Well I have finally made a prototype and as far as looks are concerned, it looks like it has seen some battles with mutilated limbs and war scars. My intentions were to reproduce the mechanism cover without the top hump and then attach the cannon to the top of the cover. I was not keen on doing the UK version of spray painting the mechanism and leaving bare solenoids in view.
For the cover, I used original Stern cover measurements, minus the top hump, and used light cardboard. I then pasted a gold colour envelope cut out onto the cardboard and then on the left and top pasted an apron card cutout as shown on photo. This was then laminated with 250 micron laminate. This stuff is pretty thick so I ran it through the laminator 4 times untill the apron card colours look vivid.
The laminate was then folded and the screw holes cut out to match the mechanism. As you can see in photos, I used original 4 screws to secure the cover.
The canon underside between the wheels had to be trimmed as this is secured to the modified cover. I also had to reseat the left wheel slightly lower as it was getting stuck to the glass. The rear end of the cannon is totally mutilated on this prototype as I was playing around with best seating position. I will do another one later with all in one piece.
