Since my last post on Saturday I have made a bit more progress. As I mentioned I wasn’t too happy with the way that I had done the ‘hinges’ principally because the gap in them was too large but also because I had an itch to try to make them articulate.
I started on the bottom section because that was where the the gap between the two plates was greatest. I took the plunge and cut off all the lower sections of the hinge leaving just a small overhang behind. Then I cut some 2mm lengths of microbore brass tube and soldered them under the overhangs of the remains of the hinge plates. Then I measured the gaps in between and cut and fitted some more lengths of tube in between these were nominally 10mm but since I didn’t get the 2mm pieces exactly perfect they had to be custom fit in to each gap.
Then I fed a length of 0.4mm wire through all the lengths and tack soldered the longer lengths to the centre section of the shield.
18 Pounder Gun Shield Parts18 Pounder Gun Shield Parts
As reported elsewhere, I have been attempting to catch up with a few unfinished projects, some of which needed painting. When I was getting set up to paint I opened my spray booth door and the 18 pounder was sat there on the turntable awaiting paint.
So in amongst the railway wagons I also made a start on painting the gun.
Emhar 18 Pounder Gun
I confess that it was at this point where I thought sod it and painted the supplied gun shield. Once painted I couldn’t live with the moulded on rope and set to with a diamond ball tool in the Dremel to carve/grind it off.
Emhar 18 Pounder Gun Shield
I blew it over with paint but ultimately I decided that I couldn’t live with that either, so back to plan A and scratch build a replacement.
Those of you who have seen my post on the rivet setting tool, will now know what I need all the riveted strips for.
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
Rivet Strips
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.
Gemstone setting tools
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.
Home Made Rivet Setting ToolHome Made Rivet Setting 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.
Way back in 2015 I started building five PO wagons from Colin Ashby kits picked up from the now defunct GOG Executor and Trustee service. Over the intervening years I had slowly added brake levers and guides and ultimately a couple of them just required buffer stocks before they were painted. In my recent quest to move a few of my shef queens along I fitted the last ones with buffer stocks and I have painted them ready for transfers.
Modified by CombineZP
When we lived in Wakefield we were just up the road from the former Newmarket Colliery of J&J Charlesworth and that’s whose I livery Intended to do them in. Powsides do J&J Charlesworth transfers but they are the rub down type so I think that I will get some white transfer paper and draw up my own for cutting on the Silhouette Cutter. Hopefully it won’t be another nine years before you see them finished.
A couple of days ago I finished the painting of the brake van and then glazed it and refitted the buffers.
The result is quite unusual when compared with the normal SR brown or BR Grey liveries. Spray painted with Anitas Acrylics Sunshine Yellow and Vallejo Model Color Black. The interior was done with Vallejo Game Bone White and Model Color Medium Sea Grey for the veranda floors.
Connoisseur LSWR Brake van finishedConnoisseur LSWR Brake Van FinishedConnoisseur LSWR Brake Van FinishedS1280Connoisseur LSWR Brake van finishedConnoisseur LSWR Brake van finished
It will be on it’s way to it’s new home this afternoon.
Another session at the bench yesterday saw the remaining brake van ready for paint. With the addition of the final details such as buffer stocks, sandpipes and guard irons added.
LSWR Brake Van Ready For PaintLSWR Brake Van Ready For PaintLSWR Brake Van Ready For PaintLSWR Brake Van Ready For PaintLSWR Brake Van Ready For PaintLSWR Brake Van Ready for Paint
Having finished the Princess I have promised my good lady that the 8F (which she bought me in 2010 would be the next loco to be finished. So in the spirit of things I took the pretty much complete tender and the loco chassis along to Stafford so that I had something to talk to people about in between dealing with the modelling competition and the Sunday display of members models.
I was surprised but not too dismayed when three separate people advised me that 8F’s didn’t have water pick up gear fitted. I say not too dismayed because I have no intention of taking it apart to remove the water scoop and associated fittings and it will solve a little niggle that I have had since deciding to model 8425. 8425 had a welded tender and Dave Sharp does provide sides/rear plates to make up a riveted tender when originally building the tender to be for an LNER 06 I chose the riveted sides. I never felt confident that I could remove the riveted sides and fit the welded ones and as I couldn’t find the welded ones I feared that I may have cut them up and used the metal to make other parts.
