I made one of these recently. It was from an old casting from Ivan Law,I think,but I’m sure the new ones are the same. I cut it in half first of all and only gave the back faces a bit of a rub on wet and dry on a flat surface,that’s all it needed.

Then made the hinge using a 1/4” s&f cutter on the vertical mill, cut very nicely,then treated it as one piece. I clamped it to a n angle plate to drill the holes for the fingers,one at a time of course.

I am slowly building one, it’s about number ten in the priority list, getting locos ready for this season is top priority, but I would certainly recommend facing both sides and cleaning up the outer edges before cutting in half. The casting will never be to drawing, it was underside when cast same as the bar stock, mine is all cut dead length or slightly short, I have purchased a fair few Hemmingway kits over the years and the raw material in all of them is short to start with, I put it down to the fact that I live in the south and perhaps our inches are a bit longer than inches north of the M4 motorway. One thing I shall certainly do with my fixed steady is to make some decent adjustment screws, the bit of M6 studding I got in my kit is absolutely disgusting. I shall screwcut some 1/4 dia stainless 26 or 32 tpi, haven’t decided which yet.

I built the Hemingway steady for my 254+ , didn't have any issues apart from as Baz says above the terrible zinc plated M6 studding that was rusty and corroded when I opened the kit. Couldn't believe they would send something like that out, replaced with some M6 stainless studding from Ebay. That aside the steady does work well and the large capacity is a definite plus, used it for the rollers for GHT's bending rolls and it did the job perfectly, also faced off a smokebox tube for a friend that was just within its max capacity, so versatile too.

Edited By Dave Wootton on 13/03/2023 07:42:37