The brass tubes have arrived so last night I started the process of riveting the infills in place
I started by drilling a 6mm hole right through the plane with the front bun in place and clamped firmly. I checked with a digital angle gauge very carefully that the hole was going to go through parallel to the sole
Went very slowly as it was going through the other side
Just appearing
Went through OK
Nice clean hole all the way through
I reamed the hole out to 1/4"
And the hole in the infill very slowly I reamed and enlarged to 9/32" which is the brass tube diameter
Here's the brass tubes and the 1/4" mild steel rods
And here it is all just roughly assembled.
The infill hole must have wandered a fraction as I had to file one side of it a fraction of a mm but it should all be OK once peened. Need to practice peening with 3 layers insulating tape - I read that somewhere can't remember where
Ian Houghton at Chalco has the Lever cap and, as of an hour ago, a design for my stamp (thanks Jimi that was an inspirational email exchange)
So close now - I will finish the riveting this weekend, then assemble it before carefully filing down the peened rivets - how stressful is that going to be with the infills in place??
Thanks for looking
Cheers Mark