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It is just so Super (Sentinel).


JimH

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I'll bung a few photos of this here rather than cluttering up the B&W thread which was where the conversation started but this is the Merryweather Gem. Being built in 1908 it is one of the later ones.

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It's been around here since the early 60s when it was bought from a scrap dealer in Melton Mowbray. We last ran it properly in the mid 80s to early 90s when we decided to call it quits on a boiler that was approaching its 100th birthday. Also there were a fair few things on it that were not right and were getting tired and despite a fairly major engine rebuild in the time we ran it they do not last long when you work them hard. They are very maintenance hungry. So it got taken to bits and then it was decided to build a Sentinel. The it was decided to build another Sentinel. And then another. The upshot is that there is at least one major task still outstanding.

The numbers are 400gpm and able to project a jet on a 1.125" nozzle 169 feet. What the numbers don't shout about is that it has two monstrous double acting cylinders and it is designed to run flat out all the time. It makes the most wonderful noise when it is running at full chat and I really like it as a toy. However, it was tired and had first been brought back to life in the 60s so a lot of things weren't right so it got taken to bits.

This is the pump body. As you can probably make out it is cast in bronze and it rather complicated. The main problem is that the pump pistons used leather buckets (leather cups sandwiched between bronze discs. This was a reasonably effective material to use but everything embeds in it so it tears the pump bores to pieces. The main job was to pop it in the boring machine and give it an oversized rebore. This was a bit fraught because you don't have a lot of material to play with. The leather buckets have been replaced with modern viton buckets which have a much smaller contact patch so hopefully to the problem of wear on the bores should be minimised.

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The pump uses 16 disc valves which were bady worn so we got some new guards cast and had some discs made is a selection of modern materials for testing. We still have some original new discs that came out of Meryweathers in the 60s but theyare natural rubber and don't work or last too well. The rubber disc is not shown here but is sandwiched between the flat bronze disc with holes in it and the wheel like guard that limits its movement.

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I won't bore you rigid about the finer points of what happened to the engine but here it is back in a few less pieces. About the only non-standard thing you can see is the oilers on the scotch crank bearings. We have the originals in a box but it uses a lot of oil so we prefer to use some bigger oilers that you can see working. Those people who don't get invited to many parties will spot straight away that there is no expansion gear on the valve train. They designed this thing to run at one speed. I suspect they did it to make it cheap because quite a lot of steamers used expansion gear (especially Shand Masons but everyone knows that they were much better in all sorts of ways)

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From the rear you can see the exhaust pipes. You can probably spot that they are quite big and they make quite a bark. The sliders on the scotch crank are a modificaton. Oringinally they were in two pieces and they knocked themselves to pieces. These ones are solid with roller bearings hidden away so wear is all but eliminated.

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And here is the engine in even fewer pieces. The valve chest cover is not on here and the recirculating valve spindle isn't in but the gauges look nice (they were remasked by Richfield Speedograph - top bods that come highly recommended). The brass handle is what the stoker hangs onto as they cantered through the streets. Neither of the main controls are in place but the black square between the cyliners is the valve chest where the throttle valve sits. This is just a round valve wheel . There is a second valve wheel on the pump valve chest that allows you to recirculate water through the pump should you need to keep the engine speed up but not shift as much water. That about your lot. Just keep an eye on the water level (it goes up and down very quickly) and keep shovelling coal on until they tell you to stop. In quiet moments makes sure you tip oil on everything.

Lubrication was one area where Merryweathers were complete rubbish and Shand Mason weren't.

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We have very few photos of what was done to the carriage but it was completely dismantled and stripped before the top box went to a cabinet maker to have some repairs done that were badly needed. One of the problems is that modern fire engines they are very low volume production and a lot of the detail design could be a little better. The top box was made little better than a packing crate. Mercifully the wheels were in fine fettle so were stripped done and repainted.

Finally there was the issue of colour. Since it was repainted in the 1960s it was done in post office red which was as wrong as a wrong thing that is having a bad day. Fortunately we got the chance to have a proper look at a Gem which had lived in a shed untouched since it was taken out of service. Getting to some bits that had been savedfrom sun and aging it was possible to see that unsurprisingly the colour used was much closer to vermillion so vermillion it was. This was a bit of a shock because I had got used to seeing it in DCR.

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And a bit later on with more brass bits back on. Many of these didn't have a bell but ours did. You can't help feeling that the driver had enough to do already without have to stamp on the pedal to sound a warning.

