.

It’s for a Ransomes and Rapier 70′ table and this is what you get in the kit. This is the kit itself and the additional turntable installation kit.

This is how far I got in a very short space of time. The nickel spacers were folded up and soldered. and a couple of bearings were soldered into the centre bottom spacer. The rest just screws together…

After dinner I will start on the riveted angle plates. I expect that these will take a little longer to make progress.