Use these links to jump to the section you are interested in on this page :-
Making the Firehole Ring Attaching the Firehole Attaching the boiler Bushes Attaching the Girder Crown Stays Assembling the rear of the firebox. Attaching smoke tubes to firebox.Or try one of the other pages on building Spencer :-
Machining the Driving and Coupled Wheels
Spencer Start page, frames, Axle boxes, painting wheels
The rivetted outer wrapper assembly was cleaned in pickle, rinsed and fluxed. Strips of Silver solder were laid on the inside of the join before fluxing.
The barrel was surrounded inside and out with cubes of Thermalite building block in the hearth. The main problem with this setup is it is difficult to get heat into the barrel. Shold have left it open at the front.
The big burner was used to preheat the outer wrapper.
It's obvious from this shot that the wrapper has pulled away from the front plate. Due to not enough rivets. I'd say I should have used at least seven!
After a cleanup it all becomes obvious.
The gaps were closed up with a little judicious hammering. And a second attempt was made, this time applying the Silver solder from the outside. The results are much better with a reasonable fillet visible
Next it was time to attach the firehole ring and the boiler bushes. These are attached with Silverflo-24 the highest melting point Silver Solder I use.
The silver solder was applied as a ring before the flux. Leaves a bit of a mess at the front.
The penetration was excellent. Sadly the rivets are in the wrong way round!
More Silverflo-24 was used on the tube plate bush. Note use of charcoal to stop threads being filled.
A ring of silver solder was trapped under the flange and the assembly heated from below.
Great penetration again.
Backhead bushes were all done in one heat didn't quite get all joints.
The stays were trial fitted with the outer wrapper in place.
The feet needed to be trimmed and fettled to give a tight fit to the firebox wrapper.
Top view getting ready to drill rivet holes.
Top flanges were also levelled.
Holes drilled ready for riveting
Rivetted and fluxed ready for heating.
The hearth nicely packed out with thermalite prior to heating.
First heating didn't have quite the desired effect. This was with Silverflo-55
A little fettling with a punch. And the second attempt looks much better
Next job was to make the front and rear pieces of the foundation ring. This allowed me to check the length of the inner fire box.
It also allows checking of clearance for the tubes.
The rear of the fire box could then be rivetted and fluxed
You can see I protected the existing lower joint with flux too.
This joint wasn't too bad so I decided to finish it at the same time as the tubes. The tubes have to added next and rather tahn mess about with expanding tubes I just made a simple setup which utilised gravity!
Next I needed a load of silver solder rings.
The resultant coil was snipped in a line to make rings.
The whole lot was assembled with lots of flux.
After heating it didn't look too bad
After pickling it became clear one of the tubes hadn't been touched so a reheat was in order.
Second attempt with a bit of extra solder. (Silverflo-55)
This time it was successful if a trifle messy and expensive. The bridge of silver solder was removed with a saw later.
View inside wa sequally comforting.
The firebox rear was lookikng good too.
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