Thankyou Gentlemen. I'm mostly happy with the finished product. The original magnesium casting is more porous than a sponge, and I wasn't able to fill every hole to full satisfaction. It's OK though. Yesterday evening i got the telescope sight holder put on, and what a drama that turned out to be. I got a couple of scratches on both pieces, unfortunately, but only one is highly visible. I'll need to sand that one out and touchup the area. It was such a stupid mistake on my part which led to the damage in the first place. My language after the event was not fit for human ears nor beast. Would have made a wharfie blush, in fact.
I still have a couple more things to work through, and then everything can go back together properly. One of those things is to get the upper dial sight base securing bolt machined. I was very fortunate to get an original donated to me, but the thread on it has been chewed on by someone. Most likely that chap with metal teeth from the James Bond movies, I should expect! I will get the thread lathed off, and a smaller diameter thread put back on. It won't look original though. The perfect repair would be cut the entire thread off, bore a hole, tap a thread in that hole, then make another portion of thread to original size one end and the thread other end to put into the newly bored end of original bolt. In fact, now that I write it, I will get a price for doing that way. I really should get my own lathe. For some reason the local machine engineering shops are hugely expensive. Might get time to look into that tomorrow afternoon.
Wait till ya see what the next little project is. Rob Nixon knows already. Should do, he got me the bits I needed....again.
