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Old 11-03-21, 00:18
maple_leaf_eh maple_leaf_eh is offline
Terry Warner
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Shouting at clouds
Posts: 3,084
Default welding your slit trench

Looks good! When you get closer to fabricating larger missing pieces, bear in mind the workshop conditions when these 40 hulls were manufactured. Was there a fully dedicated clean-sheet production line, or were these welded up on jigs on an open stretch of the factory floor? Were the workers the most highly skilled men in the entire factory, or were they the next shift available? Are there signs of careful, precise and repeatable measurements and precision controlled cutters, or more scribe a line and grind down to it?

I mention this degree of imprecision thinking about a story from when DEW Industries in Canada graciously restored a WW1 US light tank which ended its service life in the nascent Canadian Armoured Corps. Don Dingwall was at DEW and he had to laughingly explain to the modern shop workers just how primitive the shops were in 1918-19. Of course nothing would be square or perfect. The workmen were used to making locomotives, which only had a few truly standardized parts.
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Terry Warner

- 74-????? M151A2
- 70-08876 M38A1
- 53-71233 M100CDN trailer

Beware! The Green Disease walks among us!
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