Cleaning funnel info?

[Peter Laidler]

Armourers used to have to make one of these as part of their apprenticeship in the days JUST before Carlisle came on stream. But there's more to it than that of course. There always is when you're an apprentice! First, you had to draw it all up as part of your engineering drawing lessons and then trace it out, I think it was a truncated cone of sorts, cut out the parts and sweat it all together during the tin-bashing phase with one of those huge copper soldering irons. We had some other items to make and as always, there was a sting in the tail because as you set about soft soldering the next part along, the previous soldered joint would quickly fall apart due to the heat and so on. So then you designed a small jig to hold it together during the process but........... the jig acted as a heat sink so nothing really went well. I have that period of my apprenticeship to blame for the fact that whenever I solder anything the whole thing is virtually dripping with solder - known as 'snotty joints'. As for bending that xxxxxxx pipe over wood formers............. ! Happy days