Still working away at adding details to the left hand side of the loco (although, I have added the solid blocks to the base of the firebox on either side).
After much fiddling to get the vacuum ejector pipe to sit horizontal I got there and it’s now fixed in place. As happens sometimes. I spent some time making the very visible pipe flanges that are fitted to the lower section of the vacuum pipe just above the footplate.
The best of these were soldered together in pairs and one pair fitted to the pipe. Then of course I discovered a pair of nice castings on a spru so my homemade ones are consigned to the spares box for now.
It was also kindly and discretely, pointed out that I had the dome on back to front. Which, was accompanied by a clear explanation of why it was thought to be so. As I read it, it made perfect sense and I could see clearly why it was on back to front. Life got in the way and I was unable to do anything in the workshop on Wednesday but I awoke early yesterday with my mind working on how I might safely remove the dome. I’d run elaborate scenarios of using the microflame while wrapping vulnerable bits in wet tissue ad using various items as heat sinks etc.
When I got into the workshop after breakfast I looked and realised that although I had fixed the boiler in place and removing it although not impossible would require undoing and refitting a number of parts. I could in fact get my low melt soldering iron into the base of the dome via the opening in the base of the firebox.
Then it was a relatively simple matter of starting to ease it off with my nails while heating the underside with the iron then once i had it move enough I used a pair of wooden coffee stirrers as pry bars to ease it off the rest of the way without damaging either the casting or the boiler. it was one of those situations where another couple of hands would have been helpful but I managed.
Oh what a few years of experience brings. Back when I started this build, if someone had told me then that I had the dome on the wrong way around. I would never have had the courage to remove and refit the dome and at that point the boiler was a separate entity.
As a small side note not long after the Finney7 team took over the range I bought a set of etched pipe clips (a side product from the Duchess kit) and this is the first time I’ve remembered to use them. Of course as soon as I touched the first one after thinking it was fixed in place, it pinged off, never to be seen again.
After a reply from a gent who knows much more about the real thing than I do, my life was made easier when he said that the smaller pipe didn’t actually feed into the down vacuum pipe put was clipped to the back of it. This saved another delicate 0.4mm drilling job.
It’s not exactly clipped but it’s out of sight behind the vacuum pipe when fitted so well hidden.
The observant amongst you will note, that the small pipe at the smokbox end was a casualty of my ministrations. So that will need reattaching.
Also, since the photos were taken I have shortened the union at the rear of the vacuum ejector which holds the pipe that goes into the cab. It’s now more ‘nut’ like… Plus I’ve cleaned up much of the excess solder even though it’s out of sight.
One of those jobs that I thought might take a bit of time and effort, actually went quite smoothly. Aside from a few minor adjustments and having to add a top piece to the two front backing plates because they were not included on the etch and there was quite a big gap above them which needed filling easily made from scrap etch, bent and then cut of with the guillotine.
Probably not the clearest in these photos but I also fitted the top feed pipes and the small casting and associated pipework to the smokebox.
Having got the steam pipes in, I decided to work my way down one side at a time with the detailing. The vacuum ejector looked like it was going to be fun so yesterday I made start on that.
The elbow casting is provided in the kit but no provision is made for the small pipe and it’s connector nut that comes out of the bottom of the elbow. A 0.4mm hole was drilled and some 28 gauge brass beading wire soldered in. With a slice of tube filed to a hex to represent the nut.
Then came the pipe clamps. There isn’t any provision for this in the kit so I made some ‘split pins’ from 0.8mm half round brass wire and another slice of slightly thicker tube to create the flange.
Next is the ejector itself. The casting as you might expect comes devoid of pipework so more 0.4mm holes ensued pipes again made from 28 gauge beading wire and another length of microbore tube. This was cross drilled on one side to take the vertical pipes. I still need to drill the thicker down pipe to accept the horizontal pipe but first I need to make sure that it fits to the footplate and is bent in the right planes. There is also another pipe to fit to the rear of the ejector casting that goes into the cab.
