Pattern makers Dowels

[Chubber]

[submitted here after a suggestion to do so was made in the original post in the 'Layouts' thread]

 

Having recently read a topic concerning P.M.D.s I thought I'd see how much they cost, and having picked myself up off the floor to find they are about £4.50p a pair [plus p&p] I'd like to propose the following gadget for the budget conscious [read 'married, wiv kids' or 'retired wiv wife and pension' or 'I prefer spending my whisky tokens on whisky'] modeller.

 

Fellow RMWebbers, I give you....the 'Earwig'

 

Disassembled

 

 

Assembled

 

Assembling two boards

 

Essentialy three well-fitting pieces of copper piping, such as a straight 15mm union cut in two and a small length piece of 15mm pipe. The short outer pieces are held in place in the ends of the baseboards with a smear of Araldite and the wire clip, bent from piano wire or similar passed through the inner during baseboard erection to prevent it sliding out.

 

The end boards can be clamped together when the holes for the outer pieces are drilled to ensure perfect lining-up. If you can't find a drill that is exactly the right size for your outer pipe, buy a spade-bit a mm or so bigger and attack it sensibly with a file/grindstone until you can make a hole that fits your tube correctly.

 

The baseboard ends can be held together as usual with wing-nuts and bolts. I imagine £4.50 would buy enough unions and copper pipe to fix up the average three or four board layout!

 

When the boards are taken down at the end of the exhibition/running session, the inner tubes and clips can be taken out and stowed away carefully with the additional advantage over P.M.D.s that there is no protruding component left sticking out to get banged by the car boot-lid when loading up for the trip home.

 

Doug