Readers paying attention may have spotted that in the first trial assembly I had installed the boiler the wrong way round! So I had to strip down the boiler, clean off all the dried superglue and reassemble correctly re-drilling for rivets as needed.
Here are some photos of the re-assembly process:-
Now I start to add the water tubes. There are five in all, this photo shows the first three installed:-
BLTE Boiler Assembly – Three Water Tubes
But that was a terrible job. You see, the tubes have to go into holes in the boiler at each end of the tube. How is that done when the tubes are longer that the distance between the two hole?
Answer. With great difficulty. Basically by brute force an mangling the tubes by hand. What started out as nicely bent straight tubes ended up as roughly bent tubes and with huge gaps around the tubes at the front of the boiler.
From this point forward things only got worse….
To the extent that I might have to make a new boiler and/or at least drastically alter the design of this one.
The saga continues on the next page Bassett Lowke Boiler – Part 10 – Boiler Assembly Disaster!