In my last post I forgot to mention that I was having a great deal of trouble getting the steam pipes to sit and stay in the correct position for soldering. In the end after a bit of careful measurement I turned a small steel button.
This was to fit on my wooden cradle, under the base of the steam pipes and just protruding past the first layer of etch to allow the steam pipes to sit as desired. It certainly made the job much easier.
Having had a short break from loco building while finishing and painting the Bolster wagons and putting together the 3D cranes. Yesterday I fitted the horn guides and front frame spacer to the N10 and today I fitted the steam pipes and worked out where the holes for the sand box fillers need to to be made in the filler backing plates for the 8F.
No photos of the N10 yet but I have some of the steam pipes on the 8F
I took a close up of the ‘woodgrain’ and rust on of the bolster wagons in response to a comment received on another forum and I thought that I would share it.
It’s certainly the best result that I have ever achieved when painting brass or styrene to look like wood.
Before fitting them, I painted the jib(s) wood coloured again using a mixture of Vallejo Woodgrain and Burnt Umber this time over a red oxide primer which gave a very nice looking result. This is one application where small visible layer lines actually add rather than detract from the overall finish
So much so that people who have seen and handled the jib thought it was a piece of wood.
I still have to fit the yard Crane jib, but it’s painted up ready to fit.
Late last week I managed to get the final bit of paint and the transfers fitted to the bolster wagons.
In my modelling time period these would have been relatively new so I didn’t want the wood finish to be too aged. It took about 6 layers of combinations of Vallejo: Wood Grain, Burnt Umber and Chainmail silver to get a finish I was happy with.
I also added a wash of rust and some graphite from a pencil lead onto the rubbing plates for the bolsters. At the minute I’m undecided as to what if any weathering to apply to the outside of the body and underframes. So I will delay fitting my load (a tree trunk aka a thickish twig from the garden)
I thought that I had sent the stl files for the yard/floor mounted version of the crane to my friend for printing but I hadn’t so I duly sent them through. However I made a complete horlicks of the amount of rollers/spacers required so I had to turn the missing ones for myself.
The top one I turned from a wooden garden stake/plant support stick. The other two cream coloured ones were turned from old knitting needles.
These are the same views after I had primed the crane with Vallejo German Red Brown Primer
Last year I designed mobile and static versions of a 5 Ton Hand Crane mainly to try out animation to see if I could make the gears work on a design. I hadn’t really thought too much about having it printed but a friend offered to print it for me if I created STL files.
He printed them recently and yesterday I made a start on assembling the Mobile Crane.This is where I got to having decided to prime when I got this far while I decided on how to depict the the jib. By that I mean raised as if to lift something or lowered as in travelling.. After some thought I realised that the 3D printed clevises wouldn’t support the stays without the slightest movement snapping them off so fully assembled it shall be.
While I was in the mood I got stuck in and masked up the bolster wagons ready for spraying the underframes. I had already sprayed the top coat on the upper bodies on Friday but didn’t take any photos as they looked no different from when they were in primer.
With the solebars being black on these Steel bodied wagons, it made masking up so much easier that wooden bodied vehicles where the sole-bars are body colour and you have to work around brake levers and lever guards etc. when masking.
Speaking of which that’s the next job, as I am also on with painting some NER vehicles for a friend at the same time.
Needing to make a number of hooks for the shackles and the ends of tie down chains I decided to make another jig. Initially I made up a couple of hooks to gauge the length between the bends then I drilled a couple of holes in yet another plug pin and added some piano wire. i confess that I was very sceptical about how well the piano wire would hold up being quite thin at 0.8mm but in practice it’s been more than fine.
Hook Bending Jig
Once I had made a few I cut some lengths of copper coated chain that I had left over from a Connoisseur kit and fitted hooks to each end
Finally I started adding a hook to each end of the shackles. like making up the D links it was another steady but quite therapeutic job.
Now that my Bolster wagons are nearing completion my thoughts turned to loading it and by good fortune my good lady had recently trimmed out apple trees. So I found a couple of stout branches amongst the offcuts which looked like they might make suitable timber loads.
