Canopus: Replacement Connecting Rods

So it's been almost three months since I last did any work on Canopus. If you can remember back that far then you'll know that I hit a bit of a problem as some of the parts that come with the kit aren't the right size. Specifically the slide bars are two close in to the wheels and the connecting rods are a touch too short. It should be fairly easy to move the slide bars out slightly but there is now way to stretch the connecting rods to make them longer. The solution was to get a new set of rods etched.

A few days ago the new rods arrived in the post having been etched for me by Narrow Planet. On it's own that might not be worth a blog post, but what you are looking at is the first set of etched components for which I've drawn the artwork! Okay, so Steve did tweak them slightly but I did the majority of the work.

I actually only need two rods but these are etched onto 0.25mm nickel silver whereas the kit uses 0.5mm, although it seems to measure out nearer to 0.4mm, so I'll probably have to laminate two rods together to get the right thickness and strength, although it's tempting to see if I one rod is strong enough as this will improve the tight clearances involved.

Now I know roughly what I'm doing I've moved on to drawing up the artwork for the body panels for the tiny Hudson-Hunslet but that can wait until the next post.