Yesterday having cut short a long weekend up north by yours truly forgetting to take his medication along I looked more closely at the brake and water scoop standards. I had more dialogue on RMweb with MikeMeg on the subject last week and he had remade the 4mm versions. I thought initially that although slightly on the fine side that the castings looked usable. – By fine they are quite slender in appearance whereas the photo posted earlier show them to be quite chunky, especially where the mounting pieces.

These are the castings provided.

Gladiator B16-1 Brake and Water Scoop Standards

The problem came when testing them against the tender front (stuck in place temporarily with bluetac).

Gladiator B16-1 Brake and Water Scoop Standards

Despite my cutting them off the sprue with as much length as possible, they are short in the column length

I couldn’t see any immediate way of extending the column* A better person than me might have been able cut it of and drill out the fixing brackets but they looked a bit on the fine side for me to be confident that I could achieve it so I decided to have a go at making some replacements.

Now I have to be honest at this point and say that this really became a test exercise to see what I could achieve with my Proxxon mini pillar drill with the X-Y table attachment. I have been looking for something to try it out in anger, having only drilled out 4 buffer stocks since I got it at Christmas.

Gladiator B16-1 Brake and Water Scoop Standards

Gladiator B16-1 Brake and Water Scoop Standards

Gladiator B16-1 Brake and Water Scoop Standards

They took me all day to make but I really enjoyed it and I have parts roughed out to make a couple more for a build for myself at some point. to give an idea of scale/chunkiness the new columns are made from 1.6mm rod.

*Thinking about it afterwards I could possibly have joined an extension piece onto the castings where they go through the wooden floor extension that’s shown on the photo of the tender front.