Chapter 5.4 – Bottom Horseshoe Member and Top Horseshoe MemberToday I worked on the Bottom Horseshoe Member. This is a support piece for the “U” shaped cut out in the front part of the tender. This U shaped cutout in the tender is where the coal would be piled to feed the firebox.
Here’s a picture showing all the pieces that make up this U-shaped section. Today’s focus is the Bottom Horseshoe Member (6), the Top Horseshoe Member (7) will be next, followed by the Verge Board (
and the Vertical Sheet (9) which makes up the sides for the horseshoe shape.
The Bottom Horseshoe Member is an 11” piece of 1/4” square brass. After cutting and trimming to length, I made the specified cutouts for the corners. These cutouts will be where the 90
o bends will be. Kozo gives exact lengths for these cutouts and they work out just right!
Next, I turned the part and drilled and tapped the #3-48 mounting holes. I probably should have waited till the part was formed and then marked the spots for these from the base, but I chose not to. Kozo’s plans are quite accurate and I had faith that the holes would fit. And it's SO much easier to work on the piece when it is flat and straight than when its all bent up. So I just went for it. Worst case I’d just have to do it again.
When I get to soldering the whole horseshoe together, I’ll need holes for the screws to hold things in place. So I drilled them now. The mating holes in the other piece will be located from these, so it's OK to dill them before forming.
Here’s the part, all ready for bending.
Now, here’s the part where I learned a lot.
I started bending the corners. I’m thinking – I wonder if I will need to anneal this. Kozo didn’t say anything about that in the instructions. Just as I’m thinking this, ‘snap’ the part broke in two. And I had my answer. Yes, of course, I should have annealed it!
So, before I started over, I decided to try silver soldering the parts together. And that actually seemed to work out OK. Now, I wasn’t smart enough to take pictures of my mishap. I was kind-a focused on working myself out of my stupidity and wasn’t thinking about pictures at the moment. But here’s one of the repaired spot after silver soldering (and a little filing, cause I was a little too free with the solder) while bending.
And a wider shot of the bending process. It took a couple of annealings to get the full 90
o bends in place, but no more breakage!
And what’s cool, is you can see that the lengths where Kozo had you narrow the width of the brass – they bent nice and evenly. You get a nice even radius there. That’s pretty cool!
Another closeup of the repair job I did:
And here it is fitted in place on the tender floor. And yes, all the holes lined up, though it did take some adjusting of the shape. That’s the other reason I put the mounting holes in earlier. I knew the spacing for the holes would be correct because I used the DRO. The question was the radius of the corners. So, if I did the holes first, they would help me get the right radius. Does that make sense? It made sense to me anyway.
More pieces to go, but I think this one turned out pretty good!
Kim