The next thing was how to tie them down and I decided to have a go to see if I could make some screw shackles – think screw couplings without the hook for the vehicle body.
I started by making what I call the trunnions and centre pins lots of small turnings. Some of them were cross drilled using my Proxxon mini pillar drill. The major diameter of the rod is 2mm and to centre the drill on the part, I popped a 2mm drill bit in the chuck upside down and dropped that in between the vice jaws.
I made the bob weights from 1.6mm rod which was turned down to 1mm nominal for the shaft but in hindsight I should have made them a little bit thinner.
I drilled and them cross drilled more 2mm rod to make the bob weight collars but since making these I experimented with making the collar and centre pin as one piece and in future when I make more I shall do that as soldering the bob weight in, and then soldering it central on the shaft was a bit of a pain.
The final piece was a small washer to retain the other trunnion.
And with the obligatory 5p piece for scale. magnified so much the solder looks a bit messy but it’s barely visible at normal viewing distances.
Finally I had to make up the D shackles so I made a bending jog to ensure that they were all pretty much the same size.
D Shackle Bending Jig
The jig is made from another redundant plug pin with holes drilled in to determine the length between bends with short lengths of 0.8mm piano wire loctited in to create the pivot points. The observant amongst you will note that initially I drilled a third hole to insert a tail to start the initial bend but after doing the first one I realised that it was much more efficient to make the first bend with a fine pair of round nosed pliers then placed the formed eye on the jig to bend the other end.
D Shackle
I made four pairs in this session of making them. All that remain are hooks to attach to the chains.
This post is a bit in reverse order of what I’ve been up to in the last week with the latest first because it follows the previous post better.
The chance discovery of a part can of Halfords grey primer in the shed and yesterday’s cold, but dry and windless conditions, had me dig out my outdoor spray booth (aka a big cardboard box that sits on the dustbin) and prime the bolster wagons.
Now the replacement spring has all but disappeared into the background and I suspect if I don’t mention it casual observers will be none the wiser.
Inspired by a friends recent photos of his Connoisseur Bolster wagons I kicked myself up the backside and finished my pair of jim’s bolster wagons that I have been slowly making as a demo piece at shows last year.
As these things go I took the pretty much completed wagons along to show a friend who has recently finished a lowfit and he noted that my axle guards splayed out slightly, which I confess I hadn’t noticed. But as I said to him, I would rather find these things during the construction phase than after painting so I set to and removed one axle guard from each axle choosing to use the unbraked side as being easier to get at. One of the bearings wasn’t seated properly so I deepened the hole. However they still looked splayed out. so I filed the pin points off both ends of the axle. This fixed the problem.
As ever this didn’t go quite as smoothly as I’d hoped as on two of the four axle guards castings that I removed, I did managed to damage them. The first was just one of the spring hangers broke off after I stuck a screw drive under it to prise as I heated up the body to soften the low melt. As luck would have it, when making some different anvils for my Leakey rivet press I had done some test rivet strips and one of those had just the right spacing to make some new hanger brackets from. A short stub of 1.6mm rod in between and we have this.
Sadly on the other one I wasn’t quite so lucky in that in a moment of inattention with the microflame I also melted the spring as well as the hanger. So I set to and made a pair of hangers and the spring to go in between.
On a side note I also fitted the D plates with the microflame. I tinned the backs with 100 degree solder and placed them on the solebar. Then I wafted the flame on it’s lowest setting along the bottom of the sole bar until I noted the D plate starting to settle then I took the heat away.
Needing something to store my newly constructed Finger plate in. I initially looked at wooden boxes sold by “The Works” (after a recommendation by a fellow Guild member). However when I looked at them, they may well be good for storing rolling stock in which is what the recommendation was for, but they are far too flimsy to store reasonably heavy tools in.
Chris took it upon herself to look for alternatives and found some on Amazon. Although they offered a 20% discount if you bought five, I opted to buy one at £6.99 to see what they were like.
