gjdale

Fascinating project Ian - I’ll follow along for interest.

That is looking great (and huge!) Yves. You must be well pleased with this.

A good question Kevin, and Wefalck has provided a great answer. Thank you both for exploring this.

At last, I have managed to make a proper start on this project after a few distractions! Construction: Main Frame Construction begins by checking the alignment of the Main Frame Boiler Ring, the Boiler Ring, the Coal Bin and the Boiler Cap Ring. The Boiler Cap Ring (upper left in the photo) is used as the reference for all other rings. It is important for these to be as round as possible as the boiler walls index from these. The parts were then scraped, filed, and sanded of all extraneous casting imperfections (there were many!). The boiler walls are comprised of two sections, both formed from photo-etched stainless-steel sheets. The outer faced of these are first scrubbed in a horizontal direction with a Scotchbrite pad to simulate a brushed surface. The sheets were then slowly formed into cylinders by bending by hand and using the mainframe / coal bin along with the boiler ring to get them to the right size. Once they were the right size, I held them temporarily with masking tape and miniature clamps while medium viscosity, gap filling CA was applied on the inside surface of the joints. Once that had set, the clamps and tape were removed, and more CA was applied under the overlapped edges on the outside face. Masking tape was reapplied to hold everything in place while the glue set, and they were left overnight. The next day the tape was removed, and excess glue cleaned up with Acetone and cotton buds (Q-tips). All in all, this was a lengthy and difficult process – far more so than the description suggests! Lower boiler wall being formed using Coal Bin and Boiler Ring for index: Upper boiler wall being formed using Mainframe and Boiler Ring for index: And the finished boiler walls: These are now set aside until much later in the build. The reason for forming these now is so that subsequent paintwork on the other parts does not get scratched in the forming process. Attention is now returned to the mainframe and some initial components – the Lower Steam Box and the Upper half of the Water Box, along with various attachments. Locating and identifying some of these parts is a real challenge. Although the drawings are very good and the instruction manual has a lot of photos, some of the smaller parts take a while to positively ID. And although the instruction is very good, it is not perfect, and I’ve already found a couple of inconsistencies that it took a while to nut out. It is important to scrape, file and sand the casting imperfections and then dry fit everything prior to painting and assembly. All the locator holes had to be re-drilled to accommodate the indexing pins as well. Once all of these parts looked like they would fit in the appropriate place, they were scrubbed with a toothbrush in some warm soapy water before being set aside for painting. Here are the parts ready for the spray booth (along with the main frame – not pictured): It may not seem like much, but there is two full days work to get to this stage!

Outstanding B.E. - but then again, we have come to expect nothing less from you! 👏👏👏

This is certainly coming together quickly Kevin - looking good.

He’s also a member of this forum Kevin - goes by the screen name “Xken”. He also designed the Allerton Steam Pumper kit I’m just starting. You’ll see some similarities in design principles between the two.

I see that this kit is another Ken Foran design, so I expect it will be a good one. Nice start.

I’ll be interested to follow along too. Looks like you’re all set for a great start.

Nicely done Dave.

Looks superb from this distance Mark!

Lovely work Ryland.

Looking very sharp Mobbsie!

As long as they are sanded flush, they shouldn’t be a problem as you will be sealing them. If oxygen can’t get to them, they can’t rust.

Kevin, I would think that the solution to that particular issue is to stop posting on the FB group, rather than stopping work on your model. Come back to it after AV and post your progress here. In all the time I’ve been a member here at MSW I don’t think I have ever seen that type of “trollish” behaviour - only ever encouragement, support and constructive suggestions.