the" repilcants !"

some of this stuff is made of "unobtainium"....so, our only recourse is to make the missing bits!

case in point

the scarce non milspc 1930s speedo gage, with the face rusted , we could have tried to weld a small piece of tin...but then

lets just make a new one and add new artwork !

seldom seen...the inside of the HT gages

these need a full resto as well, and I'm happy to say that ive gotten them to function, so now its clean up, rebuild and paint !

its the little things that count !

so, as we are cruising along with the M3 part, we have gone from big armour work to some of the smallest details, such as the instrument cluster rebuild.

these gages are complete "Unicorns" and impossible to replace. Luckily they are in great mechanical shape, so a quick check is in order, then, the application of gage decals to freshen up the sun faded faces!

more on that later, but here are a few inside shots , The gages are inset into the round case in two half moon backing plates , making removal for service "easy" !

when it goes wrong, it goes wrong fast

first, the pics....

Notice the full leather gauntlet, and what's left of the cutting wheel . In this case, I was bolt cutting when the cutting wheel failed....It jumped out of the cut, and ran up my glove, finally grabbing my long sleeve.

I wear these heavy gloves and a tight sweater while working so there are no loose ends...even so, this shows the result of a wheel failure.

This was lucky. I work alone 95% of the time, and all the work planning revolves around safety, it has to, help is just too far away. Each task is planned, tools and secondary safety processes, checked

Luckily, I'm a Fire and Rescue Tech. when I'm not rebuilding armour, so I have the Emergency Medical training to patch myself up, and the right trauma kits , including self use Tourniquets....I got off cheaply this time 

This work can be dangerous in the life altering sense, so lets all learn and make safety job 1!

Winter Soldier

Busy day here getting BOTH AX 160 engines packaged up and sent for rebuild . Frame will be following shortly for blast and paint, then we start adding things back on

so, we had to move the shop around, and the Ferret came out for some fresh -20 C air . You can see a bit of the stunning frost covered surroundings in West Quebec

Front Axle dropped out

well, that's off !

here are few details of the parts that go into the axle mount, note, the angled shim plate. One spring, the drivers side, had stencil on it denoting WHITE HALF TRACK, so, we are curious if this is factory, or wartime replacement, certainly, the recent find of damage in the steering worm makes us wonder .....what happened here ?

we will replicate this stencil when we rebuild the spring pack

Art Shot

Yes, ! its early and not on our normal Friday slot, but we are now getting into a stage of archival batching, artifact identification, cataloguing  and evaluation , so , our posts will be reduced to just a few times per week as we complete this necessary task of this aspect of curatorial work. Once this is complete, then the posts resume in earnest as we rebuild the M3 from the frame up

the artfully cast rear axel drain plug !