This last week has been one of those where you don’t really know where the time went and workshop sessions were of short duration. Which for me, isn’t really conductive to problem solving on the 8F although I did manage a little bit of problem solving and moving ahead with it as my last post confirms.

Like many model builders I use a lot of small BA screws which means that I also use small flat headed screwdrivers. For some time for the smaller 10BA/12BA/14BA screws I have relied on a screwdriver from a three piece set which was sold for the repair of spectacles. It consisted of a small flat head, crosspoint and a handle which I assume was designed to be a nut spinner but rather than machined I have a feeling it was cast because the internal hex was oddly shaped and I never found a nut that would fit in it. More on that later.

As I say I mainly use the flat head but I had misplaced it and needing something relatively quick to do I wondered if I might make a replacement from some 2mm silver steel that I have a reasonable stock of (as often happens you plan to buy a length of it but it works out only a little more to buy a pack of five).

Making the blade took about fifteen minutes I held the length of Silver Steel in a square collet block and milled down each side for a short distance to make the blade shape then I heated it to cherry red and dunked it in my olive oil jar before reheating to temper it.

The handle was made from a piece of recycled rod from an old printer. I chose a length which had previously had some plastic gears fitted to it that were held on by splines. I reasoned that the splines would provide grips without further need of any additional work. There was a grooved section in between the splines so I turned a slight taper on the edges to make them more comfortable in the hand and allow me to blue where I had turned it to give a little decoration. All in all it took around half an hour to make both blade and handle.

At this point Chris said that she could do with a replacement screwdriver for her sewing machine so I made a second one but I guesstimated the size a little on the big side so it wouldn’t fit.

It turned out that the first one that I made was perfect for the sewing machine so I gave that one to Chris and kept the chunkier one for my own use – it’s perfect for 6BA or bigger screws.

So then I needed to make another smaller screwdriver for myself to replace the one that gave Chris.

I did things a little different in so much as I put a 5 degree angle block under the collet block ad instead of milling from the side I milled from above this gave me much more control over the final blade thickness at the tip. Using both ends of the bar I made two blades one with a tip thickness of 0.25mm and the other with a thickness of 0.5mm

Using the same splined rod for the handles as the first one albeit that there wasn’t two sets of splines near enough to each other that I had to add a bit of knurling and a few grooves to help with grip again I blued the exposed areas that I had turned as I find that these printer rods rust easily if I don’t blue them.

Finally a couple of days later I made another blade and I drilled out the useless nut spinner mentioned above to make a handle so now I might get some actual use from it after it has sat on my bench for at least 10 years without ever having been used.

Over on Western Thunder a fellow member posted photos of a hand crank that he had made for his lathe and I said that it might make a good side project at some point.

Talking of side projects. I have mentioned a few times that I am using a Spin Indexer to index the gear blanks for cutting.

Most comercial Spin Indexers are made in China and having seen quite a number of videos on the use of, and improvement of them one thing that pretty much everyone comments on is the locking screw which locks the barrel both while indexing and fitting and tightening items in the collet holder. As supplied they come with and aluminum screw which has a nice knurled head but that’s the only good thing that you can say about it.

The fit in the internal thread is so sloppy that I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t getting on for a millimetre of play in the thread. Now most of the videos that I have watched have been Americans and the other thing that they found really frustrating was that they couldn’t work out what thread it was. That’s because it’s an metric M12 x 1.75 thread.

I do have a tap and die for M12 x 1.75 but by good fortune I was recently given a bag of big bolts to use as raw materials and amongst them was a number of M12 coach bolts. I tried screwing one of them into the hole of the Spin indexer and the fit was perfect.

I cut of the head of the coach bolt and then cut a length of the threaded section and included short length of the plain shank, which I turned down to make it round as it was slightly oval to start with. Then I drilled all the way through 5mm because the aluminium version has a hole through it. I opened out the threaded end to 8mm and turned a brass top hat bush to fit inside it and secured it with Loctite.

Next I used a boring bar to open out the hole in the knurled part of the aluminium screw until it fitted the turned down section of the replacement threaded section. Then I parted it off and Loctited that to recreate the screw.

Now I have a screw that will tighten down properly with no slop in the threads and the brass end will stop the barrel of the Spin Indexer from getting chewed up by the steel screw thread.

