Project It is just so Super (Sentinel).

[JimH]

I've been trying to limit what I do on the body in an effort to force me to do the boiler cladding. It's slow going putting the decking down and most of the trouble is cutting the planks to minimise wastage. Plugging the screw holes take an age too.

However, it isn't too bad to work with.

A question. I've laid the planks with a 1/8th spacing to allow movement which I believe is the way you should do it. Because this is going to be inside the body and likely to be used as living space I was considering filling the joints with a sandable Sikaflex as per posh yachts with teak decks before sanding and oiling it. Is this a wise thing to do? I was quite pleased with how straight everything was.

The edge at the back is protected by a piece of heavy angle which means checking out the planks so the angle sits flush to both the top of the planks and the face of the oak bearer. The top of that middle plank looks wavey for some reason. It isn't. Promise.

We're about half way here. I laid the rest of the planks on loose last night because I thought we were going to need more wood. I also wanted to work out which were the best looking planks so the less then pretty ones can get hidden under the water tanks or bunker.

What else? The other shitty job was making the boiler cladding which is just a complete and utter nightmare. True story. The only time I have ever been so frustrated with a job that I hurled a hammer at the radio in the hope that it would shut Bon Bastard Jovi up was when I was making the cladding for the last one. I missed and Bon Jovi did not shut up. The cladding was originally in blued (more later) steel whereas the later S was done in aluminium. Some of these are done in stainless which looks terrible and at least one I have seen is done in brushed stainless which is great of you want your waggon to look like a Waltham music centre but not quite correct. Anyway...

The cladding was rolled up a while ago and then ignored because there was always something better to do. I roughly marked the centres for the fittings and then popped a 2"hole with a ring saw about where it should be. This let me slip the cladding onto the shell and pick op the centre for each mounting pad or coupling. Once marked each hole could be cut out with a nibbler and finished with an angle or die grinder. Each hole has a fininging trim around it that fits close to the boiler fitting so you don't need to be that accurate with your measurement but one of the things I hate about these jobs is it looking a complete mess before the shame plates go on so I try to work accurately for my own sanity. This wastes time but I don't care.

This is the top cladding (upside down) getting the holes cut out.

And this is it on. Most things line up neatly. The finishing plates are getting jet cut so they are as tidy as possible.

And this is the bottom half. This is even lousier to work with because gravity is against you and it has to slip inside the upper one so they can be screwed together. The squae cut outs are to fit round the boiler mounting pads.

So, how to finish it? You don't seem to be able to buy blued steel any more and last time we did it the various cold bluing products we tried were hopeless. After much head scratching we has resigned ourselves to painting it which would have brought a whole load of other problems. After watching something convincing on Youtube I bought a bottle of this as a last throw of the dice.

And bugger me backwards if it didn't go and work. The finish it gives is a bit fragile and takes a lot of looking after because there is bugger all corrosion resistance but it gives a decently convincing finish. Ignore the slightly rusty streak on this sample piece - I have been rubbing it with a finger as hard as I could so see how durable the surface was (not very but good enough). Or the scratch because I wondered how easily it would scratch (very). It's no wonder that people have to treat guns like new born babies.

Sadly for apprentices one through to three this means that there is a lot of polishing to get through before the cladding can be blued. 

Here is the hole cut in the back of the cab to get through to the bunker which will be in the body rather than the cab. This is not original but it makes the cab a much nicer place to be. It also means you can get four people in the cab rather than two. There will be a steel chute bridging the gap.

And the alternator (it is an alternator in the hope that we can get at least a bit of power out of it) needed a different mounting because someone didn't listen when I told the the clearance under the deck.. Dynamo set ups were always a bit tenuous on these things and many weren't fitted with them because they were largely useless but because we drive at night a lot you do need some decent lighting. Most of what you see here will be hidden under a slightly more period looking cover.

And annoyingly because we needed to remount the alternator it also meant we needed to make another water pump bypass line which we could have lived without.

Correct mirrors are very hard to find because they were a bit fragile and easily broken so we had a pattern made from the ones on the S. This will look pretty funky when they are finished but sadly they are tiny and close to useless. On the S we have a camera to see what is behind so we'll need to have something similar on this one. Using convex glass helps a bit but not very much.

We had got a foot brake valve but it had been frost damaged and someone had brazed up. This wasn't the best way to do it but once cast iron has been brazed there isn't much else you can do so we tried to make a better job of the brazing. This happily took a x1.5 pressure test but no one was very happy about it. We pondered various ways of making it less shite but in the end just got a new casting.

Much nicer if a little fiddly to machine in parts. This is it having the spindle and guide fitted.

That's more like it.

And it even got a new steam shut off valve made for it. Fiddly little bugger to make it was too.

And as with all projects as you get closer to the end the jobs to do list keeps getting longer, not shorter.

[UltraWomble]

Top work Jim

[nomiST]

Amazing work, you really should be very proud.

And I'm nicking "shame plate" thankyouverymuch!

