I breathed a sigh of relief as I finished tapping the last Panther wheel hub this evening; this to allow attaching the hub caps I described in my previous post. 128 0-80 holes threaded on 16 wheel assemblies and I never broke a tap; I did manage to break 2 1.2mm drills but fortunately these were removable and caused no issues. I used a 1.2mm drill for the tap drill as it is .001" larger than the specified # drill for a 0-80 thread. My thinking was that I didn't need a full depth thread for what the purpose is.
Anyway this is the second time I've run the gauntlet for this work- I did it before on my JagdPanther some years ago. It is tedious, stressful and I'm going to try my best never to do this again! At least not with such tiny screws and taps. Sad thing is once it's painted no one will likely ever see it. I chose to use screws to hold these in place as gluing never really works for me and if there's any maintenance to be done this will help that.
Jerry
