Monday, February 29, 2016

Monocle

When working on the cab yesterday I realised that the rear windows didn't have any moulded surrounds. The front windows do have surrounds and I'd been intending to leave them as they didn't look too bad. As even old photos show rims around the rear windows I'm going to need to do something about them, so I think I'll now be replacing the ones on the front as well. On every model I've fitted window rims to they have been etched and while I could easily go that route I thought I'd see if I could turn them instead. Unfortunately after making the buffers I had just a tiny piece of rod that was roughly the right size left so as a test I made a monocle instead of a spectacle.


The hole in the cab is approximately 3.5mm so I opened this out to 4mm and then turned a rim with an outer diameter of 4.25mm and a central hole 3.5mm across that was a push fit in the enlarged hole. It probably needs for the rim to be slightly less proud of the cab and the edge rounded if possible, but as a first test this shows that the approach should work (a good job after I'd opened out one window hole already) so when the 6mm brass rod I have on order arrives I'll turn four rims rather than drawing up etch artwork.

3 comments:

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    1. Thanks. I wasn't quite sure if this would work or not; I thought they might be too thin to part off without distorting. Still waiting on more brass rod to arrive before I can have another go.

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  2. There used to be a company on Roman Ridge Road that sold bar ends of non ferrous metals and engineering plastics. They cost about 30% over scrap price and some of the ends were massive. I am trying to think what they were called but before they moved they used to be near the Midland Station a few doors down from Laycocks. The purveyors of all things for polishing.

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