[JimH]

There isn't too much wildly exciting going on at the moment because so much time is spent finishing things to the proper finished standard. This rarely results in anything worth photographing. This is the finished brake valve which is tested and ready to bolt on.  You will note that there is very little difference to the one that has been junked despite soaking up many days' of effort.

And these are the mirrors. They don't look much different to the last picture although the poor No1 apprentice has been standing for hours dressing them up. They are now getting close to being buffed. The glass isn't glass because the mirros need to be convex to make them even a tiny bit useful so we were trying some plastic ones. I for one am not impressed.

And there are lots of pipes to insulate. We are good and pure and holy we don't agree with the use of artificial, man-made fibres. We only use wholesome, natural fibres for our work. .

Some pipes already insulated with Whole Earth Natu-String. I need to get some whipping twine to make a nicer job of the ends.

I got the deck finished off, well, screwed down and then spent an age rebating the end of the planks so the piece of angle iron that finishes off the deck and protects the end of the planks sits flush to the top surface. The plug cutter fell to pieces so I need to buy a new one so I can plug the screw holes and make it look pretty.

You can probably spot in that photo that the wings are sort of held in place too. Because these waggons were converted from solids to pneumatics in period there were all sorts of ways to hold the wings on and very few of the period efforts looked very nice at all. We decided that the best thing to so was copy the brackets on the S4 because Sentinel made them so they might have made these the same. Someone who wasn't me stood for a few days TIGging these together so they looked like the ends had been forged. This is the rear one.

And this is the front one. This one needed to be a bits jinkier because you had to dodge around the chain. There needs to be a set of brackets made for the top of the wing to steady it.

The sharp eyed may also notice that in all that black another black thing has appeared. This is the chain oiler. On later ones these were cast aluminium but on the Super they were fabricated from eighth plate. This was handy because they were a doddle to make and gave No1 apprentice more experience gas welding. These are exactly as per the Sentinel design. We are just waiting for the castings of the valve body and the drip rail (which pokes out the bottom of the box)to come back from the foundry to finish them. These bits are often missing because people ran the chains until they were completely buggered and lashing around to they would be whipped off by the chains.

And the offside one. Lift the lid against the springs and swing it to the side, fill the box with oil and then drip it on the road. There will be a needle valve to control the flow of oil and to shut them off. Note also the offside wing brackets are there too.

This is the new front apron which was cut from 16swg rather than the 14 we used for the first effort. This makes it much easier to work with but isn't as fragile as the original spec of 18 gauge. The inside face has just been painted because access it not good once it is on. Now we need to fit this (again) then the work of making the cheek plates can start again. Underneath the apron plate is the 10 sheets of 1mm sheet steel for cladding the sides of the body. Whoopee.

And after probably getting on some sort of watch list because we bought so much gun blue this is the cladding getting somewhere near done. I don't think gun blue is really the way to blacken as much steel as this but there isn't much alternative these days (unless anyone knows better in which case speak up). It is a complete pig to photograph - well, it is if you are as crap as I am with a camera. Please note the tight fit of the cladding around the various fittings which means the shame plates can be quite small and this makes me happier. The brass band on the bottom isn't fitted yet which is why you can see the welding clamps.

Damn tight. Despite the streaky nature of the finish (which looks worse on camera than it does in the flesh) I am pleased with how this has panned out.

Most of the shame plates are back from the cutters so I'll blue these then fit them this weekend. We managed to get some period looking self tappers to fit them but the screw heads will need bluing too. This is one just sitting there to show how tight you can make things if you get someone with a plasma cutter to do the job. It would be a massive pain in the arse doing things like this by hand.

Throttle valve on for the last time and the steam pipe in. There is a bit of tin bashing required now to make a nice looking heat shield to save the skin on your knee.

This is the top piece of cladding which hasn't been blued yet. There is to be a flanged brass band around the top which hides the join between the top ring and the cladding. There is then a funny truncated conical ring that covers up the nuts and also holds the boiler top in place to make everything look real nice and purdy.

The bluing on the cladding looks really horrid in this photo. God knows why. Also I don't know why the perspex template is sittling on top of the boiler.

And that's about it. The only other thing that happened was that the motor in the tyre changer went phut which was annoying because we were changing some tyres at the time. The motor is now repaired and waiting to go back in. Top Chinese quality.

 

[JimH]

It’s been a while since the last update so a bit to catch up on. Let’s start with a pile of shiny black. These are all four mudguards plus the various brackets and spacers. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it already but they are sitting on a pile of plywood for the cladding for the body. The only things to do for the front wings is to get some canvas mudflaps stitched up.

 

And these are the start of the windscreens. These were optional extras in the day and I’m sure if you were pootling round town you could live without but on the open road you really need them. Sadly they are an absolute nightmare to make and soak up an ridiculous number of manhours. These are the hinges and side frames.

The funny T shaped handles are locking screws which are used to clamp the top light of the windscreens open. Although you need the windscreens unless it is lashing down you need to have them open otherwise you bake.

One of the reasons we are short of lorry drivers is we have only recently started treated them like shit. Apparently.

