Armortek

Ferrule. That was the word I was looking for.

Vince

I would love it if you can come over to my house and help me with the cables on my Tiger

If you did not live so far away I would have considered it. Closest I have been to your part of the world was Seattle visiting the training facility of a famous plane manufacturer and Las Vegas picking up a plane but that was when I was much younger and long distance travel was an adventure.

Vince

It's nearly a week since I posted any progress. Still working on the front mudguards, track rope fixings and side skirts depending on the mood and available materials but I haven't done anything new. Also, the temperatures here are not conducive to doing anything in the workshop. At the moment it's 35 degrees and tomorrow they are saying that it might go up to 40 degrees. So in other words, progress has slowed down, like everything else here.

After that rant, I did something new today. I started on the side skirts reinforcing webs. I used 0.8mm brass sheet and cut them old school with a tin snips.
These were then soft soldered to the side skirt with an even older school method. Do you remember soldering irons one heated on a flame?
And the result is not that bad.
I have a question if you don't mind. In the last photo, the area under the side skirt shown with the arrows, does one cover it in zimm also? I have seen models with zimm and without zimm in this area.

Vince

Vince,
Those side skirts look awesome. I will do something similar to add the triangle pieces. I may use steel.

I believe the entire sides were zimmerited, even under the skirts.
Bob

Thanks Bob for the comment and the info.

Vince

Those turned out really well Vince. I roughly copied John Grima's technique. I made a pattern from cardboard and traced them out onto brass sheet stock. Then I cut the pieces rough and slightly oversized. I flattened the bottom of all the pieces and clamped them together in a vise and gang filed them. I then shuffled them and filed them again very lightly.

I used my resistance soldering system to attach them. If I were better with it I could probably replicate welds fairly well. I was very pleased with them. One or two were not soldiered perfectly square due to my primitive work piece holding techniques, but probably won't be noticed.

I would love to have a couple of side skirts and exhaust covers made out of soft copper in order to more accurately replicate battle damage.

Those look great Greg.

Vince

This might help:

Thanks for that Simon.

Vince

Thanks Vince. Some of them came out better than others due to my poor ability to hold them steady. I started out soldering with a MAPP torch and finally broke down and got a resistance soldiering system. Big difference.

Like everything else, practice makes perfect Greg. I can imagine those resistance soldering units (RSU) would make life a lot easier, but in my case I could not justify the expense for seldom using it. I am following a discussion on another forum on the possibility of making one from scratch. It only uses a low DC voltage, if I remember correctly, between 1.5V and 3V, a high current and a carbon rod as the probe. Somebody is also experimenting using a bench power supply. I'll continue following this discussion to see if it is at all possible to make one.

Vince

You definitely can. There are numerous examples on youtube. One hard expense are the electrodes. I can easily see spending several hundred a year on them. But even a homemade one would give you amazing benefits.

Here is one example I found online: http://pnr.nmra.org/1div/clinics/Lowcos ... lderer.pdf

I have literally never been able to get a regular soldering iron to work properly.This despite several college hours in electronics.

I threw the traditional soldiering iron away for a MAAP torch fairly quickly. I melted a lot of little components with it.

The control with these devices are amazing. You have a higher skill level than I do with metal, so you would get proficient faster than I would.

But you are correct, it is mostly another expensive tool on a shelf.

Finished soldering on the sideskirts of one side. Now to clean them up and remove any surface rust in preparation to be etch primed. I also did some work on the front and rear plug of the sideskirts (CE0365). I elongated (not opened up) the fixing holes by 2mm so that the plug could be moved up and fit better with the sideskirt.
I did this with a 3mm slot drill in the milling machine but could very easily be done with a small round file. Now to do the same thing to the sideskirts of the other side.

Vince

Finished all the work on the sideskirts and started painting them. Turned back to the front mudguards and decided to make that "catch" thingy to keep the mudguard locked in the down position.

Which means I have to fabricate the actual lock. Are there any drawings for this part?

Vince