Fast forward to about a month ago, while looking for something else, I found that by good fortune I did keep the welded side overlays. Also in the stash as mentioned on Nick’s current build thread, I have a JLRT Rebuilt Scot. So I intend to swap the tenders and use the Scot tender built without the water scoop and fittings with the MOK welded sides which are a perfect fit when dry fitted over the JLRT etches.
I have made a small start this evening and I thought I might have to make a new anvil for m rivet punch but it seems I had already made one for smaller spaced rivets so that was a bonus.
Well, I got there at last. Her Royal Highness will now go around 6ft curves without derailing or shorting.
I did have to introduce some springing to restrict the movement of the bogie.
DA Princess Royal – Spring Wire Restraints
There are two spring wires at the rear which fit between the inner and outer bogie frames. They restrict the sideways movement of the rear of the bogie. The bogie pivot point has side control springs which allow more movement at the front of the bogie. This sort of worked but the front of the bogie was so light that it had a tendency to lift of the track so I added a second element of springing which holds down the front of the bogie and all runs nicely. This spring has a loop which is held in place by the pivot screw then bends over the front of the plate that you can see in the image below before curving onto the front of the bogie frame. Although it looks huge in the enlarged image it’s only 0.5mm spring wire.
After all that I forgot to add that I also turned some replacement buffer stocks. Those familiar with Jim’s kits will know that to keep costs down Jim provides whitemetal buffers which can be sprung but it involves fitting a piece of spring wire through the back of the coupling hook and then to the rear of the buffers. Although I used this method on a few of my early builds having broke one of the cast heads of a buffer rather put me off the idea so now I add sprung buffers and I usually solder the coupling hook solid.
I had some spare buffer heads (kindly supplied by our very own Mr Moss as when received from NER Days they were unusable without further machining which Mossy isn’t equipped to do) which are fitted with 10ba nuts so the shank is a bit thicker than the 12 or 14ba that most comercial wagon buffers are fitted with. I did drill out one of the white metal buffer stocks and I did make it ft but the walls were very thin. I decided to turn replacements from some 14″ nickel rod. Although the finished dimensions were the same as the whitemetal examples the nickel replacements are much more substantial.
LSWR Brake Van Buffers
So now The van just needs these fitting, some sand pipes and coupling chains and a good clean up before painting.
On Bank Holiday Monday I took the one to be finished along to Harrogate show and again made excellent progress despite chatting to lots of people.
What I hadn’t realised at Redcar show is that although I had assembled parts 23,24, 25 and 26 into a sub unit and dry fitted fitted them I hadn’t actually soldered them in the second van. Sadly when I piked the van up to pack it away the sub assembly must have dropped off asI couldn’t find it at home when I discovered it’s was missing.
So I ended up scratch building a new sub assembly to replace the missing one.
I fitted a floor and then fitted the subassembly before fitting the rodding. Having prepared the parts before I went to Harrogate I did all the assembly during the show so didn’t get any photos of the subassembly after I put it together or without the rods in place. I replaced the two part etched crank with a piece of 10ba threaded rod (I have a number of short lengths from where I have shortened 1″ screws) with a wrap around that better represents the real thing.
LSWR Brake Van Brake RoddingLSWR Brake Van Brake RoddingLSWR Brake Van Brake RoddingLSWR Brake Van Brake Rodding
Although there is a plan view of how the brake rods fit the small fitting that fits the upper rod to the bottom of the van isn’t provided so I knocked a couple up from scrap etch. Bending and soldering those last two short upper sections of rodding in place really challenged the patience and it’s a good job I was in public or I may have expanded my Anglo Saxon dictionary…
For the last couple of weekends I have been demonstrating brass wagon building at a couple of shows so I took these along to see if I could make some progress on them. Surprisingly I did manage to make quite a bit of progress with both of these now up on their wheels with brake gear fitted. They still need brake rodding added and then details such as buffers etc. – I will take some photos once they are properly dry.
The plan for these was always to sell them when complete to fund something else and now that they are nearing completion I am starting to think about what livery to finish them in.
The good news is that they are now both sold, one as is to be finished by it’s new owner and the second to be finished and painted in a yellow light railway livery.
Here’s where I had got to by the end of Redcar show.