 

While we are on the subject of making drivers suffer he is a picture of my knee next to the throttle valve. This is where your knee sits when you are driving and you will see there isn’t much room. To make matters worse the throttle valve sits at about 550F which means that even with as much ceramic blanket as you can get in your knee starts blistering after a few hours.

 

It’s not just the drivers that got the rough end of it. This is where the stoker sits. There was no real restrictions to where on the waggon the feedheater (black box close to the bottom of the picture with the white, natural fibre insulation on it) was sited but they chose to put it where the stoker would have put their feet. Gee, thanks.

 

The chain oiler cases got finished and fitted a while ago but we were waiting for the castings for the valve and dripper to come back from the foundry. They arrived the other day so the oilers now have their valves in. The drippers (little brass casting that lets oil fall onto the side plates (if you are lucky) are elsewhere and sit on the end of a long copper pipe which fits to the spout coming out the side of the valve. You just need to remember to turn the off when you are finished or you’ll end up with even more oil on the floor than normal.

You need to be careful that the chains are kept in adjustment of the lash in the chain causes them to swipe the drippers off.

 

Now the cladding is on it get its data plate as required under PSSR. We had these acid etched ones made which look a bit more heritage until you notice the SI units. Note also the uber close fitting trim plates around the gauge glass and feed clack valve. We managed to find someone selling some elderly flat head self-tappers which got gun blued so they look quite nice. I can’t make my mind up about the brass set screws holding the cladding together. If we find some suitably old looking steel ones I think they would look less acned.

 

This is the boiler top looking neater than it’s ever done. The nut guard hides to top ring of nuts as well as hold the boiler top (inner bit) and the cladding top tries in vain to keep the heat in. The brass band hides the joins. The closing plates around the superheater tails was a pain in the arse to make.

The eagle eyed will notice a Beetle door mirror sitting on the rear seat. We were just messing about trying to find the best place to put a mirror (not a Beetle one) so the drive can see the water level.

 

And from the driver’s seat. There is a stoking chute and lid to make yet to keep the smoke going up the chimney rather than filling the cab (which it does if you aren’t tuned into what the driver is up to)

 

Speaking of the driver’s seat you can see that what started as a nice, roomy perch has become more than a little congested. There is a little more to go in yet.

 

And looking the other way you can see that there is plenty* of room for your feet.

 

And now onto what I’ve been occupied with for a few weeks. I’ve touched on these before and had already done some work on them but it has now got to the point where I need to make the cheek plates. These plates fill in that empty space between the front panel and the bottom of the windscreens and are a shape called “a shape”. My first effort ended up n the scrap because the works drawing wasn’t even remotely right so what we see here is the start of effort three (you may notice some tacks have been cut out.

 

The plan is to make it in three sections butted together with gas weld then dressed. The section you see there is fairly painless because the side of the front plate is straight. However, further round the front plate gets a 12’ radius in it which makes flanging it really hard. You can possible make out the curve here. You can possibly also deduce that I needed to hit the 18gauge sheet quite hard to stretch it.

  

So once they are made you need to beat out a dished section to fill in the gap. And it is that curve which is problematic. There is some stuff on Youtube made by a tin basher in the states about flexible patterns. You make these with low  masking tape and and glass reinforced tape. Ratherthan go on about it here take a look at this vid here: https://youtu.be/y-JQgPm4_7s

So this was my first attempt

 

The things is that the curve on the panel is absolutely critical. You would think “that should be it” then when you bolted it in place you stood back and then started crying because it looked utterly wrong. With a bit of trial and error you determined that you were actually putting too much shape in it rather than too little.

So this is the off side one tacked together with the original (which is bollocksed even though it doesn’t look it – we filled it up to make the pattern). This is still not right but the metal is at least in about the right place.

 

Rather than carrying on with this now I had the shape about right I decided to do the nearside one next. So you hit and hit and hit things until it looks like this

 

And the other bit looks like this (the front plate is bowing out here rather than my tin bashing being complete shite)

 

Then once the middle bit is bashed it looks like this. I was using those rather handy butt weld clamps to hold things together which let me tack things up in place.

 

The issue here is getting both sides the same which I’m still not convinced I am there yet. The problem is that there are shiny bits and hit bits and mill finished bits which make it difficult to see what is wrong and what is just a reflection. Note also the boiler cladding and ash pan in place. 

 

So once I had welded the nearside one up I daubed some undercoat on it to stop it reflecting so much. Yes, I know it looks like it has been kicked down the road and back – I am more bothered at the moment to get the shape right before I start dressing out welds and dents.

 

So that is where we are now. A lot more hitting in prospect to make things look right. Oh, and he tyre fitting machine got mended. It turned out that the capacitor was knackered. 

[JimH]

Not much to add at the moment other that the very annoying discovery that I'd made the nearside door 1/4" too narrow so I'll have to make another one and the other annoying realisation that I have used the wrong thickness of hinge which has thrown a number of other things out but short of building a completely new cab we'll just have to live with that. However, on the slightly more progress side I've pretty much got the O/S cheek plate finished. 

