I like big bolts and I cannot lie

 

Melbridge Dock is held together by bolts. 

Eight are used to fix packing boards on to the end of the baseboards, to turn the modelling into a box for transport. 

When the model is set up, four of these hold the boards together, in addition to the loose pin hinges. The other four hold the information boards to the front. 

These bolts are big, chunky things. I know that something about 4BA would do the job, strength isn't an issue. The threads on these are around 1cm wide. Far more metal than is really required. But, my overengineering has a big advantage at the end of the day. Coarse threads are much easier for tired hands to thread. 

So, today's lesson - go for the big bolts. You won't regret it. 

Making Peco OO9 slate wagons go around really tight curves

 

My railway under a cake cover goes down very well at shows. The only whinge is that the Peco tippers are a bit of a fiddle to couple up, as they all have Bemo couplings, and keeping them on the track whilst shoving them hard enough to couple up isn't easy. 

Salvation should have come in the form of the same company's slate wagons. These are designed to be used in rakes. There is a simple loop and pin between each wagon, and you can replace this with a supplied Bemo at the end if you want. 

So, I put them, on the track, and set the loco moving. They fell off. Again, and again. Fortunately, the hoppers ran all weekend perfectly.

Now, the problem with the cake cover railway is that the curves are very tight. I used Peco flexi track, as the set track isn't tight enough to fit. And I bent it around my knee to produce something that would fit. 

Back home, I investigated. Moving the wagons around, it seems my curves are just a little severe for the hook and look couplings. They seem to bind at the extremes. 

So, with nothing to lose, I thinned down the outside of the loop with a fine abrasive. Not a lot, just enough for the coupling to work more loosely. At the same time, I gently carved out a little material from the inside of the loop with a sharp knife. The amount removed was tiny, I'd guess less than 0.1mm, but it seemed to do the job. The hook ran much more smoothly around in the loop. 

The results were good, but not perfect. But, these are very light wagons, so I cut some bits of lead flashing so they fitted in the bottom, and allowed the plastic slate load to fit over the top. 

Result - wagons that would now follow bit the diesel and Hunslet around the model reliably for five minutes. 

Final job, hack away the box insert so the wagons can go in with the Bemo fitted. Really Peco, you might have done that bit... 

 

A Gu desert pot comes in handy, again...

 

With everything painted, it's time for assembly. Wheels slide on to the axles, followed by the axleboxes. These locate into slots moulded in the bottom of the chassis. It's pretty much idiot-proof. 

I've fitted the nails in the end for the couplings, and of course this means that you can't sit the chassis upside down for setting the gauge. 

Not to worry, one of these handy Gu desert pots, as seen on The Repair Shop, is just the right size to support it!

The perils of buying second-hand steam locomotives

 

My plan for the club steam day, had been to take two locos along. The Garden Rail Peckett and my Regner Willi. 

In preperation, because it hadn't run for a while, I took Willi down to the club for a quick spin. Chatting to the organiser, there was a problem. While I might be happy with my little vertical boiler machine, when I bought it second-hand, I didn't get the all-important boiler certificate. 

Not certificate, no running. Especially on public days. 

This isn't unreasonable. We've just had to cetificate all the boats for insurance purposes. On a public track therefore, proving that your chuffer isn't going to explode is fair enough. 

Of course, there's no time to get a certificate before Sunday, not helped by a pressure gauge that doesn't drop to zero. Yes, it goes up when the model is working, but you don't pass a test without a properly working gauge. 

This is a new problem, and one I'll need to attend to. Maybe there is a way to adjust these things, or I'll just have to buy a new gauge. At least access to change it is excellent!

So, if you buy a second-hand model, make sure you get a boiler certificate, or at least be aware you'll likely need to do something about it in the future. 

Anyway, I was allowed on the track during the evening. Five minutes to make a complete circuit!

Roof rolling

 

 

Nice thick plastic sheet is included for the roof, but in the past I've found that simply bending it on the model produces a dip in the centre, if a full set of internal ribs aren't fitted. 

However, if the roof is rolled back and forth in the rolling bars, it takes a pretty perfect curve, and is simple enough to glue in place with more Speedbond. 

I'm quite pleased with this trick, and will definitly be using it in the future.

Wheel cleaning

 

After all the spraying, including a coat of varnish to seal in the transfers, the wheels were pretty filthy. Time for cleanup, which turned out to be easier than expected. 

Step one: Using a cotton bug, wipe nail varnish remover on the treads and flanges. This removes a lot of muck, but dries super-fast leaving a smear. 

Step two: Polish the smear away with a fibreglass pencil. I was pleasently surprised how fast the metal shone through. 

Nice for something to go well, although I don't like the smell much!

SAR boat on the water

 

Batteries charged, it's time to take the pilot boat to the lake and see how it handles. First though, I tie the superstructure to the hull with a length of wire. It's held in place with magnets, which seems pretty good, but I prefer this belt and braces approach on all my models. If the top comes off, you can always tow it home. 