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It looks a bit odd in all red but one of the jobs that we need to brace ourselves for is lining it. These engines were wickedly expensive (they cost 400-500K in today's money) so they represented a massive investment and towns were very proud of them. As a result they were dressed up like fairground rides and were plastered in gold leaf. Even the springs are lined in leaf. On the wheels the rims and spokes were leafed and the entire outboard section of hub was gilded. This picture here gives and idea of what they are supposed to look like. It's a lot of leaf.

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While this was going on we'd been searching round for a set of lamps for it. After a bit of horse trading we now have a full set of Merryweather lamps - there are two little ones to light the pressure gauges and water level gauge then two carriage lamps so you can see where you are going. Yes, of course these will help you see where you are going. In reality these will spend most of their time in a cupboard somewhere in case someone pinches them.

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I covered this here earlier but one of the major problems was the boiler cladding. Here it is fucked

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And here is the new one we made. I am very proud of this. If you go back a few pages you well see how it was done.

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And now we come to the reason why it is still not finished. The boiler. These are rather special and are pretty bonkers even now. They must have been properly bonkers back then. Vertical water tube boiler with a massive grate. The party dodgers will have probably spotted in the first photograph that this thing has no ashpan and therefore no way of controlling the air to the fire. The result is that it fires at full tilt all time. In additon to that they needed to get up to steam very quickly. From cold they would do this in 11 minutes. From warm (they kept them warm in the station with a paraffin burner) you could do it in five. How you achieved this can be seen in this picture of the firebox.

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Tubes. Lots and lots of light wall copper tubes. 136 in total. water capacity of the boiler is slightly less than 11 gallos so there isn't much water and a massive heating area.  Merryweather ripped off this design from Shand who patented the design with a heavily inclined cross tube nest to give good circulation. Merryweather dodged this by making the tube nest level in one direction but adding 36 J shaped tubes in the dead space to the side of the tube nest. Those are the holes at the bottom of the box which match to the holes in the horizontal top plate. This aided circulation and kept the heating area up. The wastage on the plates should be obvious to anyone with eyes.

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You get an idea of how little water is in this thing. This is the gap between the inner and outer wrappers of the crinoline.

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The problem is that the boiler design is very difficilt to replicate for a number of reasons. When we spoke to Newtons (the one before the company was sold on - boiler makers for 200 years) about forming a tapered ogee foundation he just shook his head. So we have a design that deletes the water filled crinoline which greatly reduces the heating area to make things more controllable - we'll still have the old crinoline to keep things looking right but it just won't be used as a pressure space. The boiler will be a greatly simplified and therefore much easier to design and document but as far as the average joe is concerned it will still look the same. 

This is the preliminary design for the boiler. If you look closely you'll see that the crinoline is reduced to being a refactory lined combustion space. The J tubes are deleted and the Shand cross tube pattern is used because it's unlikely they will sue us now. The original plate thicknesses are not really up to modern standards so things are a bit thicker and the copper tubes are replaced with steel tubes which are welded in. A shame to lose the copper tubes because they are good fun but it would be more difficult for us to document the design.

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Maybe when the Super is done. I'd certainly like it back running again.

 

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  • 1 month later...

As the end gets closer the steps get more and more difficult to spot because you spend more and more time fitting and finishing things so photographs don't look that much different to the last time you saw them. Here is the ash pan on it's hinges and being held in place with the operating rod. This is a fiedishly complicated way of controlling the fire. When it needs more air you lower the ashpan and make the hole bigger.

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And at the other end of the operating rod there is the lever. These take for bloody ever to make because there are so many fiddly bits. This is only in place at the moment and there is a bit of work left to finish it.

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Valve for the pressure gauge. Trying to find valve that don't look shit gets harder and harder. It also gets pretty bloody expensive.

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The gauge glass in the early morning sunlight. The valves will be painted black so they don't stand out too much. Lots of people don't like these but I have seen far too many period bronze castings that are just complete shite to be happy with them being in use today.  You will also see more and more bits of pipe appearing.

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More bits and pieces attached to the throttle valve. Annoyingly the throttle valve casting was an early one so it was short of an outlet which has complicated getting the right kind of steam to the right places. Note horrible modern valve handle that won't be there for much longer. You may also note that the reversing lever  and handbrake assembly isn't there any more. What might be less obvious is the fabricated valve handle on the clack valve. We did have two new castings of these but is appears that some light fingered git had away with them when they were left unattended for a few minutes a couple of years ago and their disappearance has only just come to light. Some folk, eh?