This is the first thing I've made which I've had to summon up some vaguely artistic ability to come up with a shape. This is it mostly dressed out and the butt welds dressed out. I am quite pleased with this but more aware than ever that there is a lot to learn.

 

Gas welding these things is a bit of a problem for me because I don't have the steadiest hands. On top of that keeping butts tight when you are dealing with flat sheet isn't very hard, however, when curves start to get involved things can get a little too wide in parts which needs a little filler wire. The upshot is that there are some areas of weld that I can't dress right out.

 

I'm kind of looking forward to working in lighter gauge aluminium rather that having to put the effort in to moving steel around. And just to show that it doesn't look a complete mess on the inside...

 

Now to finish the nearside one. 

[Supernaut]

I'm disappointed I wasn't quick enough to see this in person when Tickman et al collected that 4 post lift from you. We just rendezvoused with them on the road outside.

However, I also didn't realise how close you are. For some reason I thought you were down in the borders...

Top work as always though!

[JimH]

Pictures are always in short supply at this time of year because I really have no clue what I am up to with a camera given the not exactly studio quality lighting of the big shed. However, best have a quick update because it is changing quite rapidly at the moment. 

There was much humming and hawing about the windscreens and how they would have built them. Sentinel did not make the screens and instead used Auster to make them. As an aside, if you rake through patent records for Auster you find countless little developments for all sorts of things to do with making windscreens for all sorts of things. Many of these were in the name of Mr Percy Lane. He must have buggered off to set his own thing up because Percy Lane Ltd appeared in the early 1930s doing pretty much what Auster were doing. They must have taken some of the work with them because Percy Lane made the windscreens in the later S Types and are still in business today doing pretty much what they have always done. Aaaanyway, following a careful inspection of an original set of screen it was concluded that they must have been milling the sections from solid bar rather than using extruded sections. Extrusion was in its infancy in the early 20s and we felt that there were a number of shapes which were too sharp edged to have been extrusions. The final piece of "evidence" was that the windscreens were wickedly expensive. A pair of screens cost you the same as a new boiler. On top of that no one makes any extrusions now that were even close to what was needed so milled from the solid it was. 

These would have been relatively easy to do on a horizontal mill but we don't have one of those so we'll have to do it the slow way. So, first you track down the sizes of brass section which is less than easy as it turns out.

And then you set about throwing most of it away

And with no small amount of gyp windscreens start to appear

 

This is one of the bottom sections. This isn't all glazed because there is a louvred panel close to the chimney where it was clearly too hot for the glass. More of that when we get to it. The top panel is a single pane of glass which is hinged at the top so you can see where you are going when it rains. The frames are silver soldered together. They will be painted black when they are done because they would have been black originally and they look far better than if they were polished. 

These brass frames sit within a pair of steel flat bars which are suspended from the cab uprights on stout bronze hinges. The whole affair is very heavy. You can make out the hinges and steel side supports in this image. 

 

You will also notice that the cab has got curvier. Things came in not too bad but they are not finished yet. It took quite a while to get these things finished off. 

That is the start of the body going together. This is a bit crap looking from the outside because it's just plywood but it looks nicer on the inside. Uprights are ash and the rails and mid point spacers are oak. That is the nearside top rail sitting on the offside of the platform.

The body gets bigger but sadly more shed like. The sides will have steel sheet bonded to them as the original design (almost) had so the finished item won't look too much like a single garage. You may note that the body is very tall. 

 

Despite their size there was very little stowage space on these waggons for personal effects so many grew additional toolboxes slung under the body. I think a large stowage box would look nice under each rear corner as well as give a handy place to hide the modern rear lights. We aren't massive fans of venturing onto the road without indicators and brake lights and modern LED things are very discrete so there is very little excuse for not having them on. 

Trying to work on something so large is a bit hairy so you need a scaffold. We'll have to come up with something different when it comes time to paint it. 

So that is both sides in place. The lump of wood at the top is only tying the two sides together. The roof of the body will have a curved roof to match the cab roof. There are nine ash beams to steam bend. I've glued the uprights to the plywood with Cascamite which isn't the easiest thing to use but it seems to be pretty strong. 

And from the inside you can see how big it is. There will be a water tank on either side over the rear wheels which will take up some room but there should still be enough space in there to make a brew and listen to TMS. The midpoint horizontals look on the piss because they are just sitting in there waiting to be glued in. I can't do that on my own so need No1 apprentice to assist. 

This is the start of the other space hog - the bunker. It is framed in oak and panelled out on tulipwood and should give us about 15 cwt of coal. Once the body is finished it will get paneled out in 6mm ply and painted. You can just see the hole in the back of the cab where you can shovel from.

What else? Someone put the front wings on so the lights could go on to start building the wiring loom. The wings help the look at the whole thing.

A few more of the cheekplates. I was quite pleased with how these came in. You can also see how weighty the side bars for the windscreens are. 

