Work on the body of the First Class carriage has stopped for the time being until I take delivery of some grab handles. I've made the ends but didn't want to put it all together until I had marked out and drilled the holes for the handles. I felt that it would be much easier while everything was still in the flat.
So, I've turned my attention to the leaf springs. I did have a go at making some but that turned out a disaster and so, I looked around for some ogg the shelf version. Well, they don't exist but Mike Williams has some that, for me, would pass muster. The parts duly arrived and then I had to think up a way of joining the spring to the hanger. Initially, I was going to have a go at cleaning back the parts and then drilling a 1mm hole through the end of the spring and the hanger and inserting a pin. While cleaning up the parts, I thought to myself that the chances of drilling a holes in white metal castings and have them all line up was a bit of a long shot and so, I decided to simply glue them together with an epoxy. However, when the first one was all cleaned up and ready to be glued, I thought that it may just be worth having a go at drilling and if that failed, I could just glue as per my first plane. I put a new 1mm drill into a pin vice and after a bit of twiddling and checking that all was going true, I ended up with some holes. I then tried a piece of 1mm nickel wire through the hanger and the eye of the spring and it went through no problem! Now that was a surprise but, I have another eleven springs to sort out as yet. I'm just hoping that that wasn't first time lucky.
Jon
This is the type of spring that is required.
This is what I'm working with and is the closest that I could get.
The mount on the hanger has been cut back, the spacer between the cheeks(?) cut away and the eye of the spring drilled out.
The finished spring with 1mm dia nickel rod roughly in place