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The curse of the archive drawing strikes again. This hole looks just the same as when I cut it a while back. However, it is now two inches bigger because the drawing I used was just plain wrong. Interestingly when I compared the wrong drawing with another drawing of a related item it turned out that the second drawing was even more wrong. The hole is now somewhere the right size if not the right shape. The hole is meant to be pear shaped which allowed a chain to be dropped through the roof to let the firebox be lowered for cleaning. We don't need to do that so I left the hole as small as possible. because it only lets rain in. This seems like a trivial job but it wasted a good few house because it meant making a new piece for the top side of the hole - there is a steel plate top and bottom to sandwich the wood together to support the free ends around the hole.)

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And the thing that fits through the hole gets a bit more finished. The inner and outer liners are positioned and held in place with the correct spacers. The brass strap is what secures the relief valve vent pipe in place. At the moment it has been shaped but not cut to length which it will be once the vent pipe has been bent up. Where the join is between the two pieces is at the front of the chimney so one everything is in place you don't really see it and everything should look nice and tidy.

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More pipes in place together with the injector. The steel pipewith the braided flexible is the steam to the engine. The flexible is non-standard but is a much better solution that what was done originally (pull a full turn loop in the line about 14" in diameter). Yes I know almost all the bolts you can see are far too long. These are on the list of things to tidy. Many of the lines you can see in this picture will be wrapped in something suitably vintage to insulate them.

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The brakes get a bit closer to getting finished. There are just countless pins, collars, grease nipples, bushes and the rest to finish.

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It is disconnected at the moment but this is the cross over shaft and sliding link for the handbrake. Before the handbrake lever was taken out of the cab this was all in place to check that was had been dreamed up actually worked. Fortunately it did. Note injector feed line sitting in place completely unsupported. Support brackets are being made.

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Levers in pieces to do some more fitting to them. Mostly this involved slotting the keyways in bits that are supposed to not move against each other. However the detent spring arrangement for the reversing lever needs to be made so that is probably this weekend's job as well as putting new handbrake cables on the TT and new tyres on the Sprint.

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Slotting the keyways in the handbrake lever. It is easier using the slotter on the milling machine than the shaper.

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I finally got the material list for the body put together and sent it off for some quotes so that is going to be a bit painful. However, apart from the body and the windscreens there aren't too many bits left to make. Plenty to finish but most of the bits are there now. It shouldn't be too long before there is some heat on the boiler.  With that in mind there are some new drawings on the board now. Let's see how far this goes.

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  • 1 month later...

Things keep getting slower because you have to spend ages finishing things. When you first made a clevis pin it was just something to link one thing to another so you turn the pin up, pop it in the hole and use it to make sure everything works. In your mind it is finished. However, now you have to take that pin, machine the head, drill it out and tap it to take the grease nipple, make a collar for it and drill it to take the split pin. Nothing hard but enough to make a couple of hours disappear. As we go on you need to look harder at the pictures to see a difference.

For example here is one end of the handbrake operating rod. In this picture the pin has been finished.

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In this photo it looks braodly similar. Only the sharp eyed would notice that the thrust collar has appeared on the cross shaft together with a little bit of shim. Again, not much difference but three or four hours gone in making the thrust collars and fitting the cross shaft bearing blocks so everything moves freely even when things start moving and twisting. Just need to make a nice shim now.

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And here is the finished throttle valve which was "finished" ages ago. However, then you start buttoning it up and testing things you find that the valve buttin for the main stop valve isn't right because we misunderstood the design so you need to make a new one. The best part of a week of work went into finishing this off. This is it waiting to get bolted on. The only thing missing now is the lagging jacket and heat protector for your poor knee which sits next to it.

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We've had a picture very similar to before but again, this is it finished and bolted back on. You would need to be sharp eyed to see that some poor sod stood at the bench for hours tidying everything up.

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And at the other end everything looks nice and tidy now. This is the way that the fire is controlled. If you want to calm it down you lift the ash pan up and reduce at amount of air that comes in.

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These are the reversing levers finished off but not painted. They were not too far off before but the reversing lever needed the detent spring made so it stayed in the right place. We also got lucky and some kind soul donated a brass plate showing the cut off positions.