And at the other end... Everything looks dusty because I had been using that well known cabinet maker's tool - the 9" Makita disc sander. 

And the safety valve vent pipe is checked for fit again. There will be a steel headboard mounted on the cab roof which will fill in some of the height difference between the cab roof and the body. 

A boring machine which hasn't done anything for a while. Have to find something else to occupy it.

 

 

 

 

 

[JimH]

I've been leafing through the online archives of Falkirk Council and came across a few pictures of Sentinels in Grangemouth where I done used to live. I may as well put them here.

A Super owned by McEwan's delivering to a boozer in old Grangemouth (it's a funny place because almost nothing exists of the old town - it has almost completely vanished). The bridge over the canal; would not have been up to the weight of the waggon so they rolled the barrels to the pub. There are a few things strike me as odd in this photo - the waggon seems woefully underequipped for use by a brewer. Sentinels offered all sorts of bodies for lifting and lugging barrels yet this is a straight flatbed, no sides, no runway beam, nothing. Lifting full barrels of beer down must have needed a stout lad.  On top of that it's a fair hike from McEwan's place in Edinburgh to Grangemouth and there seems to be not much at all on the back to justify having two blokes drive all that way. Maybe beer was really expensive back then. 

Same scene, different photos. If the date on the phot is correct (1935) the waggon is about 9 years old in this picture. According to the records they owned it from new and must have covered a reasonable distance with it to justify the conversion to pneumatics which was a pretty involved and expensive process. 

There are a couple of others but their website has just gone phut so I'll add them later.

[Asimo]

Those two blokes must be about to lift an empty onto the lorry.

I have seen full barrels unloaded by one man, rolling them of the lorry to drop onto a big cushion, made of what looked like knitted rope. Possibly that big shapeless thing next to the barrels.

[JimH]

Looks plausible, doesn't it? I thought it was a tarpaulin but it seems a bit bulky for that. 

[busmansholiday]

54 minutes ago, Asimo said:

to drop onto a big cushion, made of what looked like knitted rope. Possibly that big shapeless thing next to the barrels.

I seem to remember that the "technical" term for that is a "pig".

[UltraWomble]

[somewhatfoolish]

1 hour ago, Asimo said:

Those two blokes must be about to lift an empty onto the lorry.

I have seen full barrels unloaded by one man, rolling them of the lorry to drop onto a big cushion, made of what looked like knitted rope. Possibly that big shapeless thing next to the barrels.

I think you're dead right; I got a tour of a whisky bond a few years ago, while we were there a delivery arrived and the lorryist dropped off the barrels exactly like that, rolling off the back of the wagon to land on a giant block of foam rubber.

[CreepingJesus]

Done brewery jobs in the past, and I can confirm kegs are still handballed into the cellar. Metal ones have handholds, so don't need a pillow, there's a swing from height you perfect pretty quickly, or else! Wooden ones are still old school though. Same with delivering flour: a bag on each shoulder and off you stagger. Some jobs have no better way, although obviously, much has been palletised.

But anyway, I digress. 

If it's any help, Engel's Coach Shop on YT has a few good videos on steam bending, usually ash too. Just the size and scale you're after, and his methods are traditional, and often mechanical. I have an old US Navy video there too, which is really handy on selecting the right pieces to bend in the first place.

In my dreams, I have the skills and equipment to pull off a silly big project like this! I am full of admiration for this.

[JimH]

10 hours ago, CreepingJesus said:

If it's any help, Engel's Coach Shop on YT has a few good videos on steam bending, usually ash too. Just the size and scale you're after, and his methods are traditional, and often mechanical. I have an old US Navy video there too, which is really handy on selecting the right pieces to bend in the first place.

Thanks for that - I missed that one when we did the beams for the cab roof. I see at least three things that we did wrong when we did them. I think we are going to have to work out a better steam box because the steaming times for the wood we are bending are silly long. 

[JimH]

Their website is back up. Here is a small truck crossing Dalgrain Bridge

And here is a heavily laden Sentinel DG6 completely failing to cross the same bridge. I'm amazed that the front end managed to get across. 

[somewhatfoolish]

Oops.

[JimH]

I like that the report is of a "bridge collapses". Strikes me as a spot of victim blaming. A fully (almost certainly over) loaded DG6 on solids would be pushing 18 tons and the front axle weight alone should have pushed the poor structure well over its limit but it was the bridge that didn't have the moral fibre to stay in one piece. 

[JimH]

I'll put this here because people reading this thread might have interests in other aspects of silly old engineering and may not know about the online patent database which is just here: https://www.epo.org/searching-for-patents.html

Just pop in the name of your favourite company, engineer or designer and see what patents they filed. It isn't the nicest to use thing but you get access to the original document with drawings and whatnot. A nice rabbit hole to disappear down when the phone isn't ringing. 

[lexi]

The wood you are buying is probably kiln dried.  If you leave the wood soaking in a vessel or canal for a few days, before steaming, it can help. Steaming in situ with long polythene tube/bags can also be useful, pieces are not too stout. It saves wood cooling down too much before clamping.  Two or three wallpaper steamers can be inserted into the bag ends.