The box arrived today and I have to say that I was impressed. They were £2 more than those at The Works which had actually been reduced from £6.99 to £5 but they are much more substantial. I cut some foam to create some packing around the finger plate. It’s a little too short in height to hold it with the jack screw fitted but that’s not the end of the world.
I have done further trials with my Vallejo Old Gold paint mixed 2/3 -1/3 with Vallejo Natural Steel then let down for spraying with Johnsons Klear.
In the first two photos I used the same brass safety valve cover as a comparison piece but realised after taking the photos that the brass had tarnished slightly in the intervening time since I did the last comparison.
I used an image editor (Picasa 3) to add some contrast to the same image.
Then I took another photo after polishing up the brass valve cover again so the comparison is more like for like than the first photo.
And again with a some contrast added
Brass Paint Comparision
I have reached the conclusion that it is possible with good preparation of the whitemetal casting to make a decent fist of painting it with brass paint as long as there is no actual brass in close proximity to allow a direct comparison. I thought that I would pain the dome too to see what a difference a bigger subject made and while it looks okay to use it in practice I would need to fill some holes in the rear of the casting that you cannot see in the images.
Back in 2023 when I was restoring the Moore And Wright Scribing Block there was a discussion on one of the forums which went along the lines of “you cannot have too many toolmakers or engineers clamps” At the time I had 3 sets that were cheapo imports. Since then I have added another single 2″ Eclipse example to the collection but I was also thinking about a pair that could be used for holding parts for soldering without going rusty.
I happened to have a length of 1/2″ square brass bar that I’d had for a number of years without having a use for it. A quick measure up worked out that I could get two pairs of jaws from it so in the intervening 3 years I have been slowly building a pair. I made the screws from stainless M6 threaded rod and the knobs and nuts were made from 10mm nickel bar.
They have been substantially made for quite some time and really only needed the angles putting on the jaws and some way of retaining the nuts in the absence of having any spring steel. In the end I milled some flat brass bar to fit around a slot cut in the lower section of the nut.
Shop Made Brass Toolmaker’s Clamps
Now all that remains is to loctite the knobs on he ends of the threaded rod and put some on the bottom of the threaded rod where it screws into the front lower jaw.
Since buying and later modifying a tap follower back in 2023 I have used it many times and I wouldn’t be without it. However one thing about it is a bit of a pain, or perhaps I am just bit lazy. That is swapping the piston over end for end depending on whether my tap has a point or a dimple.
As a rule of thumb most of the bigger size taps have dimples whereas the smaller sized ones tend to have a point or at least a tapered end.
To get around this I dedided to make a second smaller tap follower with lighter springing that could be dedicated to the smaller taps that I seem to use a lot.
I decided to make it from a couple of pieces of rod recovered from a printer drum unit. The main barrel being 8mm in diameter which will fit in all my Jacobs drill chucks without issue and the piiston end made from some 5mm rod, again from the drum unit.
Springs from my spares box and an M6 grub screw and away I went.
I chose M6 because the tapping size is 5mm which meant that my piston could be a 5mm rod with the end turned down to pass through a smaller hole in the end. So it was a case of drilling the main body 4.8 mm and then reaming to 5mm with a 2.9mm hole in the other end reamed to 3mm. Sadly all didn’t go as planned because in a moment of inattention I broke my 3mm reamer in the hole. After trying a couple of pins to knock it out and a 3mm carbide end mill I turned a little off the length until I exposed the broren end of the reamer then using my vice as a press I managed to push it part way through. Then I found in my bits box a short length of rod with a smaller stub which fitted in the 3mm hole. Using this as a drift I managed to push the reamer a little further in, then I turned the small stub end a little longer and repeated the process it took turning 3 more sections down before the reamer popped out. Then I ran another 3mm end mill through the hole to tidy it up and get it concentric before finally turning the small end of the piston to be a tight but sliding fit in the hole.
A fun little project that had I not broken the reamer would have only taken an hour or so. I’m sure that it will see much use in the future
