The things you do to keep out of mischief.....

[Roger Payne]

Earlier today I was going through the saved photo's on my phone, deleting as many as possible to free up space. I found a few that I'd taken a couple of years ago during one of the lockdowns when I'd busied myself in the garage workshop. I thought they might be of interest to a few others just as nerdy as me. In the batch of ex-Indian No32's that I bought in 2016 were quite a few that came with brackets. Unfortunately four or five had either one or both of the cradle clamps missing, or in some cases, had had mis-matched top clamps forced onto them. I'd just left them to one side for several years, but as I had plenty of time on my hands & nowhere to go I decided to have a go at making some replacement clamps from scratch, using what tools I had available. A friend in Devizes very kindly put a one inch diameter drill down a length of mild steel rod that I'd bought, & then slit it lengthways to give me two lengths of steel channel like a gutter in section. I cut pieces from this as needed, & the rest I did largely using files & a pillar drill. A specially modified (ground) centre drill was used to create the holes with the correct angle of taper for the cradle screws. Anyway, all of the brackets seemed to turn out functional; one even was a very nice REL example.

And it kept me out of my wife's hair for a good few days during lockdown.....