Fired up, the boat actually works. 

But not very fast, or for very long. It moves OK, but not as rapidly as I'd have hoped. Worse, the duration was about 5 minute sfrom one pack and 3ish from the other. OK, neither pack might not have taken a brilliant charge, but I need to look at this. 

The battery pack used is a six-cell (7.2v) 2000mAh Ni-MH set and I think the solution will be more volts and more amps.Looking at the maximum capacity of the speed control, we could be good for twice as many cells, so a bit more omph should up the top speed. 

However, I'm wondering if it's time to take the dive into a LiPo battery for this boat. More power for less weight is very appealing, but I've always fought shy of them. Techincal and possible to explode, neither appeals much.

The one-minute model boat stand

 

When working on a model boat, having the thing rocking around on the workbench is a bit of a nuisance. The correct thing to do, is build a proper stand for it to sit in. 

It might be the "correct" thing to do, but I want to get this boat on the water to make sure I haven't bought a lemon, and wooden stands take time. 

Then I spotted a piece of polystyrene left over from another project. It looked about the right size, so I cut a quick channel down it with a craft knife, and there we have it. A servicable model boat stand!

Of course, clearing up the little white balls will take longer than a minute...

Super fast flagstone painting

 

My current mag project has a very tight dealine, so I've been using plenty of quick'n'dirty techniques in order to get it out of the door. 

One that I was especially pleased with came about by accident - I had some laser-cut MDF flagstones to paint and having undercoated them with Johnstone's Mocha emulsion paint, dabbed the still tacky surface with Toasted Beige from the same range, applied with a sponge. 

Result - a realistic (to my eyes) finish, all achieve in a matter of seconds! It took me longer to write this post telling you about it then it took to do.

Dirt stops solder - deliberatly

Time for a job I don't enjoy, soldering the washers on to the crank pins to hold the rods in place. It's one of those jobs where everything can go wrong, and you end up with a lump rather than a collection of moving parts. 

My solution is to put permanent marker everywhere I don't want the solder to go. Since the stuff will only stick to clean metal, in theory (and practise I'm pleased to say) it won't stick to the penned up bits. 

As an extra precaution, some light oil floods the crank pin hole in the rod. This is the old skool way of doing things, but I'm always concerned that the heat of the iron will boil off the liquid and let the solder do its worse. 

Anyway, in the photo, you can see the true horror of the over-large holes in the rods, but as the chassis works fine, I don't care how much it annoys proper engineers, I'm not bushing them. 

Another handy hind, ignore the washers provided with Romford crank pins, you only end up filing them much thinner, just use some 10BA brass washers and save some effort.

Rescuing brass parts superglued together

 

Look at this photo. What have I done wrong? 

Yes. Yet again, I've but the signal levers in their frames back to front. The hand grabs should be facing away from the signalman, and if the majority of the levers are off, as they should be, then I have them on the wrong side. You can tell that it's taken me a long while to spot this as they are at the painting stage. 

Now, I could ignore this, but since it's for a mag feature where I need to take close-up photos, the error had to be fixed. 

 

 

Assembly was with superglue, and it had set hard. With nothing to lose, I stuck them in a small jam jar with Zap superglue debonder on all the joins. These were left overnight to let the chemicals do thier job. 

 

 

In the morning, a little waggling released all the parts. Next, they parts had a batch in cellulose thinners to remove paint and glue. The remaining adhesive had turned to a rubbery substance a bit like a stiff Prit-stick. I picked this off using tweezers, and the result was a kit, ready for me to build all over again. 

 

This time, I paid attention and put them together properly. I'm pleased the debonder worked as well as it did. My fall-back was to take the levers outside and heat them up with a gas torch. However, doing that releases some rather nasty chemicals, so it's not an appealing choice. 

Brickwork patching

 I love working with styrene - it's so forgiving. There aren't many materials that allow you to make invisible joins in so easily. 

 

 

The design of the South Eastern Finecast arches combined with the way I've used them on Selly Oak lets the end of one arch be visible where I don't want it. 

 

 

The bricks are laminated to a 2mm thick backing sheet using Limonine solvent. To hide the end of the arch, I carefully cut out a section of bricks and a matching strip from a plain sheet. Then the whole are is washed with Mek-Pak. 

 

 

The strip is them shoved hard into the gap after making sure the bonds line up. It's important to push it in properly because the two plastic pieces will be slightly soft thanks to the solvent. Done right, the plastic will bond and leave no gap. A wash of solvent over the surface and apart from a slight shine, which will be covered with paint, the bodge will be invisible.

Gluing brass to wood

My dad is hard at work building the Hachette Hood partwork. There's an awful lot of really nice etched brass to cover the superstructure but the instructions are a bit light on suggestions for the best adhesive to use.

