Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s update! This week has seen further progress on the Plate, E212315. Starting with last week’s floor, which had just been laid loosely down in the wagon.
The floor was left sat on top of rivets from the underframe, something which isn’t uncommon on wagons. These usually need a relief making in the floor timber to allow the board to sit down fully. Nick, using his favourite tool, made impressions of the rivet heads in the underneath of the plank.
Mark then lifted the plank out and rolled it over, after which I set about it with the big drill and a Forstner bit to make the relief.
Dan was kept on his toes, cleaning up the cuttings and sawdust behind us prior to putting the plank back down to check for if any other drilling was required.
After the planks were fully seated, we moved on to the capping strips, laid down each edge of the wagon. The floor was drilled from underneath, and the strip positioned above. The strip was then bolted to the kerb rail, and thus the floor secured.
Sunday saw Michael join us to help with scraping the Plate, getting it ready for paint.
Nick and I concentrated on cracked welds around the bottom of the doors. At some point in its life, the doors on the wagon had metal strips stitch welded to them. Some of these have since had rust build up between the strip and the door angle iron, resulting in the welds cracking, or even one strip having broken clean off the wagon!
All the doors had some welding attention, but the west side required much more with the north door having both strips broken off and reattached.
Michael made an excellent job of the east side underframe, which is now ready for paint. Both sides still need the doors needle gunning before the body can be painted however, which might be a job for next week…
That brings us to a close this weekend, thanks for reading!
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