Quite a few screws to fit this time, to secure the bottom skirt to the base plate. That is after fitting the covers for the bottom lights. Took most of the time of the first session of the snooker final to complete but it's starting to look good. It looks like the next two deliveries will the the rest of the top side skirt and then perhaps we will see that start of the bottom sides.

As this will be running in parallel with the Dalek project and is something I will pick up and put down at times then a separate blog diary is appropriate.

I have had a few problems due to a couple of parts going missing after the various movements of my property around different storage locations, but I've just received the final part, the sides of the tender, which has been a rather expensive purchase at 10 times the original magazine price, but at least I have now been able to obtain which is a fairly critical part of the finished model. Last year I sorted through the pile of magazines and put each part in the biscuit tin back with it's original magazine, and found the I was missing two key components. The die-cast chassis was an easy purchase at the time and while a premium over the mag price, it was not as expensive as the tender body wrapper. But everything is now in the kit and ready to go. A little counter intuitive perhaps, but I've now numbered each part with the magazine issue and tidied them into some semblance of order into a tidy pair of storage boxes.

This then allowed me to look at scanning all of the magazines, and as I've done previously with the large stack of Model Engineer and other mags, I stripped all the staples in order to put them through the document scanner. Nothing is easy however. While I'd assumed the mags are 'A3' pages, it turns out that they are actually a little longer than 'Ledger', which is the longest length that the document feeder will handle double sided. Fortunately the scanner will work in 'Long Page' mode, but only single sided, so it needed each magazine to be scanned twice. Once for each side. I soon worked out that I could run the pages through and as they came off the first pass, slip them back at the bottom of the pile ready for the second pass, just creating the one pdf with all the pages in. While the first 6 mags are made up of four sheets, the rest are just three, and easier to handle. In the end a stack of 25 only took a little over 30 minutes to run through. Next problem is to process the double page spreads back to individual pages using PDFArranger and I am about a third through that step. Having the electronic copies allows me a number of options and the first is to go through and mark up those areas that were subject to latter modifications, such as the back-head of the boiler and a couple of other areas where the initial assembly has to be modified later. The other advantage of working one the parts out of magazine order is that the dismantling of various parts for painting can be addressed by completing the painting prior to assembly.

Another area which is a little annoying is that many of the magazines have full page spreads with a loco picture spanning two pages. While the first magazine has this spread on the middle pages and so is a clean print, many of the others are spread across different sheets and have colour match problems between the two halves. It WOULD have been nice if those pages were printed on the middle spread, even if it meant that the construction notes continued after that spread. Processing with PDFArranger allows me to merge the two pages, but many will need fine tuning to match the two halves, although I don't think the colour differences will be modifiable.

Next step after sorting all the scans is to produce a complete tool kit listing. I've already picked up a few new tools such as a new set of tweezers, and I should have all of the specified drills, but may need a couple more holders for the smallest drill sizes. I don't think that the PCB drill will be stable enough, although I do have a suitable machine vice to go with it so we will see.

Magazine and parts after sorting everything last year.

Magazine and parts.

Complete kit of parts after labelling and sorting.

A bigger box this time with a panel to cover the whole base, but while most parts have been assembled in minutes, such as the final overlay here, part 61 took a lot more time, and I did not see much of the first session of snooker while working on it. The initial problem was that fitting the bars to take the bearings for the balls just pushed them right inside. I had to dismantle three of them and glue the housing in place in the central tube to stop it sliding. I could have saved a little more time if I had fitted the ball race bearings after reassembling and reading ahead better I would have realised that. The main problem was that once I'd managed to wrangle the 8 bolts into the first motor mount bar, I realised that the second one would not fit as one of the base plates had been flipped, and a cutout for one of the motors was under the already fitted bar. While not to difficult to resolve, it did take a lot of time unbolting all the bolts, reversing the plate, and refitting them again. Need to take a little more care checking alignments in future. Another irritation is the lack of space to actually hold the nuts that the bolts need to fit into. The right angle socket spanner is a good idea, but needs less depth so you can actually get to the nut . I ended up using the pliers and balanced things to get at the ones under the motors.

All in all though that was a nice distracting afternoons work!

This adds the second motor to the one added to the stretcher last time and has both wheels mounted for one side. The second stretcher is started with another motor and wheel which will be completed next time. I've tested all three motors and we are read to roll when they finally get mounted on the base plate. The other elements this time are the reflectors for the under skirt lighting. The 4 smaller units are secure to the base, while the large one has gone back into it's box to keep safe for when it can be added in. I presume that one needs access through the middle of the base when it comes time to fit the motor assemblies.