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Then you take a photo of it and notce that you forgot to machine the bolt markings off the clamp bolt. Something else to do. However, everything moves as it is meant to. Once we are happy with it it will be lifted off and painted as an assembly which was pretty much how it was done back then. These things never lasted that long so not much was wasted on coatings.

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Yet another rod end finished off. Yes I know the bolts are all too long and the nuts are wrong. It is all on the to do list. The wing is only sitting on top of the wheel out of the way.

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And this cover (the thing that has clearly been gas welded) stops rocks and larger wildlife falling into the camshaft control box. Not quite finished yet but it still took a few hours to get this far.

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As if we didn't have enough to do we used to have two of these but some light fingered shite had away with one of them. This is the handle that works the exhaust drain valve and this is the one off the S4.

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And this is the one that was made for the Super. Normally these are cast but we just could not be arsed tracking down the pattern that is available for them. It still needs the castelated nut and spring to make it look right. Still, it's pretty close to the original.

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We got the superheater tails welded up (it's under a fair bit of load so you leave the TIGing to someone with some certificates) and now there is the nightmare task of fitting the supports and mounting it on the boiler top. This is one of the worst jobs of the whole project.

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And we still plug through all the bits for the brakes finishing things off.

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Boiler clacks finished and pressure tested. Incidentally, the testing is more than just a formality. When we pumped up the boiler outlet which was a new steel casting it showed up a minor fault in it so it had to be junked. There is a new one on its way from the foundry.

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Finally for now here is the knackered cheek plate covered in wob and more wob.

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Why? So I cover it with layers of this.

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Why? Becuase I want to try to make one of these to see if it makes it easier to finish the cheek plates.We'll give it a go, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Let's start this update with a throttle valve handle. Most throttle valve handles for Sentinels are cast. As far as I am aware originally they were cast hollow to keep the heat in your hand down a bit but many around now  have been copied from hollow ones without a core meaning that they are solid. By chance we found an early drawing of a throttle valve handle which showed them being made from several pieces with a rotating knob made from hardwood. This seemed like a much cooler (literally) idea than the cost one and also meant that we didn't need to pay for a pattern and core box to be made so we got a nice man to make us a handle in oak. I think he charged us a tenner for it. This is the throttle valve ready to go being only short of its heat shield which will get made once it is in position.

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Levers final fitted and in the process of having some paint blown on them. They are in primer at the moment. These lorries were not built for a long life and the paint coatings that were applied were specified on that basis.

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And this is the steam brake mechanism that you have seen growing up slowly all finished and having paint blown on it. The bits of steel on the top are the front mudguard brackets which took a while to get right. This will get one coat of top before it is bolted back in. Then it will get a second.

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Now the front mudguards have been fitted then they need painted before they go on. These were never designed to have wings like this (the solids just had a splashguard rolled from flat plate) so they are a right pain to fit so they look right. It is a bit of a juggling act.

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The feedheater buttoned up, tested and has its cladding fitted. It just needs bolted in place once the first boiler inspection has been carried out.

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And here is the back of the chassis getting its blowover. Only in primer at the moment.

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This will mean very little but I am very pleased with this. This is looking up at the ash bend which now has its beading on. I learned a few lessons from the last one so the beading sits much more comfortably than last time. On that one the beading sat too low, only a uqrter of an inch or so but it never looked right. This one is much righter.

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The white line you see is the canvas covering which I spent a while gluing down. We had this stitched up by the local tarpaulin people so the seams looked the part. It is interesting to note that while paints have gone all pansy with less and less solvent Evo Stik is still cjock to the gunwhales with evil smelling poison. It did the job anyway. I think this will get a coating of something suitable to help it be waterproof(ish).

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Edge detail for the canvas and how the beading finishes it off. There is a fair bit more finishing to do around here.

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Yet more roof detail. You will probably see that the flameguard around the chimney hasn't been fitted yet. The body will have the same material covering it but that is about three times as big as the cab so that's going to get pretty smelly.

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The new casting for this turned up yesterday (the last one didn't pass its test) so this got machined this morning. This is the last bit that was needed to get some pressure on the boiler.

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And this arrived too. It is the arm that operates the bypass (or byepass if you are Sentinel) valve for the water pump. The water pump runs all the time so if you don't want to put water in the boiler then you have to spill it back to the tank. This arm is operated from a handle in the cab connected by a bit of wire rope.