Connoisseur LSWR Brake VanConnoisseur LSWR Brake VanConnoisseur LSWR Brake Van
All issues of whether the styrene might wear over time aside, even with added weight on the trailing truck, the chassis still wouldn’t go around a 6ft curve reliably so more drastic measures were needed.
Using a piercing saw I cut out part of the inner frames.
DA Princess Rear frame modifications
Then I soldered a plate across the ends of the frames at the front by good fortune there were two tabs at the rear with could be soldered to.
DA Princess Rear frame modificationsDA Princess Rear frame modifications
I then reduced the width of the inner plate and soldered the frame pieces back together with some end plates to take up the gap left by the saw kerf.
DA Princess Inner Frames NarrowedDA Princess Inner Frames Narrowed
A quick dry fit of the rear truck leaves plenty of space either side of the inner swing so there should be no shorting but I may need to remove some of the spring casting to allow more swing to help it get around the curve – it’s a long chassis.
Having solved the issue of the wheels touching the upper frame I then discovered that the wheels were touching the inside of the frames when going around a 6ft curve.
DA Princess Still creating shorts!
So I added some styrene insulation either side of the inner frames.
This cured the short problem but running trials revealed that although it would now go around 6ft curve without shorting it didn’t do so reliably without the trailing truck derailing.
In an attempt to cure this I tried introducing some weight on to the trailing truck. I cut a couple of rectangles of lead and using a V block and a couple of different sized rods I created some weights that fit on top of the ruck over the axle.
DA Princess Trailing Tuck BallastDA Princess Trailing Tuck Ballast
I was getting low on lead but just this week we have had a couple of chimneys repointed and re-leaded as well as four wet verges I asked the roofer for the lead that they removed so I now have sufficient to see my days out I think.
It’s been getting on for six weeks since my last update on HRH. I haven’t been idle and the process of eliminating shorts has been a journey of education, frustration and determination to not let it beat me.
Starting with a belt and braces approach I remade the drawbar in Delrin.
DA Princess Royal – Delrin Drawbar
Next, having already added insulated washers to the wheels which are insulated at the hub I turned my attention to the driver which are rim insulated. I had previously made inner balance weights from Nickel sheet and although I had stuck them to the wheels with epoxy I was concerned that they be be helping to bridge the insulation gap should they touch the frames. My answer was to remake the balance weights for the insulated side from styrene.
Then I noted that the cross piece pf the rear inner frames was touching the tyres of the rear truck wheels. You can see the plate with the half etched rectangles in the image below.
DA Princess rear frames
A look at the instructions mentions the possible need to remove the half etched sections in case of shorts so the plate was removed and the rectangles removed.
DA Princess Frame plate modification
Sadly, this didn’t cure the problem so in the end I took of the outer sections leaving just the brace in the middle.
DA Princess 2nd Frame Plate Modification
As it turned out that solved one problem but left another which will be the subject of another post
Then I connected the loco and tender together and it immediately tripped out the controller and so I started a further round of troubleshooting. First I removed the bogie and after coffee I went back into our cloakroom where I have temporarily set up my test board. This room is west facing so gets sunlight mostly in an afternoon but it’s below ground level as the path outside the window is cut into the embankment and so doesn’t get quite as much natural light unless the sun is really high in the sky and it’s late afternoon.
Now one of the suggestions from Thursday nights meeting besides dig out the multimeter was to try hunting for shorts in the dark as sparks are easier to see. As I went in for further testing I forgot to turn the light on and so the room was a little gloomy. This proved to be a benefit, because as soon as I moved the bogie on it’s own, I noted a spark which I wouldn’t have seen with the light on. I noted that the guard irons were quite close to the rails and may have caused shorts on curves so they were adjusted and then further examination showed that I had fallen foul of the etched washer/hub insulation again. A further check of the trailing tuck revealed the same issue. I had a few spare insulated washers that I had turned when working on the tender but they proved to be too thick even after turning/milling down the axle bushes.
I was initially going to make some up by using a hole punch to cut holes in some styrene sheet and then snip of /file them into circles. By good fortune a video that I had seen some time ago that was lurking in my memory surfaced on my Youtube feed. After rewatching it I decided to have a go at pressure turning a number of washers all at once.
Now unless you want really big washers the process is a little wasteful because you need enough stock to hold onto to drill the centre hole. I chose to cut some 0.5mm styrene sheet into 20mm x 20mm squares aiming for a finished size of 10mm diameter. You also need some scrap to hold the parts and one of them becomes almost sacrificial.
