Firebox

Firebox
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

I only needed two goes at this one...

The firebox is made up of a former, wrapper and whitemetal front plus a couple of bits to represent the fusible plugs that are affixed first. I started attaching the wrapper at the bottom of the fold up inner part. Relieving lines make the corner bends easy and when I finished the wrapper was about 1.5 mm too long on one side.

Taking it off (good job it was only tack soldered), the next attempt started with marking the centre line of the wrapper and former using a CD marker pen. Then soldering started in the centre and moved out each way towards the ends. A little bit of overlap at the bottom on each side was quickly cleaned off with a big file. The whitemetal lump fixes to the front with 100 degree solder. I built up the edges with low-melt to give plenty of meat for rounding off the corners.

The ashpan is a more interesting prospect. It's made up of 4 parts with have to be riveted and formed (folder and bent in places). A lot of tacking, and repositioning took place before I was happy that the result looked like what I could see in the prototype photographs. I'll look forward to painting this bit as it's going to need a lot of weathering !

In theory the ashpan is fixed to the bottom of the firebox and the whole lot slid between the frames. It seems a little wide (about 1mm) for this so I'm going to deviate from the instructions and fit these bits separately. This shouldn't make any difference to the finished model.