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And these came too. A pile of valve handles that look a bit more age appropriate. They certainly look better than aluminium ones painted red.

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D beadings for the cab getting the backs of them painted so they can be fitted for the last time.

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Headlamp ad sidelight bowls in top coat waiting to be fitted up for the last time. The headlamps will have some Wipac H4s hidden in them because we drive on the road at night a lot so decent headlamps ar pretty important. You really need to have a good idea about what the road is going to do next (up and down rather thn side to side). The side lights are repurposed as indicators so the sidelights proper will be in the headlamps. Agin, not completely accurate but you really need indicators on the road and this way they get hidden pretty well. Modern LEDs avoid the gingercator problem.

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And some primer on bits of the cab.

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In other news the wood has been ordered to build the rear body so that was pretty painful and it should be here in a couple of weeks. The other problem is now the colour. For a while we've been convinced that it was going to be green. We were certain that the UCBS colours would have been some sort of period correct shade of green. We'd been considering the various options and had selttled on Dark Brunswick Green as the most likely option. We were on the verge of ordering the paint when we took the water tank to get blasted. In the course of a chat with the lad who was doing it we mentioned that we were going to turn it out in UCBS colours. The next words that came out of his mouth were "Aye, they had a bakery in Dunfermline. Their wagons were all dark red with cream writing". Bugger, that's thrown a spanner in the works. 

Knowing Glasgow it is possible that certain comapnies might have avoided green or blue so maybe the red (or reddy brown which would tie up with them using something like Crimson Lake) so maybe the lad was right. A brainwave was to ask one of the older bakers in Glasgow if he remembered what they were. This morning we got a letter back from Boyd Tunnock saying that as far as he could remember the wagons were all brown with cream lettering. Oh.

Brown might have been crimson lake which is a bit muddy or it might have been brown. We'll just have to keep looking before we buy any paint.

It might end up being turned out as a Boots lorry at this rate.

 

 

 

 

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16 hours ago, outlaw118 said:

 I've put a message on the lost Glasgow page on FB, see if anyone knows anything.
 

Thanks for that. You would have thought with a company so large that reckoned to bake half of Glasgow's bread someone would remember seeing their waggons/vans/carts around. That massive building on the tin is their factory which was pretty much in the middle of town so they were hardly hidden away yet no on seems to know anything at all. 

None of the biscuit tins that crop up from time to time give any clues about liveries and the lengthy history of the USBC which was written just after WW1 gives any clues as to what colour their lorries were painted. The Mitchell Library holds the USBC archives but I suspect that this will be full of dust dry accounts and minutes of board meetings.

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  • 4 weeks later...

This doesn't look very different to the last picture in the last post except the dark grey primer is now light grey primer. However, in between the picture up there and this one there has been a lot of work. The ash bend was carefully tidied up, the D beadings around the doors/cut outs fitted and finished and the sides flatted down. By flatted down I don't mean wafted over with a bit of P120. It took a long time to sand the boards so the whole side was as flat as my talents could manage. That meant removing all of the dark grey primer which jolly well should not have been there in the first place ho hum.

 

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Levers in shiny paint...

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Period looking valve handles applied to non-period valves...

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And a top damper made for the chimney. Chimney top casting still looks shocking because No1 apprentice has only just started on it. The chimney cap is supposed to be a pressed steel thing painted black but we haven't managed to get one of those yet so we are having to make do with this rather poor casting. I have a passionate loathing of polished brass chimney caps so this will be painted black anyway.

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And a lever for the top damper made to look something like it should. This flap just swings over the chimney to keep the boiler a bit warmer overnight.

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I need 128 angled brackets to build the body. This is the sort of soul destroying job that is given to an apprentice. Fortunately we have some of them to do that sort of work now. 28 down, 100 to go.

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It is good practice for No1 apprentice to learn to gas weld. Annoyingly she has much steadier hands than me so despite just starting she is already pretty good.I know this weld is probably the easiest one there is but the steel is quite light and bracket quite fiddly. Anyway, the most important hurdle to get over is being shit scared of the burny hot flame.

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The water tank has been blasted, caulked, treated and bolted up for a pressure test which it passed to my amazement. I need to spend some time on it sorting out the fold marks and tidying up the ends.

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This is the colour of the interior. I need this bit painted so I can avoid removing the levers again to paint the rest of the interior.

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A back end looking a bit black. About the only thing left to do to stop it moving under its own power is the brake levers and the temporary water tank to rig up.

