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It is just so Super (Sentinel).


JimH

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  • 3 weeks later...

And here it is with the... bloody hell. Someone's nicked it.

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Ah, there it is.

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The pools of water underneath should be a clue as to why it has been dragged outside. Do you like the relief valve vent pipe that runs up the chimney? There are very few that are as right as that one and I am very pleased with it.

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I think you can just about make out a heat haze at the top of the flue (it's only burning wood) but just to prove it. It is having the hot test done this week so we thought we had give it a quick check before the inspector turned up.

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There you go. Nought to 200 psi in only five years. One of the big unknowns was whether the injector would work - they are a bit difficult to test off the boiler - but fortunately it worked well enough to get water in the boiler. A little more fiddling required to get it working spot on but it was moving in the right direction. (The injector, by the way, is some black magic device which takes steam at boiler pressure and uses it to force feed water into the boiler at slightly more than boiler pressure.)

When I say I was pleased with the R/V vent pipe I was until I stood in front of it square on and saw the brass band had pulled it slightly off. A tweak needed to make it sit properly but everything was red hot by then so it will have to wait until later. Most of the copper pipe you see will be insulated with a very rare asbestos substitute that looks exactly like asbestos. There is also no cladding on the boiler at the moment for insection so it is pretty much unbearable standing next to it let alone sit in the cab. One of the reasons I am pleased about this is it is very thin wall pipe which is a nightmare to bend without it collapsing.

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I'll do some better pictures of what is going on with the body later but here is a large amount of oak held in place with lots of clamps. I could not get oak side rails the full length so had to make them in two pieces with a lap joint glued and beefed up with a metal backing plate. I know the coach bolts are too long, the right ones haven't arrived yet. Fortunately the body design means that the coachbolt heads are covered up by the plywood cladding.

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R/V tested and set, brakes working and the fire out driven back inside the shed. You start to get a feel for how many very hot things there are to burn you on these things. The temperature is one of the main features of driving these things.

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Things don't look very tidy with the cladding off. There is a shaped ring that hides the top flange bolts and doubles as a clamp for the chimney top. We are also going toinsulate the full boiler top on this one. Originally they weren't and that was handy for making excellent cheese toasties but you get a lot (in bold and double underlined) of heat off it so an inch of ceramic blanket should helpto cool things down. The two pairs of pipes poking out of the boiler top are the superheater tails. Output from the superheater is about 550F so plenty of tape needed on them.

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More load deck - the plywood comes to the bottom of the oak side rails sothe coachbolts are all covered up. This is bit of a shame because almost none of the nice wood that wasn't exactly cheap is visible. The coachbolts in the rear bearer are visible which is why we used old looking bolts. With the metric coachbolts (whit ones cost a fortune now) we use square nuts and keep the exposed thread as short as possible so they look as right as they are going to look when you peer underneath. You can just about make out that the water tank is painted and fitted and it still doesn't leak so that is nice.

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An obstable course to get in.

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So after that the insurance inspector comes this week to witness the R/V being floated and then it all gets stripped down again to get the boiler cladding fitted. Bit depressing to do it all again but there you go. Once the cladding is on it all gets buttoned up again and the new apron plate gets made and the cheekplates finished and the windscreens made and the body gets finished and that'spretty much it. Only another year or so to go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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So the inspector returned, watched the R/V float and then went away again so that was money well spent. Then it all got taken apart again. I need to get the fork lift out to lift the superheater out but that will get done this weekend. Now we have to make the boiler cladding which is easily the second worst job of the whole project (fitting the superheater being the worst).

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Injector on the bench waiting to be stripped down to check a few things. The wheel for the shut off valve is red because it hasn't been blasted since we used it as a pattern to cast all the other valve wheels.

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And the throttle valve being stripped down to lap the main valve seat in. It also needs a new spindle made for the steam brake supply valve because it turned out that someone didn't do it right the first time. Not me, I hasten to add. The brake foot valve in the corner of the shot also needs one of the plugs reseated. 

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As an aside we trooped down to Lincolnshire a couple of weeks ago to pick up some odds and sods that someone was clearing out and in the pile was another injector. Slightly incomplete but nothing too tricky to replace. I suggested that it would be a good starting point for the next waggon but that idea didn't gain a lot of traction.

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Some more of the odds and sods. There was also a couple of Cooper Stewart drum type speedos and the main reason we bought the pile was there was a nice 24" wheelrim which we needed because we were short of a spare (not in shot). The Coventry Climax FW was not included in the haul.

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No1 apprentice has been busy making the body brackets. These need fettled to make them look right but they are getting there.

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The idea is that the U shaped part bolts to the oak bearer and then sits in the cast cup which is bolted to the chassis rail. There is then a single 1/2"whit bolt that holds the two together through the bottom of the cup. Things are yet to be drilled.

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Here is a slightly better picture of the water tank in place. The white lines you see are the canvas tapes which buffer between the straps and the tank. They will muddy up and darken down in time. I think this is a reasonable approximation of what a Super Sentinel water tank should look like.

