Well, I have been in France for the past week and - despite having a lot of other stuff to do - managed some progress on the Dual Dragon.
The top of the cabinet needed to be reinforced, so I went for some thick plywood. I have noticed that some of the plywood they sell in France has a nice dark reddish veneer on it and - unlike the stuff they sell in the UK - looks pretty presentable as it is. So, I had a bit of that cut to size. While I was in the shop, I had an eye out for some beading to hide the edge of the plywood. Imagine my delight when I found some chunky, serrated strips of beech which look exactly like the spiny ridge that runs the full length of a dragon's back - you know, these spikes that dig into your butt when you're riding a dragon on some quest or to rescue a damsel from the top of a tower. They also happened to be exactly the same width as the edge of the plywood. I have never seen these in the UK:
I gave the plywood three coats of super-hard water-based varnish and - staying with chunky - fixed it to the top of the cabinet with hex-head coach screws before attaching the beading with round-headed brass screws. The whole thing looks a bit 'new' but I think it will tone down once it has been subjected to wear, tear, cutting oil and general machining grime:
Next, the pillar which will support the motor and drive system. This is a massive piece of oak that was one of the vertical supports for a dilapidated outbuilding that I demolished a couple of years ago. The bottom end of it had been soaked in water for quite some time as the building deteriorated, and the wood had rotted a bit and split because of that. However, the wood is fundamentally sound, heavy and hard. I dug out the rot and took it back to healthy wood. The split end will be the top of the drive support pillar because IMHO it looks good and funky and will be seen (whereas the bottom end will be hidden by the cabinet):
I then planed and sanded the pillar (not too fussily, you understand), treated it with xylophene just to be on the safe side, gave it three coats of beeswax and buffed it up. The result is a lovely nut-brown satiny sheen:
And now to the machines. The antique Swiss seven-headed machine has had a brown colour to it since I first bought it. Because of this I thought that much of it was made of bronze. However, it's actually a finely textured layer of superficial rust. Some tentative experimentation with WD-40 and Scotch-brite revealed that the machine is made of some kind of silvery steel (I'm no metallurgist). See the spindles nearest the camera:
It seems to me that in time, and with patience, it might be possible to achieve the kind of finish that can be seen on
this beauty. It will certainly be worth the effort as the seven-headed machine is exquisitely engineered - real Swiss quality.
Meanwhile, it would seem unfair to post a picture of one of the machines without posting one of the other, so in the interests of even-handedness here is a recent photo of the Burke No.0:
So, to get an initial sense of what the Dual Dragon will look like when it's done, I sat both machines on the cabinet and propped the pillar up behind them, all in roughly the right positions:
I may move the whole thing in due course so that I can bolt the top of the pillar to one of the oak roof trusses for extra stability.
And that, guys, is as far as I got this week. At this point I'm looking to use a three-phase motor and variable speed control. However, I'm going back to Guernsey tomorrow and won't be coming back to France until April or May next year, so nothing will happen until then. This is not short-term stuff...