 

[JimH]

Aye the wood in kiln dried and I didn't know that the 1 hour per inch guide was supposed to be doubled if you are using kilned stuff. That means these things are going to have to stew for four hours. The other thing I took from the carriage maker chap is that he was doing it under pressure to get the temperature up. 

One thing we are not short of is steam and while it would be a bit annoying to do it because they are drained down for winter it's not much of a biggie to drag one of the Sentinels out to use as a steam generator. Last time we used one of those daft Karcher things which at least you could run them continuously rather than the wallpaper strippers that you needed to turn off to refill. We have a piece of 4" aluminum pipe that is long enough to take the beams  - attempt one with the 4" soil pipe did not end well - but now I'm wondering if we need to make something a bit more butch that can be pressurised. 

[lexi]

6 hours ago, JimH said:

Aye the wood in kiln dried and I didn't know that the 1 hour per inch guide was supposed to be doubled if you are using kilned stuff. That means these things are going to have to stew for four hours. The other thing I took from the carriage maker chap is that he was doing it under pressure to get the temperature up. 

One thing we are not short of is steam and while it would be a bit annoying to do it because they are drained down for winter it's not much of a biggie to drag one of the Sentinels out to use as a steam generator. Last time we used one of those daft Karcher things which at least you could run them continuously rather than the wallpaper strippers that you needed to turn off to refill. We have a piece of 4" aluminum pipe that is long enough to take the beams  - attempt one with the 4" soil pipe did not end well - but now I'm wondering if we need to make something a bit more butch that can be pressurised. 

Gas mains pipe or similar.  I had a 10ft bit of street lamp post in the past for it. Problem with steaming is that you always need a piece of timber that is way oversize. It is near impossible to bend the end of the timber when it is short or cut to size .

[JimH]

The bloody jobs to do list keeps getting longer. Here is a bunker that is somewhere near finished. There are two lids which are somewhat long at the moment because I keep forgetting to buy some hinges for them. Once they are in the right place I can cut them down so the leading edge of the bunker is a nice straight line. There is no cladding on the front of the body yet. That is going to be a bit interesting because I'll need to move the whole body back a couple of feet to get access. 

 

One day son, all this will be coal. I'm hoping that this should be good for about 15 cwt of coal so we can go a reasonable distance unsupported. I'll seal the gaps in the floor with something suitable and then lay 16 gauge sheet on it to protect the wood and to stop coal dust working through the gaps and onto the engine below. 

 

And you can probably make out the hole now has something in it to let the coal pass from the body to the cab.

Looking from the cab side it should get in the way of rear seat passengers too much. Anyway, you will only take the skin off your ankle once. The sliding door is far too tall at the moment - we need to find some suitable design for a couple of handles before I decide how tall to make the slider.

 

It doesn't look very big but when you see it on the bench there is a lot of steel in it. 

 

The start of the top window clamps for the windscreens. The top pane flaps open to try to keep the cab not quite as hot as Hell and the are a couple of thumb screws that hold them open. It took a while to work out what on earth was going on with these because I could believe that they had designed them that way. A quick visit to look at some original ones showed that they had indeed done it that way. 

 

It has taken a lot of hours to get them this far. It seems almost a shame that they are all going to be painted black. 

Here is the spare wheel sort of wedged in place so we can work out the carrier for it. Since the conversion to pneumatics was a modification spare wheels tended to be carried wherever they would fit. Fortunately on the longer wheelbase waggons have a big, handy gap behind the cab. All of the solutions look as jury rigged as they were as many were carried out by the service agents so efforts were all a bit "local".

 

The idea is that the wheel bolts to an arm which is hinged from the side rail of the body. This lets to wheel be swung up to that sort of angle and held in place with a screwed support bar. There are all sorts of designs for the arms (and not just for Sentinel - most manufacturers were having to deal with these tyre things) but many look a bit crappy. I decided to go for something that looked a bit more intended. This is the start of the arm. Obviously it isn't welded here so it's sprung all over the place. When it is done the legs will be parallel and the centreline of the loop is the same as the PCD of the wheel stud holes. 

 

This is the start of one of the interior water tanks. We had to get someone to fold these up because our folders aren't long enough. There will be another one opposite this directly over the rear axle. With these tanks we should have about 400 gallons of water which makes travelling distances a lot easier. I can't decide at the moment but I think these need to be clad in wood to make the interior of the body look nice. 

Mid point horizontals fitted. I suspect that the brackets are overkill but someone went to the effort to make them so we may as well use them. Eagle-eyed viewers may spot that I got a new Makita battery drill for my birthday.

So bending wood. These photos are a bit out of sequence so things appear and disappear but they show enough of the story. Firstly, something to hold the bit of wood. This is a piece of 4" aluminium compressed air pipe which is perfect for the job but annoyingly will only take one bit of wood at a time. The ends are just lumps of polypropylene. 

