All the while I was making the wheels I was looking at the front forks, and in particualar the gaiters, and getting less and less satisfied with them. I decided to look at how they would ideally fit together by measuring up the parts and constructing a side view.
The result is on the left. In each corrugation, only the lower half fits to the inner vertical tube, the upper part having a much larger hole and mating with the lower half of the piece above. As a result, even tiny errors in assembly of the two halves lead to magnified wonkiness in the outer rim. Some years ago I made the Serow 225 model from
Eastern's Toy-box which had a similar feature, with rather more satisfactory results. The difference there is that the segments all have the same internal diameter, and fit over a rather larger internal sleeve which positions them rather more positively. I decided to take this approach, and redrew things appropriately, as on the right above. The additional sleeve is shown in yellow in this view. I also took the opportunity to even up the spacing and the taper at the bottom end.
I think it was worth it, though it was hard to throw away all that work on the originals! At least I was able to salvage the tapered upper sleeves and yokes and reuse them (after the photo was taken).