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I lashed out some money on a new one of these. Nice, isn't it?

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We jump on a wee bit and here are the brake levers buttoned up in place. Once it was all hammered up we put the bucket pump on the brake cylinder and pumped it up to 1.5 times what it could reasonably be expected to see. Nothing leaked, squeeked, creaked or broke so that's good. We now have fully functioning brakes. There are some springs to get to take any rattles out of the levers but they aren't here yet.

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Being at a loose end this weekend I started final fitting the doors. They weren't too far off last time but there was still a bit to go with them.

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And I finished off the wee bit at the top of the passenger door cut out.

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The off side door was an easier fit (no the bolts haven't been cut down yet) but you do get a good idea of how roomy the cab is and how easy it is to access. You really don' want t bail out of this in an emergency situation. Steering wheel isn't on because I'm currently coxcombing it. Ooh. Err. Missus.

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From the front you see that you have to lace your legs around a few hard and/or hot things. The four posts sticking up support the footplate which isn't in at the moment. The footplate is a slightly non standard thing that lifts your feet up so they can reach the brake valve.

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Throttle valve in place but not piped up because the insurance inspector is arriving soon to do the cold exam. Then it gets reassembled to do the hot test and then it all gets stripped down again so the cladding can be fitted. However, before it gets stripped down again we'll be able to test a few things to make sure everything works as intended.  We also need to make a heat shield for the throttle valve because it is right next to your knee and it gets very hot indeed.

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This is good. This is the start of the door latch. It is a bit of 1" D beading with a 90 degree bend in it. Once it is finished it won't look much less crude than this. The idea is that it bolts to the inside of the cab side and swings over to hold the door closed. They did phone this one in. 

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This is the chimney you saw further up the page somewhere near done. Now it can be painted with VHT paint as an assembly. The cap has had a lot of work sunk into it by No1 apprentice with files and a die grinder and it is now looking pretty close to the shape it should be. The damper boss was a bit of a mess to it had to be built up with Belzona to make it look a wee bit less rubbish.

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Things like the chimneys never get much thought but this one has soaked up a lot of manhours.

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One thing which was done that has taken forever but I have no photos to show is that the superheater is now fitted to the chimney base. It was then all dismantled for inspection so things don't look much different other than a few more holes in the chimney base. What it does mean is that as soon as th cold exam is done we can get some heat on the boiler.

I've also just go an email from the wood yards to say that the wood for the rear body is ready which means that once we've collected it we'll be able to start constructing that. Oh joy.

 

 

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I've not commented on this thread for ages, but have quietly followed with interest. Amazing work and so heart-warming that we still have enough engineering capability and ingenuity remaining here to pull off projects on this scale. That, and people crazy enough to start such enormous challenges in the first place! 

Awe-inspiring. 

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3 hours ago, JimH said:

This is the sort of soul destroying job that is given to an apprentice.

Shit the bed, where do I sign up for that?! I'd give my right arm to be doing my apprenticeship on that beautiful machine.

This is probably my favourite thread on this entire forum (sorry everyone else). It's the kind of engineering I want to be doing, not driving spreadsheets and accounting software all day.

 

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18 hours ago, Dick Longbridge said:

Amazing work and so heart-warming that we still have enough engineering capability and ingenuity remaining here to pull off projects on this scale.

It is very nice of you to say that but what we are doing is not proper engineering. I keep going on about this but these waggons cost in the region of £250,000 in today's money and they were guaranteed for 28 days. Compared with a horse and cart they were super but compared with what we design today they are piles of useless scrap. One of my least favourite things people say to me is "they don't build them like this any more". No, no they don't. Now we build things that work for ever and don't cost very much at all. 

We do some pretty amazing engineering and design in this country which is many, many leagues ahead of what we are playing about with here. The problem is that proper engineering is really dull, involves staring at screens all day and is generally the sort of thing you want to do for money rather than entertainment.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Quick update on a few things. Firstly a sizeable chunk of oak. There are 8 of these in total acting as bearers for the load deck.

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Like I said, they are quite butch. All of the oak came from Venables Bros near Market Drayton. Their customer service may be a little on the functional side but you cannot fault their wood. Every bit of oak we have got from them has been absolutely spot on.

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However, that is just one bit. The finished van body is going to be 2 feet higher than the cab roof so we're going to need quite a lot of wood. This is pretty much everything that is needed with the exception of 26 sheets of marine ply of varying thicknesses. Yelp.

