Basic Class 25 chassis

I don't watch a lot of TV and when I do it's usually while I'm doing something else. However, I do quite like those American shows set in custom car or bike workshops. For some reason the producers seem to focus on the personalities though, rather than the construction of the vehicles. They forget that normal people will get bored of this stuff and the real market is anoraks who want to know the welding method or what CAD package is being used to machine the parts.

Anyway, watching people welding stuff with carefree abandon made me want to do something similar. Make an item from scratch and wield the soldering iron like only I can. On the shelf was the Class 25 and I reckoned that in a couple of hours, I could get the chassis together well enough to support the newly delivered bogies.

The design is simple - a flat plate into which the BullAnt bogies are bolted. I just had to cut a length of nickel silver sheet to width, mark some holes, cut some even bigger ones and the job would be done !

All of this took about 3 hours. The same number of piercing saw blades were broken hacking out those big holes. Marking out was done with a combination of pencil, scribe and a pair of compasses which have two points. This last tool was particularly useful when a lot of identical dimensions needed to be marker such as the position of the bolt holes.

To stop the plate from bending I soldered a couple of thick bits of brass down the sides inset about one and half millimetres from the edge. The leftovers from old kits come in ever so useful ! More etch edging is fitted inside the body to provide a ledge for the chassis. This was fiddly to fit but with the aid of a couple of clips and a little tack soldering, I managed.

Finally, a long brass bolt reaches inside the body to screw into a nut soldered to the inside of the roof. Doing this up provides the body with a nice flush plate filling the bottom. Now I can bolt up the bogies and look at the under-body embellishments.