And then you need a jig. Since someone mentioned that Engels Coach Shop lad on Youtube we've been watching a lot of his stuff so these ones should hopefully come out a bit better than when we did the cab beams. Firstly he said never bend the wood without a backing strap to constrain the ends. I don't know if that applies to radii as big as this but we made one anyway. It's just a piece of 1/8th" flat bar with some angle welded to the ends to lock the beam in place.

This is the jig for the bending. This time round we put a backing strip on the angle to support the beam much better rather than just letting the wood rest of the angle iron. The big problem is what do you bend them to so that when they release and spring back they end up in about the right place. I took a guess on bending them to 18 1/2 feet in the hope that they ended up at 19 feet when we let them go. This was carefully worked out on the basis that I haven't a clue about any of this. Note some of the clamps we managed to get together. The pile got bigger later on.

And you also need some ash. We are not used to buying decent wood so this was all very expensive and ruining it is not really an option. 

Another thing we learned was that if the wood is kiln dried then you need to steam it a lot longer and try to get the temperature as high as you can manage. Last time we used a poxy QVC standard steam cleaner which at least let us fill it up without needing to stop it. Since the wood was going to need to be cooked for four hours we needed more steam at a higher pressure. Since we could not be arsed pressing one of the Sentinel boilers into service ( they are drained for winter) this finally had the opportunity to do something useful for once. This gave us steam at about 30psi at the outlet. By the time the steaming pipe was lagged with ceramic blanket the temperature we were cooking the wood at must have been reasonably high. The downside was that someone had to sit with it for 8 hours on Saturday poking coal in and pumping water. Still, the kids can earn their keep for once. 

So cook the wood, take it out, clamp it to the backing strap them clamp it to the jig. Four hours cooking, four minutes activity then put the next one on to cook. The one on the left has just been done which is why the one on the right has a right rag bag of clamps holding it in place. These ones are due to get taken off the jig on Tuesday.

 

And this is one I did earlier. We made one jig up first and bent one to check they were going to come out about right. It turns out that they sprang back more than I guessed but because I'm a divvy I had measured the radius to the underside of the beam rather than the top. The upshot is that the beam is actually bent fractionally too much but since this means that the highest point of the beam is about 1/4 of an inch higher than it needed to be I reckon we can live with that.  The actual number is not critical, just that all 9 beams are bent to the same radius. After we were happy with this we made the second jig and did a pair on Saturday. Only another three Saturdays to get them all done. 

 

Once all the beams are bent and assuming they are all the same they can be cut down and the oak top rail checked out for them to slip into. Hurray. More high stakes woodwork. I love* high stakes woodwork. 

In other news I got some bits of steel and aluminium for Christmas. 

 

 

 

 

 

[JimH]

I don't do this very often because little of what we get up to has much relevance to cars but here's a little bit of tin bashing. 

Louvres. If you look at this promotional image you will see the waggon has windscreens which were built by Auster Ltd. Look more closely and you will see on the lower half of the screen close to the chimney a black panel and you should just about be able to make out that the panel is louvred. I assume that was to keep the glass away from the chimney or maybe it was just filling in the blind spot caused by the chimney. For whatever reason Auster fitted a louvred panel. 

The difficulty with making this is knowing what it was supposed to look like because the louvre plates rotted away in double quick time there don't seem to be too many original ones to copy. Many you see have the panel punched out in a modern style. Anyone who punches louvres today tends to make them look like they've been taken off a lathe or something whereas we need something much flatter. So armed with little experience in tin bashing I set about to make some. Now I see them again this morning I don't think I have them quite right yet. 

You tube drew a bit of a blank on the subject of louvre bashing  - plenty of people doing them but not in the right style - so I went back and watched the Metalshapingzone tin bashing DVD again which explained nicely how to swage things by hand. I can't recommend you buy this DVD any more because he has stopped selling them. It is so much nicer watching than YouTube because he isn't much of a "character", has next to no body piercings or tattoos and doesn't keep asking you to subscribe. Maybe it's just me.

It seems that normally such things are done over hardboard or MDF templates but seeing as 14 louvres needed to be made I made a template in steel so it would not wear out. It's also important that the louvres are parallel so making it in steel made it easy to weld a couple of guides to locate the panel. I think the idea of using hardboard is that it isn't too dogmatic about where it stays so it deforms to give the finished item a nice radius. Steel isn't going to do that so I formed a radius on the template. It is also important that you don't start bashing louvres at the wrong end which is why there is a reminder written on it.  In hindsight I should he made the guides longer. Maybe next time. 

 

Then you need some high tech forming tools. These will be a brick bolster with the cutting edge rounded off and a bit of bar with a radius ground onto the end. There was also another chisel which I ground down to to the short sides. Oh, and a hammer.

So mark out where you want the louvres and slit them with a slitting disc. Or you could use a plasma cutter if you have one (we don't) or you can go old school and do it with a chisel. The slitting disc used with something to guide it gives a straight cut with zero distortion. Tidy up the corners with a hacksaw blade.