We've been trying a few tests with various glues using offcuts of both brass and plywood. The best bet seems to be UHU Power all-purpose glue. Used as a contact adhesive (spread on both parts, let it go tacky) the brass is very firmly fixed in place. Pulling the test parts we couldn't remove it once the glue was fully dry.

It's a nice thin bond too. Ideal for the job where you don't want lumpy glue messing the lines up.

Bargain eye protection

When doing anything involving a cutting disk on camera, I feel I should say something about wearing eye protection. Those disks will shatter and fly off in all directions no matter how carefully you use them and while I've been lucky so far, a face full of cutting disk chunks isn't funny. 

As a glasses wearer, I'm a little more protected than someone with 20:20 vision, but even if I don't care about my health, it wouldn't be hard to scratch a lens requiring a pricey bill for a replacement. 

On camera, of course, I want to look good (!) so those rubbery goggles aren't going to cut it. No, I need something sleek and here we have the latest in fashionable eye protection - a pair of Overspecs from Screwfix. 

Price? 

£1.39. Cheap enough I can afford to leave them lying around to get lost. Which is what happened to my last pair...

Cleaning track in a tunnel

A recent magazine project involved me building a layout with a tunnel. After construction had finished, the track needed a bit of a polish, but there was no chance of my hands fitting through the tunnel mouths.

The solution was to take a Double O Gauge Association track rubber and stick it in a long clamp used for model boat building. The resulting rubber on an arm was more than long enough to do the job.

In the past, I've glued one of these rubbers to a length of brass for working under the Hellingly Hospital Railway overhead wires. Needless to say, I can't find that device now...

Setting up a Hobby Holidays chassis jig

Clever people don't need jigs to set up a chassis. I can do it, but as I own the tool, why wouldn't use it? 

One issue I did remember from the dim and distant times when I last did this is that the otherwise excellent Hobby Holidays chassis jig uses 1.5mm diameter ends on the supports, and the holes in my con-rods are 1mm. 

I think in the past I've just judged it by eye. This time inspiration made me use the rods to drill 1mm holes in a piece of 2mm thick Plastikard. These were then opened out to 1.5mm and used to set the spacing on the jig. 

I'm quite pleased with this idea. Let's hope it works.

A gentle tap with a big hammer - how does that work?

Writing something a few days ago, I came across this picture and was reminded that I meant to post it here and ask a question.

In the photo, I'm forcing a Wills Cattle Creep wall into a foam baseboard. By gently tapping it with a big hammer several times, I was able to shove it in to the foam without damaging the plastic part and with plenty of control.

Had I used a smaller hammer, I'd have had to whack it hard to get the same effect, smashing the plastic.

The question: Why is easier to give things a gentle tap with a big hammer than a small one?

Something to do with momentum? I can use the principle, but can't entirely get my head around why it works. That bothers me, which is why I'm asking you.

When's my water set?

On a recent project, I made use of Woodland Scenics "Deep Pour" water system.

It's easy enough to use, mix the two chemicals and pour into the stream or river bed. Leave to dry and the job is done, assuming it hasn't leaked out of course.

The hardest part is stopping yourself prodding the "water" to see if it's set.

By chance, I avoided this. Judging the amount to mix is difficult (OK, there is some maths in the instructions, but it all seemed too complicated to me) so I tend to err on the side of generosity. Better to have some left over then run short.

A flash of inspiration saw the leftovers poured into a little plastic bag. In there, they could set at the same rate as the mix on the layout - but I can poke and prod the bag without risking leaving fingerprints on my stream!

Too much heat!

Or maybe too much haste.

With my holiday looming and a piece on whitemetal soldering to write for Garden Rail, I was cracking on with a loco kit built and had reached that glorious primer stage.

A couple of thin coats of Halfords grey applied, I thought I'd make sure the paint was properly dry with a hairdryer. A little too enthusiastically as it turned out. Blasting away with no thought to the consequences, I managed to get enough heat into the model to soften the low-melt solder.

As you can see, a few bits fell off. And I said some bad words.

Fortunately, all was not lost. I could crop the final photo sufficiently that no-one will ever know. Then I fixed the bits back on later. This time, I didn't try to bake the primer dry...

Cutting foamboard square

For a project, I need to cut some foamboard. It's not a material I use a lot as I've never been happy with the edges I cut. I want square once, but always manage to hold the knife blade at an angle. With the thickness of the board, this looks a bit rubbish.

I know someone will say there is a proper tool for the job, but the only one I have is for 45-degree cuts, and I don't get on with it anyway.

Inspiration struck and I realised if I used a knife with snap-off blades, I could run it along the side of a bit of wood to keep it verticle. OK, the wood will eventually get carved away, but I only needed a few cuts.

For such a low-tech method, it actually worked very well. I don't suppose the cuts are perfect, but that are easily good enough for the job, and that's all I need.