No Longer a Screw Loose!

I confess, this is not going to be one of the most engrossing articles on Sentinel 7109 but a very short piece to record which one of the chimney castings' fixing studs needed to be welded in place to the boiler top plate. It was the one in the photo below.

The regulator is at the top right.

So, when looking to the front from the rear of the cab, the stud is the rearmost outside left hand one...

...the hidden one at the bottom left near the spanners!

A few years ago, when the top plate was refurbished and the fixing holes rethreaded, this stud was so loose, it was more likely to pull itself out than hold down a chimney. Hence the reason for the welding.

Now, just to show off a little, even I felt I'd surpassed myself with the tidiness of the weld itself. No angle grinding was used at all to cover mistakes.

Since it was always going to be a very small weld, I judged that using a stick weld would add far too much metal and need grinding away afterwards to tidy it up leaving iron filings all over the place to rust. It would also be very difficult to wield the stick in such a confined space above the boiler. So I decided to use a TIG torch.

It was still not an easy task as, not only did I have to get the welder in the cab but an Argon gas bottle as well. There really is very little space in this cab!

It was a good decision, however, as the top photo shows.