FN16 Front Turret

Work is steadily progessing on our FN16 front turret.  We have a stripped out FN16 turret which was rescued from a scrapyard sometime ago and was acquired after a gruelling three year hunt for a suitable trade.  This is a very rare turret - the only other known example is a turret base complete with most of the internals in Canada. Below are some restored components for the turret.

Turret ring cross member (one of a pair).

New bearings for the turret ring.  The turret ring has 16 of these bearings which take the weight of the turret.

The front gunners seat.  Some examples had a padded cushion fitted which this one lacks.

Vickers K gun mounting.  This is a large and complex casting.

One major task will be getting the canopy glazing reblown.  To achieve this goal, we will need to make a mould to form the perspex.  Although our turret was stripped almost bare, we have been able to find many of the missing components at Whitley crash sites.  The first of these items - the vertical steel tubes that support the hydaulic services union above the gunners head were too badly damaged to use in the rebuild but have given parts and acted as excellent patterns.

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