The Cradle Dec 03 (E Wksp)

The Christmas break gave us the opportunity to crack on with finishing the Searchlight cradle. The first job was to sort out the gearing and chains this was a job that Andy was able to take on while we worked on getting the cradle ready. I took the elevation housing pillar around to Paul's and he was able to sand blast it for us. All cleaned up it was given an undercoat of aluminium primer ready to reassemble. The upper chain was fitted into the housing along with the upper elevation cog and trunion bearings before it was assembled on to the cradle. With the elevation pillar now fitted we could fit both the top and bottom sets of gears and chain them together.
         
   
The Upper elevation gears ready for re-fitting   Inside the cradle showing both sets of gears fitted   The Elevation side with the gear chains fitted
 
   
The Elevation side awaiting a second coat of paint and plates fitted   The Elevation side awaiting the final plates fitted   The Bottom Gears trough the inspection Hatch
Click on photos for a better view
The fitting of the chains was a little harder than we expected as there is no way of mechanically taking up the slack in the main chain. But there is plenty of slack to move the upper gearbox up and down using shims and it was not long before we had all the chains and gears running smoothly. With the Gearing complete I was able to fit all the plates and finish the elevation side at leased for now. We now started work on the Left side Electrical Box Pillar at the start this was a little easy just the wire brush on the small grinder and we where away it was only when it came to drilling out the studs did I have a problem five broken drill bits of problems but we cot there in the end.  We then fitted the trunion bearing and it was ready for fitting. There is a lot left to fit in the Electrical Box but we will be dealing with that at a later date it was now ready for the Barrel.
         
   
The Elevation side Completed   Andy starts work on the Electrical Pillar   All cleaned and ready for painting
 
         
 
   
The Electrical Pillar with trunions bearings fitted   The Pillar Fitted   The Cradle ready for the Barrel