Well this adds the first motor to the last stretcher and has the first wheel mounted. The next set of parts will add another motor, followed by at least a third four weeks after that. There is a lot of waiting in this process. At least the second stretcher seems to have addressed the problem of it not screwing up tight enough as this one went together nicely. It takes longer to do this documentation that it does to assemble the parts supplied ...

Apart from screwing the last sections of the skirt base together, very little to do as we need later parts before the rollers can be added to the base plate. One little complaint is that the screws that secure the mounting brackets to the cross rail are a little long and needed a little fettling to allow them to lock in tightly. As supplied the mounting plates were left floating around a little, but a quick run on the points of the screws allowed a tighter fit. Now waiting for the next shipment, but that only includes one motor, and two are needed before this section can be completed. We are over a third of the way through the kits though which is nice.

While the last set turned up a day earlier than normal, this month the parcel got lost in the Christmas rush and was two days late ... having been directed to the wrong depot initially. Tracking does sort of work, but some times the Royal Mail site does not give the details perhaps because things have gone wrong ...

Watching the Christmas films on the TV, it did not take too long to assemble the rest of the metal panels and the top side skirt mounts. The lower skirt is two thirds complete and the final two sections are part 1 of the next shipment. I did cheat a little and secured the partial frame with a couple of screws just to keep it tidy until the next 4 weeks are up. At least the next few months are all single shipments per month, but sometime next summer I'll have to cover the cost of 2 deliveries in a month ... it's a good thing that my pension is paid weekly.

Next parts turned up a day earlier than last time and I'm fairly sure the earlier sets were delivered on the Friday, so lets see when set 13 roles up. There was also another 'extra' item that I'd already been signed up for, but I think these are just well over priced and I had said to opt me out, but it seems you have to do it every time. The parts themselves are expensive enough without an extra £25 next time!

Anyway I'd just loaded yet another 3DBenchy onto the 3D printer with the latest mods to the settings to see if it clears up a couple of more minor discrepancies. I'm hopeful that some of the extra little blobs will be sorted as the amount of filament being extruded has been reduced a little. While I am waiting for it to print, plenty of time to crack on with the Dalek. I'm also looking to see if I could perhaps print some replacement parts for it!

The next four parts are further extensions to the base plate so should not take too long to complete ... which it didn't. 3D printer is nearing end of print, but have the Dalek up to part 42 and hit a snag. The intention was that the Dalek would sit on the lower shelf next to the galleon, but it's a little wider than I anticipated, so while it can stand vertically for the time being, once I start adding the body I will need to sort an alternative storage space. The portable workstation is getting use with things like the small parts for the Dalek and some of the spares for the 3D printer. Using it to build Victory is well down the line as yet. Anyway back to calibrating the 3D printer ... tomorrow now since it's tea time.

Another useful find is the motor and gearbox set for the model. I knew I had it safe somewhere, and I've been slowly sorting through boxes and downsizing from the margarine and Chinese food boxes to trays in much smaller 'Realy Useful' boxes. While sorting the latest stuff, the motor came to light again and is now in with the rest of the kit ready to be fitted. It was in a box with some of the tools and hence the next step being to pull all of those into one place as well. I've brought two tool boxes over from the garage and there is still a third one to sort through. One that needs a little work to re-rivet the lid section, which should take me back in time as it was one of the apprentice pieces I built in the Apprentice Training School at EMI Electronics back in mid 70's. All of the other tools made at the time are still stored in it, but a damp problem at the garage is pushing me to get everything 'home' and cleaned up. JUST got an email that they are going to send someone around to check out the water problem in the garage which will help, but I'm still fighting to use the loft space here as an alternative and the delays on that is what has held up making progress on some of the longer term projects.

I've identified a few bits that need to use later instructions and new parts to address, but I still need to work back through the 'parts list' to flag where earlier parts need amendments, such as the notes relating to the very first part of the cab, which was amended in a note with part 7 and I spotted modifications to the window frames in a much later mag..

Update: While I can trim the two halves of the A3 pages to remove any gap, PDFArranger will not respect that trimming when merging the two halves. So I may be better off just leaving them as separate pages for the moment until I can do a better merge some other way. Although I have the raw scans I can return to so perhaps the faulty merge is better in the short term.