With an hour or so to spare, I went to the workshop to finish putting the tank on the Huntmaster. Bolting it down was no problem but I noticed a drip from the tap. The plunger was very loose and I imagined the cork might have dried out since it had been empty for quite a long time. I was wrong about that - the cork was just knackered.
Fortunately I have quite a lot of spare plungers knocking about and I found one with a good cork that I could plug the tap with whilst I repaired the original. It's the usual drill here with these post -war taps - you knock out the brass centre using a punch, replace the cork with a new one, and put the centre back in. In taps where you have to twist the plunger, the centre is actually formed as a square at the outer end and there wasn't sufficient material left here to re-peen the brass end into the chrome handle. I filed the end back a little bit to give me more length and used to centre punch to peen it into place:
The next job had been coming for a while. The chrome strip which hides the welds on the top of the tank broke at the hook holding it onto the end of the tank. I toyed with the idea of buying a new one for a while and then realised as it was brass I could probably make new hook, soldering it in place of the old one.
I made a new one and used some solder paste to tin both the strip and the new hook adding some extra solder to it once tinned.
I held it in place with some clamps whilst I sweated the joint together.
That worked really well, and is more secure than it has ever been.
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