Saturday 3 December 2011

Quarterlight repair

Several years ago, I made a repair here, which as you can see, just would not take. The steel was very thin and I couldn't get the temperature right...and just kept blowing holes in it. So today I decided to try to put it right. This is at the top of the off-side quarterlight.

I started by cutting out the offending part.

Then inserted cardboard to mark the radius.

The replacement part needed two bends, one of them an offset, for which I used the edge of a spanner.
Putting a radius in the part requires shrinking and stretching, which will make the part brittle along the edges, so I made the stretched edge quite wide (far as possible from the bend), but this leads to distortion of the bend, which needed regular re-hammering.

You can buy the stretcher and the shrinker jaws and insert them separately in this lever tool, but as I knew this would be a faff, especially as many jobs need both stretching and shrinking alternately, I bought two of the lever bodies. It was well worth the investment of a couple of hundred pounds.

To be continued tomorrow.

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