I have finally made a start on Kit 12. I forgot to check the box at Polly and left the fixtures behind so contented myself last weekend by cleaning up the water tank.

The tank is silver soldered and is supplied “as-is”. This means you need to clean it up and remove any stray solder and file down a few screw heads that are used in the fabrication. So out with my trusty Bahco files and emery cloth. Polly suggest using a flap wheel but I am a bit cautious with power tools so preferred to do the work by hand.

Over the week since I started I think I have spent about 6 hours on the tank.

Here are some photos of it in various states and finally the finished article.

Or should I say nearly finished article. I need to fill a few screw slots with JB Weld and sand them back. The eagle-eyed will spot that I have used some JB Weld on the bottom screw in the photo and to fill a slight flat spot around the screw. Once painted it will look good.

I then moved on to test fit the cab and encountered my first real build glitch.

You can see in the photo that the reach rod from the reverser is nowhere near the cutout in the cab. I had followed the instructions and the drawings, so what has gone wrong? A call or two to Polly and it transpires that I had used the Polly III drawings which have the reach rod on the inside of the pole but for Trojan and Molly Ann it should go on the outside. It was a bit a of pain to swap it over but I got there in the end and have re-bent it to work from the new side. Sadly in all this, fitting and testing again the rod paintwork has been scratched so I will sand it back and give it a new coat once we have rechecked the timing etc on air and while the rest of the metalwork is at the painter.

Finally, at the end of the week the fixtures arrived so I was able to start on Kit 12 in the right order. The first item to fit was the hand water pump bracket and the pump. I really struggled with the bracket to start with until I realised I was trying to put it in upside down! Correctly aligned it went in fine albeit that the screws from the outside of the frame are partially obscured by the brake system. I will suggest to Polly that the bracket should be in Kit 1 as it would be way easier to fit as part of building the frames.

I will move on to the cab over the coming days, but I have a sailing trip coming up so it might be a week or so before I post again.