 

Then set the plate in your template and make sure it can't move.

 

And then you are ready to biff the swage in with your bolster.

 

And use other things to bash down the radius and short sides. 

 

And the louvre is pressed. Flat fronted, parallel to the plate and bthe guides on the template makes sure it is parallel to the last one. 

 

Then you work down them all. The bottom one looks on the piss because there is a bit of bow at the bottom of the plate. This panel sits in a brass frame so that will hold it square. 

 

Then you can start to dress out the dents and things where you didn't work as lightly as you should have (I'm still a bit 'eavy 'anded)  and you're done.

 

Except I'm not because although I was pleased with this last night now I look at the pictures I now realise that I've got the louvre to gap ratio all wrong so I'll throw that away, alter the template to make the louvre deeper and reduce the gap between the louvres smaller - these things may be small and unimportant but it sits in a very prominent position and does draw the eye. 

Why go on about this since not many cars have louvres? The exact same technique is used to form any swage in a floor pan, boot floor or whatever. Make your template in hardboard and biff it out using bolsters, chaser, bits of pipe or whatever is needed to make the shape. 

[DeeJay]

Patience of a saint. 

Ron Covell on YouTube is excellent at bashing metal. 

 

[JimH]

I'm making no comment on their skills and there are some who are very watchable - that Runge chap is good value for money - I just find these things are much nicer without the baggage. 

[JimH]

It is a lot faster to bash the louvres out if you have a punch and die. The other benefit of using dies is that if you use tool steel an you make them properly then the punch will cut the steel as well so you don't need to bother with the slitting disc. However, it can take a while to make the punch so if you aren't doing many this approach is probably quicker. 

The other benefit of doing it this way is if you determine that your template isn't the right shape you can modify it fairly easily without having to make a new punch.  

[JimH]

A few photos to show that things are still progressing. I don't imagine too many people want to know a great deal about the windscreens which have been taking up many, many hours or the body which is taking up many more.

So all the beams got bent and incredibly between the biggest and the smallest they only varied by 1/4" on the centre height. I lined them up so they all ran in one direction and because of the distance you would struggle to see anything changing. 

 

Once they were bent then I had to check out the top rails so the beams slipped into them. This is exactly the sort of chippying that I hate because if you make a mistake you wreck everything.

 

Since there will be plywood lining the body you won't see the underside of the top rail so I was going to screw steel stiffeners on the underside of the top rail where it is checked out to take the beam. I suspect it isn't required but it's easy to do when you can dispatch No1 apprentice to make 14 stiffening plates. Stiffening plate not shown. I just wanted an excuse to have another photo of a reasonably well fitting beam end. 

 

It all lines up!

 

The eagle eyed may have noticed that the front of the body is now in. How did I do that given that there is less than 2 inches between the body and back of the cab? Well first you jack the whole body up by five inches and pack it off the chassis.

 

And then you scratch your head about how to hold up the body. Wandering round with your hands in your pockets you find the telegraph poles that the leccy board left behind when they renewed the poles that were holding up the power lines ( yes I know that makes them not telegraph poles but then if you were thinking that you are probably the sort of person who writes to Radio 4 complaining that panini is already plural ) so you cut them into six lengths and chock the body up so it sits above the chassis. Then you pull the chassis forward a couple of feet before sitting the body back down on the chassis where it was stable. That gave me enough room to get the front of the cab done.

Once the plywood had been screwed on it needed the steel sheet glued on. We are using epoxy for this but it is also screwed around the edges where the finishing trims go on. I was really looking forward to this job because nothing gives me greater pleasure applying epoxy to about 8 square meters of wood or steel while working in a restricted space. You end up sticking to everything. However, the is the first one glued in place. The edges are overhanging here because I'll trim them to suit with a slitting disc. It went on as flat as a board so all screwheads are hidden and everything looks just dandy.

The board poking up above the cab was one of the things I was using to hold the sheet on while the epoxy was setting - we chocked between boards and the back of the cab so everything stayed in place. You can see one of the former telegraph poles holding up the body where it overhangs the chassis. 

 

This is the space you are trying to work in. Just after this photo was taken the second one was glued on. It's just setting as I type. Once this is set I will put the centre trim on and then the front of the body and the rear of the cab can be painted so the body can go back in place. 

 

This is the nearside windscreen having its first fit. I remade the louvres that weren't right and I think these look much better. I'm slightly amazed at how straight I got them. There is a steel trim plate to be made to fill in the gap between the top of the windscreen and the cab roof. The glass was on order at this point. 

 

Most of these things have their windscreens polished brass which I do not like at all because they have all the style of uPVC double glazing. Looking at all the works photos if they had windscreens from the factory then they were painted black. Given the paint of the day this would have fallen off quite quickly. Today we have better paints so hopefully they should stay black for longer. 

So they were painted in epoxy primer and undercoat before the glass was fitted. 

 

They will be painted in gloss black to match the cab uprights.

 

Once the body is back in place the roof can get put on and the back doors can get made. We're getting closer.  

[UltraWomble]