Beading the edge of the tender has been something I’ve been looking forward to and not. A great step in the look of the tender, but bending the profile brass around accurately is not the easiest thing to do. At the 1/20th scale of the Burrell the 2mm wide half round brass is probably too big, but the smallest size I could find. I should perhaps have made my own 1mm beading.
The first corner on the brass edging was bent to shape before being applied to the tender, but then realised I needed to solder this to the tender before moving to the next section. There was not way I could make all of the bends beforehand.
I cleaned the brass edges of the tender and tinned them. The surfaces were coated in flux and a flux core solder was also used.
The 2mm half round brass came from EKP Supplies as a 4ft long coil.
Soldering Beading to the Tender
The first section of the beading was then soldered to the tender. Note that I started with the easiest side first. My thought was that this would allow me to anchor the brass. Maybe also I would learn on the easiest side.
There is rather too much solder here. Later in the process I reheated the solder in these areas and brushed the excess away with a fine steel wire brush.
I used a large soldering iron and a hot air gun, the hot air gun works better..
Beading around the step through in the tender was quite a challenge. I’m not sure this is perfect, but it looks ok.
Looking at this I should have made some jigs that allowed the beading to be bent and held flat. There is a tendency with the half round section for it to roll over. I used a pair of parallel pliers to push the brass back flat.
Beading the edge of the tender has not been easy and has taken me 4 hours. However, the actual end result after some fettling is quite ok.
Finishing and Fettling
All of the beading in place. Well, sort of in place. I reheated some areas and tweaked the position.
I ended up clamping some sections to stop them moving. Using offcuts of wood to isolate the clamps from the heat.
Nice work!
thanks Steve
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