The base is make from a piece of 350mm x 200mm x 6mm thick duralminium. (supplied by yet another friend - cheers Lew)
The first task was to anneal the plate . Using liquid soap as an temperature indicator the plate was heated on the stove then allowed to cool slowly.
My Axminister rollers are not designed to bend such thick material (I.e. 1.2mm max.) but, to their great credit, were able to take the enormous extra strain of bending a 6mm plate without breaking.
In order to get the plate between the rollers I had to un-adjust the bending roller after each pass then then re-adjust it to make the new bend. After several miserable attempts to bend a cold plate, I found I had to heat the plate to about 250°C and very carefully feed it through the rollers while hot. Surprisingly, I didn’t burn myself too badly!
After marking the curve on the body cylinder it was cut with a jigsaw and filed to fit the curve of the base. For final finishing I attached a piece of abrasive paper to the base with double sided tape, then ground the body until it fitted.
