johnsmachines

Sorry, no photos with this one.  As I was leaving my workshop I realised that I was missing one of my hearing aids.  It was dusk, raining, and I spent almost an hour searching for it, but no luck.  Then I forgot to bring my camera.  So no photos.  Big cleanup of the workshop in daylight tomorrow.

A half day in the workshop today.  Finished silver soldering the chassis angle brackets, then fitted them, and secured them to the girders with bolts.  In order to make sure that the brackets are correctly located for the drilling, I glued them with Super Glue initially.

The first half of the day was spent on the computer, working on Queen Victoria’s Royal cypher which is on the top surface of the cannon barrel.

The “VR is for Victoria Regina”.  “Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense” is the motto of the Order of the Garter.  It translates from the French as “Shamed be (the person) who thinks evil of it”.

It appears to have been machined into the barrel.  On my model it will be about 12.5 x 20mm.  My friend Stuart has a fibre laser which was used to permanently mark guidelines into 2 steel grinder rests (featured in earlier posts), and I am hoping that it will work similarly to put the cypher onto my model Armstrong cannon barrel.  Another option would be to V carve the emblem, using V Carve Pro.  Whichever method is used, I needed a bitmap file of the emblem.  I found several with a Google Images search, but they were very low resolution.  I should have made a rubbing of the cypher when I was at the originals at Port Fairy.

236×277 but I have spent some time with a drawing program (Corel Draw) tidying up the image, then converting it to vectors, suitable for V Carving.  The laser can interpret a bitmap file.

The curve of the barrel must be negotiated during the lasering or V carving.  Still considering options for that.

So, when the Covid restrictions are lifted, that will be one of the first visits.  To Stuart and his laser.   A practice run on some scrap pipe first.