An adventure in brass

[Schraddel]

David, my grandpa used this electric iron for soldering jobs on automobiles. He told me before he got it, he had to act like your father too. Heating the iron in the oven inside the house and running with the red hot iron out of the house to the car.


One of the next tasks was to solder the undercarriage. Two etched side members, a bottom frame, four double flanged wheels and the axles for it was a rather easy job to do.
More trickier was the turntable right of the undercarriage. This were 4 plain flat parts in kit form. Two somewhat halfmoons have to be put together to made the base. Two stripes have to be formed and soldered to form a perfect circle and this circle have to be soldered onto the base to made the circle rail for the turntable.
It reads complicated and it was complicated.




And yes it will turn.
And also a lot of solder needed to get a stable structure and to fill small gaps. This is the underside and will be not visible when the crane is mounted on the layout.





The next task was to solder all the tiny gusset plates onto the trusswork. A work which caused the most of my "Kraftausdrücke" which i will not publish here.
The lower balance beam for the scale and a connecting rod to the upper one was also fitted. From the rear end a connecting rod will go right thru the roof of the drivers cab direct to the scale mechanism.





A look from the side to show the two balancer beams.
Here in the visible areas the excess soldering tin will be cleaned later. Remember some of the parts have a thickness of only 0.1mm (app. 0.004")
So please don't cough against your screen ...








Thank you for watching.
To be continued.

Lutz