At the moment I’ve varnishing the deck of the cardboard boat. This isn’t the most interesting subject in the world for a blog post though so I decided to dip into my special reserve supply of photos and post a useful tip.
When painting a locomotive chassis, you must remember to rotate the wheels occasionally to get the rods clear of the brakes and to avoid a clean “shadow” where they cover the spokes. Ideally you would put some power through the mechanism to do this but with paint on the treads this isn’t always convenient. It can also be awkward to turn the wheels the quarter turn needed – they will tend to rotate rather more if everything is working !
My trick is to use a pin vice on the rear shaft, or leftover rear shaft, of the motor. Most locos allow you to leave quite a bit sticking out of the back. This ought to be more than enough to get the vice on.
A handy side effect is that rotating the motor in the way shows up any tight spots in the chassis. Not that there should be any at this point of course…
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