LF's First 4mm Scale Semaphore Kit

Right, MSE's LMS 4mm scale tubular post upper quadrant semaphore signal kit. (What a mouthful!)

Complete set of parts as delivered showing fret, ladder, wires, tubes, white metal castings, lens glazing and a base plate.



Following perusal of instructions I strated on the arm by burnishing both sides of the fret parts with the fibre glass burnisher (NOTE: the fibres are dangerous and will end up in your skin like splinters and are incredibly difficult to see or remove. Parts can be burnished under running water or I found food preparation gloves made from PVC not latex gave excellent protection without loss of dexterity as most actions involve the use of tweezers, pliars or soldering iron anyway)



You can see the two parts that were removed from the fret. Before removal I brushed a little flux onto the back of the arm and the front of the spectacle plate and applied a toush of the solder to the clean iron tip. Then touched the tip to the spec plat and this instantly put a thin veneer of solder in the triangular pice of the spec plate. Position the blade ontop and apply the soldering iron tip to the front and it melts the solder between the two bits making a hot solder sandwich and ruslts in a finished and complete blade and spec plate as shown.



Before moving the spec plate from the fret I drilled out the spindle hole to 0.8mm with a pin vice and appropriate size drill. If people are interested I am happy to show the tools that I used too. The other hole to drill out is the very scary 0.4mm hole that the operating wire connects to up in the far right corner of the spec plate. This I did in three steps using a 0.3, 0.35 and finally an 0.4mm drill to open this out without breaking the fret.

Once opened out you can solder in a spindle from some supplied 0.8mm wire. I drilled an 0.8mm hole in the pice of timber you see and stuck the wire in it. Then threaded on the spec plate and made the soldered connection from behind. Snipped off the spindle protruding through the front and filed with an emery board (wife's nail file type).



After that I cut the post and butt to size from the 2mm and 2.5mm brass tube respectively. I have chosen to model a 16' Starter and a table of sizes and scale lengths is included in the kit which I used to size the lengths. I cut the tube with my Xuron track cutters as I don't have a minidrill or Dremel type of tool, nor a razor saw for that matter! Will get there later I guess, maybe fathers' day perhaps. The track cutter worked well, very slight ovalation of the cut which was easily rectified by using the correct sized drill that match both tubes internal bore and thus reamed out the tubes ever so slightly.