The first step is to grip the styrene squares between the two pieces of scrap material.
Drilling blanks
I used a 1″ G clamp and a small engineers clamp to hold them all together to drill a 5mm hole through all the parts. This was to allow clearance on the 3/16 (4.7mm) axles. At this point you transfer the whole set up to the lathe before releasing the clamps.
Setting up for pressure turningPressure Turning Parts
I created the above set up which consists of a 22mm piece of Delrin in the collet (I had to turn a stub down to fit in a 16mm collet which is the largest ER25 collet that I have). This had a 5mm hole drill partially through it. At the tailstock end is another piece of 22mm Delrin which has had a 60 degree cone turned in the back so that it fits on a live centre then a short section turned down to 10mm to allow the tool to clear the workpiece(s) again it has a 5mm hole through it. Then a length of 3/6 rod was passed into the hole in the mandrel in the collet chuck and the parts fed onto it, before removing the clamps. Lastly the live centre is wound tightly against the parts which squash and grip all the parts for turning and locked.
The next step was to turn down the sacrificial scrap support until all the parts start to be turned. My sacrificial scrap was plastic which has a layer of aluminium either side of it and I found that the most depth of cut I could manage was 0.25mm per pass otherwise the parts started to slip. I started turning with a carbide tipped bit until it would no longer fit, then I changed to high speed steel grooving tool that I had ground for another job some time ago.
Washers well on their way.Finished Washers
One piece of advice given in the video was to make sure that you were using a sharp tool for the final pass to help prevent the tool from rolling the edges of one part over onto the next.
Finished Washers
These are the finished parts and they are all really crisp, aside from the one that was nearest the left hand piece of scrap which had a small burr around the edge (visible at the corner of the ruler). This burr was easily scraped off with a scalpel blade.
Since my last post I have been beavering away identifying and curing the shorts on the tender which I am happy to say that I have done.
As with many things in life getting there required at least one side project. During last Thursday’s GOG online modellers meeting the consensus was that I really needed to dig my multimeter out of the depths of the shed. On friday morning I bit the bullet and started to pull out plastic stacking boxes (having first removed the lawn mower, petrols cans, oak kitchen cabinet doors and finally my router table). An hour and a half later I had retrieved one of my two multimeters and put everything back.
Sadly the one that I found was the one with the missing probe, the wire was there but the common probe which had broken off in the dim and distant wasn’t with it. Before embarking on making a new probe I fitted a new battery to test that it still worked which thankfully it did. The metal section of the probe was made from a length of brass rod which sat atop my useful bits box on the workbench and I quickly drilled one end to accept the wire and turned a step onto the other to fit snugly into the yet to be made insulated delrin handle.
I didn’t take photos along the way but this is the finished article alongside the original ‘live’ probe.
New Probe for multimeter
Once I had it I reassembled the tender chassis test along the way without find any further shorts.
The last week and a bit of modelling time has been spent tracking down shorts on the tender and isolating them. This has required me making a number of additional bushes and delrin/acetal washers.
Insulated washers and bushes
I also had to rethink the way that I had mounted the two U shaped brackets which fit across under the tender. Unthinkingly I had mounted them in the same way as on the MOK Stanier tender using small pieces of brass angle drilled and tapped for 14ba screws. Sadly when assembled these frames touch the brakes which although the shoes are insulated the hangers are not and between the two breached the insulation between tender chassis and body.
I made up some wire supports and then shortened the brackets to clear the outer frames. Below are a couple of shots of the sets that I used to get them soldered vertical to the brackets and then cut them off to the right size. I read recently on one of the forums someone say that you cannot have too many engineers clamps. I agree wholeheartedly although when used as soldering aids they do have a tendency to rust. I do have a cunning plan to get around that, I have a length of brass bar that I have had for about 10 years which will be just enough to make a pair of brass jawed clamps which shouldn’t rust.
Jig for soldering legs
I used the Expo pliers that I recommended recently to bend the corners pretty uniformly.
Jig for trimming legs
I also had a feeling that the washers which I had used to reduce the side play in the axles, might have been bigger than the insulation gaps in the wheel hubs thus creating a short, hence my making the delrin washers.
