Inspired by a friends recent photos of his Connoisseur Bolster wagons I kicked myself up the backside and finished my pair of jim’s bolster wagons that I have been slowly making as a demo piece at shows last year.

As these things go I took the pretty much completed wagons along to show a friend who has recently finished a lowfit and he noted that my axle guards splayed out slightly, which I confess I hadn’t noticed. But as I said to him, I would rather find these things during the construction phase than after painting so I set to and removed one axle guard from each axle choosing to use the unbraked side as being easier to get at. One of the bearings wasn’t seated properly so I deepened the hole. However they still looked splayed out. so I filed the pin points off both ends of the axle. This fixed the problem.

As ever this didn’t go quite as smoothly as I’d hoped as on two of the four axle guards castings that I removed, I did managed to damage them. The first was just one of the spring hangers broke off after I stuck a screw drive under it to prise as I heated up the body to soften the low melt. As luck would have it, when making some different anvils for my Leakey rivet press I had done some test rivet strips and one of those had just the right spacing to make some new hanger brackets from. A short stub of 1.6mm rod in between and we have this.

Sadly on the other one I wasn’t quite so lucky in that in a moment of inattention with the microflame I also melted the spring as well as the hanger. So I set to and made a pair of hangers and the spring to go in between.

On a side note I also fitted the D plates with the microflame. I tinned the backs with 100 degree solder and placed them on the solebar. Then I wafted the flame on it’s lowest setting along the bottom of the sole bar until I noted the D plate starting to settle then I took the heat away.