ASSEMBLY OF THE TENDER BODY
PHOTO 106: Coal chute and seat/top of body clamped and ready for welding – once a few quick tack-welds were in place, the (plastic-jawed!) front clamp was removed to prevent parts of it from melting…
PHOTO 107: Adding the seat back – tender-body is inverted and seat back clamped in a Workmate. Tack-welds again added, before the whole was moved elsewhere for final welding. Note over-sized (too long) tabs to enable TIG welding without filler.
PHOTO 108: The final welds (before cleaning-up).
PHOTO 109: Seat back and coal bunker/chute all welded in place.
PHOTO 110: Finally, the tank sides can be clamped to the assembly and welded in place (underneath). Tabs were not used to locate the sides/rear of the tender to the seat assembly, as they would have been clearly visible, even after painting. The use of internal welds and careful clamping avoids this.
Note that the weight of the driver is supported by the front and rear panels of the coal bunker and not by the internal welds. All these need to do is hold together the body and seat – long seam-welds are not needed (and may well prove detrimental, due to likely warping from the enormous amounts of heat generated in the process (unless lots of short welds were made, with long time-gaps, to allow the metal to cool).
PHOTO 111: Tank body welded together, complete with filler-tube – again, this was welded from underneath. PHOTO 112: Underside view of the tank body, showing the welding of the ‘tabs’ on the seat-back. No filler is needed for this process, as the tabs are deliberately designed to be slightly over-length and hence can act as their own filler.