Just had a chance to rebuild this gearbox as I had an hour free in work, better light ,phones off and warm so had some piece and started.
I refitted the cam plate and plunger at neutral and decided to check the movement of the gear dogs when fitted on there shaft and into the plate .With the plunger backed right off it was easy to turn the c/plate and watch the movement of the dogs . they moved nice and smoothly and the plunger held the gears as intended , a few mins of checking that helped clarify the refitting of layshaft and mainshaft plus dogs which followed and was done ,using the elastic band method someone mentioned before ,don't like tempting fate but it was easy ,better still I was rewarded with a really crisp click when I'd fitted the outer cover /gearchange arm .
To our more competant engineers a question ,when BSA were machining the camplates back in the 40's/50's they didn't have computer controlled machines so what method did the use to produce such accurate tracks in the camplate , cheers Bob