With just a little over an hour in the shop I only did enough to take two pictures, but I think it was important work. I wanted to add that flanged, instrumented area to the recycle line because it added some interest and it would be in the front near those big windows. On boiler #2, I hadn't assemble the piping yet so I was able to make some flanges using the drill size for the T4 tubing and a 5/16" gasket punch. Ideally, the best way to do this is drill the center hole with the piece locked in place on the press table, then insert the punch into the chuck without moving the setup so the punch slug would be concentric with the hole you just drilled. Of course, that's not the way I did it.
The reason I couldn't do it was because the drill press table needed to be reset for each tool and this really disturbed the setup. So I eyeballed the center when using the punch. It took a few pieces to get my bearings but I was able to make a sufficient amount of reasonable ones to do the job. When using the gasket punches in the drill press, I put wood blocks under the table since the pressure needed to press the punch through the plastic is sufficient to cause the table to drop. The block makes a positive stop that doesn't move.
I glued the first flange into position, measured the gap to the next one and glued that in position, and then cut some strips of paper that I wrapped around the pipe to generate the thicker section shown in the prototype picture. I then glued the last flange down on top of this fattened section. I used thin and medium CA to start the paper wrapping and end it.
But for boiler #1, I had a challenge since I already glued those pipes in place. I made a cut in the flanges with a sharp Xacto, bent the ends away from one another like you do when inserting a link on a chain, and and after getting it around the pipe, realigned the ends and glued the whole deal with CA.
It's very hard to tell which was the one with the complete flanges and which was done with the split flanges. There's always a way to do something, it's just that some ways are a bit trickier than others.
After this pic I added some rectangular pieces to the lowest flange area that will be junction boxes, if I decide to do any additional wiring, that is.
I then added the relief valves. The side exit had a pin for a T4 tube, but the hole in the bottom was .030" smaller. To make a stub that would hold it into the hole drilled in the boiler, I turned down some .125" styrene solid rod on the lathe so it was a press fit into the relief valve. The holes for this extension were drilled on the drill press to assure that they were perpendicular to the boiler center line. You can see the junction box in this picture. These units will look dramatically different when they're painted.
That was it for today's work. Tomorrow should be a long work session day and I'm planning on finishing up the boilers and getting ready to paint.
