Thank you, Achim! I appreciate all the support
This is the first Saturday in some time that I’ve really gotten to play in my shop! And I made some pretty good progress! Today I finished up the sides to the tender. This involved cutting some edge support pieces for the sides and soldering them into place. Kozo calls these “Side Corner Members.”
Before I get started on the update, I wanted to post one more shot of the formers I used for the sides. I’d added some ‘registration post’ (i.e. little nails) to help align things between annealing. There were some questions about that so I took one more picture to show just the wood formers, without the copper side plate in the middle. The brads are friction fit into one side of the former, and the other side just has clearance holes, as did the side plate that I was forming. Hope this helps.
In my last update, I’d just finished shaping the sides and cutting the one-piece the middle to make the left and right sides. So, my next step was to clean up the cut and make sure the sides were of equal size. I did that mainly on the 4x36 belt sander. (This is a staged shot. I generally don’t steady my hand on the belt while it's moving. That would hurt!)
Then I spent some time cleaning up the sides to get rid of the soot and heating discoloration.
Chapter 5.3 – Side Corner MembersNext up was to make the Side Corner Members. These are 5/16” square brass bars that will fit along the base of each side. They provide rigidity and a way to attach the sides to the base.
After cutting the two pieces, I clamped both of them in the mill and squared up the ends, getting them to the correct length. I realize that isn’t ideal, to have the bars sticking out from the vise, but I wanted to be able to use the DRO to measure the length. So I just took light cuts, very gently and it seemed to work out OK.
Next, I rounded the ends to fit the inside contour of the sides. This is just a standard 1/4" round-over wood router bit. It worked fine on the brass.
Then drilled the mounting holes in the corner pieces. I did them both at the same time, for simplicity.
And then tapped them 3-48.
Rotated the corner pieces 90 degrees and drilled holes for some 1-72 screws. These will be used to hold the pieces to the side for soldering.
I fit each corner piece to the corresponding side. Using clamps to hold the pieces together in the right place, I drilled through the 1-72 holes into the copper sides.
Then I opened all those holes up to be a clearance fit for #1 screws.
And finally, I tapped the holes in the side corner members.
Now, I was ready to solder the sides pieces up.
I cleaned up the solder joint area and prepped it for soldering with flux and lengths of solder. It parts held together with five 1-72 brass screws. Now, this is soft solder. The point of these joints is to make the tank sides watertight (and to hold the parts together of course
).
After soldering:
And here are the two sides, soldered and cleaned up. I couldn’t fit these large pieces into my pickling container
. I sloshed the pickling juice around on the parts, then washed them up with soap, and I guess I’m OK. But there was no ‘soak’ like I usually do. I’m going to have to find a larger container to use I guess…
And finally, here’s a family shot with the sides mounted:
Thanks for looking in!
Kim