Back In October 2024 I won a job lot of Engineering tools via eBay. When they arrived I was reasonably certain that they were apprentice pieces all made by the same gent and stamped FC. At the time I cleaned them all up and I restored most of them in terms of parts that were missing. One final piece a sliding curved bevel worked but it wasn’t possible to tighten up or slacken off the thumbscrew. I tried several times in the intervening 11 months but did manage to budge it no matter how aggressive I got, I didn’t manage to budge it. In the end a week or so ago, I just lost patience and hacksawed the thumbscrew off.

I machined up a new thumbscrew and it worked but the stud part looked a bit undernourished so I made a second stud that I was happy with. I also spent a bit of time on the slides to ensure that all the parts move freely along the full length of travel.

After a couple of failed attempts I managed to get some red painting onto the tapered fire extinguisher. Which in my view at least has improved it no end.

Having made the cone extinguisher I decided to make a more modern more conventional type but still within my modlleing period.

Way back in 2010 for my first 7mm scale build an LMS Period One Full Brake, I scratch built a full interior from brass. As part of that interior detailing I made a couple of fire extinguishers, not having a lathe at that time I made them from brass tube and other bits and pieces finishing them with a couple of 4mm scale etched plates that I had in my spares box.

I fitted on in the coach and the other sat in my spares box for a long time. I can only assume that I fitted it to a brake van at some point because I can’t find it.

I made them from tube etc. because that’s the only way that I could see to make one up and I was really pleased with the result. However since then I have had a longstanding itch to make one of the tapered/cone type fire extinguishers. My recent success with the oil cas prompted me to have a go. I found a few photos and had a go. The first attempt wasn’t that great because my rivets were to pronounced so I changed the punch on my rivet press and had another go. This time I was happy and although they look big in the photos because that are massively magnified they do look the part when viewed at normal distances.

In between work on rebuilding the Princess post paint I also managed to finish making my collet rack.

Those of you familiar with pressing out rivets especially on metal kits will know that the action of the formation of the rivet has a tendency to distort the metal slightly usually resulting a in a slight curl or wave along the line of rivets. Like those below

In between applying paint to Mossy’s wagons I also picked up another unfinished model which I initially was going to cheat one but decided against it and as a result needed a number of riveted strips with rivets at various different spacings. The rivets were pressed along the edge of a sheet of 0.25mm (10 thou) nickel sheet with my Leakey Rivet press and then cut of with the guillotine. it’s a very satisfying process but as described it does leave the rivet strips with a bit of a curl.

Until today I have for a number of years ‘set’ the rivets using some jewellers stone setting tools after seeing the technique demonstrated on Western thunder by Peter Dunn.

These are two of the set which I use most often and I have fitted semi permanent (bonded with loctite 638) handles to them. As they come they have a wooden handle with a collet nut that allows you to change the size. To use them press out your rivets then place on a firm surface and go over them with the tool placing it over each rivet and a small tap with a light hammer sets the rivet and the surrounding metal.

This is fine and as I say I have used the method for a number of years the only minor downside is that the dome in the end of the tool is quite shallow and I have had it squash the rivets sometimes and the edge is quite reasonably sharp so if you don’t get it quite vertical it can leave a slight half moon mark around the rivet.

While pressing out rivets this morning it struck me that a few minutes on the lathe could improve upon the tool.

Using more of the steel rod recovered from waste toner cartridges I faced off the end and then having measured my most used rivet size I drilled a .93mm hole in the end of the rod and then turned it down to allow a flat bottom to not cut into the sheet but narrow enough to allow passing between close fitting lines of rivets.
I have recently made a second punch for my rivet press to allow the slightly bigger rivets on Connoisseur kits to be punched more accurately so I made a second ‘rivet set’ to set those. That has a 1.3mm hole in it. The recycled printer rods machine lovely but I have noted a tendency to rust where they have been machined so I heated the machined ends to blacken them in oil.

I bought these at Thirsk show last year or the year before and I hadn’t really used them much until recently.

I have absolutely no affiliation with Expo aside from a satisfied user of these pliers. Which I can highly recommend.

The curve of the jaws is slightly offset and I thought that this might be an issue initially but it has proved to be a design feature that has been very useful for bending wire to complex shapes.