“So, what shall we do with this fire extinguisher ?”. This was my friend Alessandro yesterday during a phone call, he’s also working on a Challenge. In five minutes we declared that the kit part is horrible and there are no offers from the aftermarket…
When I saw the F1-2000 progress from Mr. Kamimura, last year, I’ve been impressed, among the other things, how he scratchbuilt from bare aluminium rod, some fire bottles using a motortool. Hmmm…
So I bought 1 meter of alu rod dia. .23”/6mm and cut in pieces (1.55”/40mm). A drill, a file and sandpaper
To avoid surface damages, I wrapped some styrene around the rod and fixed in the drill. At a rather high speed I started filing the rod to obtain a perpendicular cut. Then with the file again I gave to the rod a little rounded shape. I refined it with sandpaper #150, #600 and #1000. And this is the first side of the bottle
I traced the length (a little more) where to cut the rod
and started cutting
At this stage, I removed the unnecessary piece from the drill and installed what will be the bottle with the finished side in the drill, always protected by the styrene
and repeated the same filing procedure above described
and this is the result
Using the kit part as reference, I drilled out two holes .051”/1.3mm on the bottle
and some cable terminals (is it the right word ?) to detail the bottle have been used
These small pipes have been hammered on the bottle
Strap, caps and cable will added for further detailing. Despite this part will be almost hidden once installed, I’m really pleased with the result, considering that it was my first attempt on such topic.
Many, many thanks for your kind words. Also thanks for looking.
Bye: Robi
