These are so much nicer then the original supplied by Bachmann. While their stovepipe funnel is nice, the spark arrestor version looks distinctly Disney rather than prototype to me.
As far as I'm concerned, a spark arrestor is a big fat thing atop the pipe. Backwoods supply a nice whitemetal casting and the builder is left with several options for topping this off. Last time I built up the etched cage but it was a fiddly awkward job and so it was deep joy to be asked to make the model as per the Backwoods web site. This loco has the basic arrestor topped with mesh.
I tried this out but the initial results looked untidy. Then I hit on the idea of using the top ring from the full cage, soldering the mesh to this and glueing it in place over the funnel top. Then the hinges and catch are extended around the lip using microstrip and the whole lot looks very neat and tidy - and more importantly like something that would work in real life.
The bottom is more fun. A hole has to be drilled up the centre to fit the locating spigot. I used a centre finding square to get the first pilot hole in the correct place and then progressively drilled out to 3.2mm. 3 chimneys is about as much as I could do in a single sitting with a pin vice - the palm of my hand was blistering nicely thanks to the back of the tool rotating against it.
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