Despite cleaning up the N7 and ordering the bits for it the mojo has been a bit lacking since I returned from my jollies so I decided to have a play with my lathe to see if I could kick start the mojo.

My first effort turned to dismay when I found that the tail stock didn’t centre on the work piece and then when attempting to turn a short length of brass rod, it was turning off centre – great for turning crank shafts perhaps but useless for what it’s designed for.

All sorts of fears went through my mind from worn bearings to faulty chuck. So I started a bit of trouble shooting and having swapped the 3 jaw chuck for a Jacobs drill chuck I found that the running with that was concentric and I turned the thicker end of the example below. This left the fault being with the 3 jaw chuck. I very quickly deduced that when I have taken the jaws out to clean them I hadn’t got them back right. I tried each combination in turn trying to get them to go back evenly by screwing them on but didn’t have any luck. In the end I had to strip down the chuck by removing the mounting plate and then removing the circlip from the back to get the front plate far enough away from the back plate to allow the three jaws to slip over the spiral and into the centre equally spaced. Then I pushed the font and back plates together and reinserted the circlip. All looked well so I added the mounting plate and tried again.

Thankfully this seems to have resolved the problem and the other end it the result from using the 3 jaw chuck.

Now by now you may be wondering what this has to do with the N7 and the answer is absolutely nothing but it did restore my mojo so being in a machine tool mood I set to drilling out the buffer stocks for the fake mounting bolts.

A while ago I mentioned that I had a Proxxon Dividing head. Up to now I haven’t actually used it but it was bought with this very thing in mind and it very quickly turned these

Into these

I then proceeded to make some fake nuts by filing hexagonal flats on some microbore tube

Using a pin vice as a guide – A technique that I picked up from Nick Dunhill.

Once filed up short lengths were cut off using a scalpel and a piece of 0.8mm rod inserted into the tube. This rod was subsequently cut to length and soldered onto the buffer shanks to give these

I took the photo when I had done two but all four were done before I packed in for the evening.

This one is a little different for me, the gent that I am building the J6 for is building a layout based on Hitchen in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s and N7’s were there a plenty. He has several N7/5’s but needed at least one N7/3 so he bought one already built from Ellis via eBAY.

It’s lacking some detail and has some that needs to be removed.

The photos below are as it came to me and are copyright of my customer and used here with his permission.

It’s new identity is to be 69618 and I am working to a supplied photo of the engine as at 23rd May 1959

So far this is what I have observed needs to be done:

Before going on holiday 3 weeks ago I bought 10 bottles of nail varnish remover from Wilkinsons (Wilcos) and left the body to soak in it while I was away.

Quite a few bits dropped off and others were coaxed to release their grip followed a scrub with Bar Keepers Friend got it to a point where I was able to use the microflame to remove other parts