When I built my first dock tank, this was where it all went wrong. Mercian supply the boiler part rolled and in theory all you have to do is solder up the bottom and move on. When I tried it the result was an oval boiler and when I tried to fix this it ended up shaped like a 20p piece. At this point the thing was scrapped and replaced with some brass tube wrapped in plasticard to bring it up to the required diameter - this lead to a replacement firebox and smokebox 'cos you can solder the metal ones to plastic...
Anyway, this time the boiler rolling was finished up in my rolling bar thingies and once soldered is a joy to behold. The front and back supports which form the boxes went on quickly.
The smokebox took me two goes. There's a lot of lamination's to build up the front and I managed to get the wrapper slightly wrong. As it had only been tacked in place a quick heat allowed another go which went much better.
Best of all the boiler top appears to be parallel to the footplate. Always a relief !
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