Progress over the last few days has been excellent so much so that I have backtracked a little and picked up on a couple of items that Paul has mentioned in the past.

The first was to replace the hatch knobs on the footplate with some wire loop examples. The knobs have gone in the spares box and will come in at some point.

The next was this comment from Paul, which I completely agreed with as I had been unhappy with the fit for sometime. But, I wasn’t sure how to go about rectifying it then, so I slept on it…

“Hello Rob,


when are you going to sort out the gap between the chimney and the smokebox?


Coat on and the door closed very quietly behind me!


OzzyO.”

The (replacement for the kit provided) chimney was cast from a 3D print by Mike Hopkins and Mike had placed his print supports under the bottom rim. I can see why as they would be least likely to be seen on the finished model. However because the casting also had a tube which fits into the smoke box to aid location, it made cleaning up the bottom rim and getting it to fit flush very difficult.

This is what it looked like after my initial cleaning up of the remains of the supports

Having almost finished the body work, I took the bull by the horns and took the chimney back of back gently gripping it in the vice between two pieces of round bar while applying heat to the inside of the chimney until I was able to ease it off.

Although I took photos long the way, I am not going to share how I machined the chimney just yet as I want to use it as part of my an evening with presentation later in the month.

This is it refitted to the smokebox.

Most people reading my threads regularly, will have gathered by now that I am a bit of a tool junkie and that I don’t do well with the smaller imperial measurements.

Late last year I came across a Chesterman Height Gauge which measures in both imperial and metric, at a price that I didn’t need to sell a kidney to afford. It came in its original box with all the attachments including a holder for a dial test indicator. When I was looking for one, even those with no box or attachments were fetching good money. I already had a good quality imperial Height Gauge which I was able to sell to recoup some of the cost, thus making it a worthwhile investment.

For those that don’t know, height gauges are used not only to measure and compare heights but also for marking out when machining and they come with at least one hardened tools for scribing. To use it, you cover your workpiece in layout fluid/marker pen and then scribe in your horizontal layout marks with the workpiece and and the height gauge on a surface plate of some sort.

Because I didn’t want to scribe the boiler, leaving marks that might show through the paint, I thought that I might be able to use the dial test indicator attachment to hold a pencil. Sadly all the pencils that I could find in the house were all the standard hexagonal type which were all too big to fit in the holder. Having a box of brand new pencils to hand I had no problem in turning the end of one of the pencils down to fit the DTI holder.

I used a flat ended HSS tool bit and although I have a corrugated way cover I immediately vacuumed the sawdust off the lathe to prevent any staining of the metalwork.

I sat the loco on a pair of 1-2-3 block on a sheet of plate glass to do the marking of the horizontal line down either side of the loco.

Since taking the photos I have chopped off the thinned down end of the pencil and it now lives in the box with the height gauge as I suspect that over time I will make much use of it for marking boilers.

After the fitting the firebox and checking the fit of the lower firebox sides with the chassis in place I was wondering how to hold them in position while the epoxy set.

After trying and discarding a number of different clamps that I have in the workshop ranging from a small engineers clamp to a pair of 1″ G clamps I decided to make a custom clamp to do the job. On my bench I just happened to have a short length of 14mm dowel which would do perfectly for what I had in mind. The bottoms of the lower firebox sides slope so I reasoned that dowel being round would allow clamping along those slopes.

Next I cut a short piece of 5mm square boxwood to a length that would sit on the footplate inside the firebox and drilled a hole through the middle. I had planned to use a 1″ 10ba screw as I have quite a stock of them. Sadly it wasn’t anywhere near long enough so I decided to turn myself a custom screw and to make it a bit easier to handle a longer length in the lathe, I decided to make it 8ba rather than 10 ba. I started with some 3mm brass rod and turning around 10mm at a time to minimise deflection I kept easing a bit more from the collet until I had a 30mm length that could be threaded 8 ba.

As I started to run the die down it I realised that I didn’t actually need to thread the whole length so I just did about 12mm. As it turned out that wasn’t quite long enough either but rather than start again I worked out that I could just counterbore the dowel to allow for enough thread to tighten the clamp. I created the counterbore with a 6mm 4 flute end mill which allowed enough clearance to use an 8ba nut spinner and for me to add a washer. As it was only to hold the parts in place there was never any need for it to be anything more than gently tightened.

There is a hole in the upper surface of the lower firebox sides which locates over the studs mentioned in the previous post. The clamp then holds down the rear and to be belt and braces I also placed a reel of solder on the on the flat section at the front to be sure that it sat down flush on the studs and stayed there.

I finally took the plunge and fixed the firebox to the footplate

In order to do so, I needed to attach the firebox in two planes, to the footplate and to the cab front. I was sure that If I attempted to use adhesive for both it would be a recipe for disaster. In so much as I would end up with epoxy smeared where I didn’t want it on either the cab front or the footplate.

To overcome this, I made up a plate that fits inside the firebox with two studs in it (1x 10ba and 1x 8ba). They pass through the cab front and are secured by nuts within the cab. They are hidden by the back head when it’s in place.

Knowing that I could stand the footplate on blocks of wood cab side down and put epoxy on the bottom faces of the firebox print while being able to slide into final position on the cab front made it so much easier. Finally two 12ba screws held the firebox to the footplate while it set. The plan was to remove them and replace them with studs that will screw into the holes and then hold the two lower firebox pieces into place until the epoxy sets on those too. Leaving the studs in place will give a degree of mechanical strength to the glued joints too. You can see these studs in the photo above as I took the photos after I had fitted the firebox.