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So, the body. The design is taken from a Sentinel drawing dated 1929 for a van body. There is only one drawing and a lot of detail is omitted so we are also working from the standard drawings for the platform which was usually fitted to flatbeds and then trying to interpret along the way. The original design used a tailgate that was about 24" high with two doors above. The idea of needing to open a door and lower a tailgate to get in was going to cause too much gyp so we have opted for a pair of full height doors.

There are 8off 4x4 (ish) oak bearers which sit directly on the chassis rails. Four of the bearers are fixed in place with those U brackets and cups you see further up the page and the other four just float around. Here we see the 8 bearers roughtly in place. I need to finalise the spacing to balance between trying to fit them round the hard points and minimising waste on the decking boards.

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There are then two 5x2 side rails which fix to the bearers with angle brackets. On the flatbeds the bearers were wasted down to about 2" wide where they meet the siderails but I think this was to keep the hole centres at the right pitch to double up as hinge fixing bolts if you specified hinged sides. As far as I can make out from the van body drawing they didn't waste the bearers down which is good because it would have been hard work doing that. The side rails are 4.88m long nd the oak people couldn't supply lengths that long so they needed to be done in two pieces with a bolted and glued lap joint. That's what you can see with the far too long coachbolts about half way down.

There needed to be some modifications made to the design because it was originally designed for waggons on solids. One of the differences is that solids did not stick out as far and had mudguards that sat inside the chassis rails. Pneumatics and matched wings don't do that so the siderails need cut away around the wing. I was quite pleased that I didn't make a howling balls up of this.

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The slightly increased width of the wings also leads to a problem of body width. Originally the bodies were made the same width as the cab which meant when they were converted to pneumatics at the factory the rear wings were left sticking out from the body in a slightly daft way. Those built by the factory with pneumatics from the start had slightly wider bodies which looked less daft. We have opted to make the body wider. It leaves a step in the side between the cab and the body but we felt this looked less slly than the Carlos Fandango/ 924 Carrera GT look.  This photo should give you an idea of how far the wings would have stuck out if we had used the original body width. The coachbolt heads are pocketed because the plymax linings are fitted over the bearers and side rails.

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The rear member just sits on the chassis and isn't bolted down. This photo will mean very little to anyone else but it took a lot of work because it fits over the chassis reinforcing plate and bolts which would have involved some deft and skilled chisel work. I decided that I had no chance of doing that without wrecking something and used the milling machine to do it instead.

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A kwalertee joint and no mistake. Like lorry bodies today things need to be a bit flexible which is why I assume they did it this way.

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And from the other side. This is about the only bit of oak you actually see so I used some nice imperial coachbolts (which appear to be close to unobtainable now).

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Pause for a moment to admire some copper piping...

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And a last look at the brakes before they get covered up. Note also that the drain line wasn't fitted to the R/V vent pipe when we steamed it up. This meant water was blown over everything when it lifted which is why the engine is filthy.

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Here is yet another pile of wood which was collected yesterday. 28mm keruing for the deck. Slightly heavier than original but it only comes in 2 sizes now and the smaller size it too thin. The cement and pitch is for my garden path rather than the Sentinel.

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And just to show that I do listen to advice here are some drill bits as recommended by @inconsistant. These were certainly the most expensive things I have ever bought for the sole purpose of drilling wood. However, that isn't saying much. Note folding wooden rule which makes me feel like I know what I am doing. I don't have a fag behind my ear but I am getting there.

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And I bought a couple of books (one at no small uplift on the cover price) in the hope of learning something useful. Not about wood working, sadly.

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On 5/18/2021 at 10:46 AM, JimH said:

I keep going on about this but these waggons cost in the region of £250,000 in today's money

I would be fascinated to know just how close to that quarter mil the project is going to wind up owing you. That is assuming you’ve kept track of the hours put into it. Just the spend on materials must be eye watering?

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Injectors are just a special kind of eductor; high pressure stuff goes through a nozzle, which accelerates it, creating low and high pressure areas. By tuning the position and size of orifices it can be used to either suck or blow other stuff. High pressure stuff can be anything liquid or gas, other stuff can be liquid, gas or even powder.

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On 6/25/2021 at 8:44 PM, 83C said:

More injector bedtime reading: http://kesr-mic.org.uk/resources/The+Steam+Injector.pdf

Also, the BR 'Black Book' has several good diagrams on various injector types.

The GWR paper is one of the better explanations I have read on the subject - I've not seen that before so thanks for that.

By "BR Black Book" I assume you mean the Handbook For Railway Steam Locomotive Enginemen. If that is the case then you are correct - a copy has been sitting on the shelf, unread, for many years and it turns out that there are some very nice colour drawings of injectors and a decent description of how they work including the function of the sliding thibble or jumper nozzles.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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That's more like it.

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

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

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  • 1 month later...

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.

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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.

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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. .

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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  • 1 month later...

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

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.

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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.

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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...

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Now to finish the nearside one. 

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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!

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  • 2 months later...

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.

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And then you set about throwing most of it away

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And with no small amount of gyp windscreens start to appear

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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

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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. 

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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. 

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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