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This is the oak for the bearers, the side rails and the rear doors (which are full height so quite tall).

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And this is the pile of ash for the uprights and roof beams (9 ash beams to steam bend)  together with T&G tulipwood for the roof and some more tulipwood to make the bunker which will go in the van body rather than the cab. This lot came from Illingworth in Manchester who are pretty helpful spuds but Venables were way cheaper for the oak. 

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So, a bit to be going on with there then.

Over the past few nights I have been coxcombing the steering wheel. I'm bit of a sucker for this look and think it needs popularising in the same way that beaded seat covers were popular once. This is it part way through being soaked in boiled linseed oil which is why it is two different colours. The string around the spokes are not brilliant because this one is cast so the base of the spokes are very wide and it was hard to get that looking right. As far as I can see if you are talented at this sort of thing there are all sorts of techniques you can use but I'm not talented so we'll have to live with this.

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And now soaked in oil and left to dry for about three weeks. Apparently as the oil dries the string shrinks and pulls everything very tight and secure. I leave them in the middle of the floor because I'm paranoid about linseed oil. How can something so resistant to burning just catch fire for a laugh?

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Fibre arts. Or something.

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What else? Look closely and you will see the very high tech door latch.

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And if you look inside the illusion is shattered. This isn't quite right because I spent a bit more time forming it to the right shape. If you do them exactly right then the doors tend to rattle and it drives me spare.

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My camera wouldn't focus on it but the blurry thing at the back is the water pump bypass handle. Pull it up to turn it on, push it down to turn it off. Don't take your eyes off the water level because things get nasty if you get it wrong.

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And this is the boiler being buttoned back up for its pressure test. The insuarance inspector was here this week for the cold exam so the next step is to put a squeeze on it so the insurers are happy it will hang together.

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And while we were down south collecting wood we also picked this up. It is the front axle from a Ford Pop. It is not for the Sentinel but it is for what might become the next project.

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And just to show that I shut up and listen to people who know better than me ( @Mr Pastry for example ) I also managed to get a Ford Y type wishbone which is also used on the same vehicle.

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It is possible that the next project will be very much lighter than the current one.

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10 hours ago, JimH said:

And just to show that I shut up and listen to people who know better than me ( @Mr Pastry for example ) I also managed to get a Ford Y type wishbone which is also used on the same vehicle.

Can't quite see from the photo, but it looks as though you have found an axle with the correct style of steering arms - luck or judgement?

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20 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Something that looks a bit like a lotus 11? Won't hairy string be a bit hard on the hands, or is piloting Sentinels strictly for Yorkie-eating heroes wearing leather gloves?

As I mentioned before everything in the cab is hot. After 100 miles or so your eyes are bloodshot and the skin on your knee is blistered. After 12 hours in the heat off the chimney is starting to cause your face to blister. You don't get in the cab without a pair of gloves on because the risk of leaving some skin on something hot is just too great. 

As for the next project, hopefully it should look as close to an 11 as possible. It certainly won't be a cut down Beetle chassis with an MG Metro engine in it. 

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On 5/29/2021 at 9:42 AM, Mr Pastry said:

It will be a walk in the park compared with a Sentinel, but much the same thought process -  how did the original builders do it?

The big, gaping hole in our experience is tin bashing the rather curvy body but the whole point is to get better at something else and if you can work in brand new metal rather than piecing some rotter back together so much the better.

To be honest it is the whole reverse engineering that floats my boat. Trying to work out what they did and why is a fun exercise. Seeing where they cut corners and made do with something because money was tight or they just plain got it wrong. You spend a lot of time trying to get into their heads. I'm going to guess the world of classic racing cars is as chock full of chancers and bullshitters as that of steam engines and the number of people happy to parrot unsubstantiated folk tales and downright fibs is about the same. It's nice to dig down a little to find at least a little bit of truth. 

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24 minutes ago, JimH said:

To be honest it is the whole reverse engineering that floats my boat. Trying to work out what they did and why is a fun exercise.

That is what I like about it .  What mainly comes through to me is how hard they had to work without much of the equipment that we have.

 

27 minutes ago, JimH said:

I'm going to guess the world of classic racing cars is as chock full of chancers and bullshitters as that of steam engines and the number of people happy to parrot unsubstantiated folk tales and downright fibs is about the same

Probably a lot worse!

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