New

Following on from my An Evening With session last night (which I thoroughly enjoyed and I hope all those that joined me, did too) I can now share with you how I managed to hold the chimney centrally in place when soldering it.

Whilst machining the base of the chimney I had deliberated from the outset how I might best hold the chimney in place after machining and I had considered boring the base out and adding a short length of tube to locate it when it occurred to me that solder doesn’t stick to aluminum so why not use the arbour to centre the chimney.
I parted the end off the arbour and machined the sides so that the chimney sat down properly the other way up.

Then using a makeshift arrangement of blocks and strips of wood I fed the modified abour up through the chimney hole in the smokebox.

There was enough solder remaining on the smokebox from where the chimney hadn’t sat down flush initially, so some flux and a waft with my microflame had in place in no time with no cleaning up.