Back in 2011 when I put the body together despite having scratch built a groom’s seat I soldered the roof on. A couple of years ago I realised that I would never be able to properly paint the groom’s compartment so I removed it again.

As can be seen from my earlier photos it was built before I started using lens tissue to represent canvas on roofs. I wanted to add it and the simplest way to do it was to remove all the roof vents, stick on the tissue and then re-add the vents. I left the two grab handles in place ad worked around them.

I am not sure whether it was because I had removed the roof after originally soldering it on but it no longer fitted as well as it did. In order to improve the fit I soldered a strip of quite thick nickel to the top of each end which filled up the slight gap that was there.

I then started thinking of how to refit the roof after painting. Initially I added a framework using my small vertical belt sander to quickly create the curves to match the roof profile with some angles to brace them apart at the correct distance. On one end I added a fold to hook under the strip on the top with the other end slipping inside the inner wall of the groom’s compartment. It worked but it was not as tight a fit as I would have liked.

While conversing with another modeller who is also building a horsebox from a Gladiator kit I had an idea. It’s not the clearest in the photo below but I soldered a curved length of 1.6mm rod to the underside of the roof tight enough so that it would snapp over the end strip and hold in position below it – think of a reversed percent sign %

That works a treat and is something I plan to develop for fixing other van roofs on going forwards.