During the week I assemble the chassis for the J17 tender which went together well apart from me drawing the holes for the brake hangers in the wrong place. Artwork correction took marginally longer than drilling 6 holes in the right places. I've stuck two pieces of copper-clad sleeper strip down the inside of the chassis and soldered the pickup wire onto these. While I have metal brake blocks and hangers on the etch I thought it would be interested to try 3D printing them and see how they worke
In my previous blog on this subject I mentioned I'd 3D printed some wheel centres to fit into Alan Gibson 4'10" tyres. I put these into my test chassis and got it working but I was not entirely happy with the result. The issue I believe is that 'Gibson Style' wheels rely on having the centre molded out of a fairly 'grippy' plastic, the hole through the centre is designed to be a good tight fit on an 1/8th inch axle. even so most of us have had a wheel be a bit loose at times and some people reso
Since I built my J17 by scrapping most of the parts of a PDK kit and making my own etched and 3D printed bits I have been thinking about the possibility of turning the result into a kit. A first draft of the artwork was turned into nickel-silver by PPD with help from my good friends at Brassmasters. (If this turns into a kit that will be where it will come from). The intention is the use etched metal for the chassis and thin bits like the cab and foot plate while 3D printing the complex shapes l
I'd spent a fair amount of time trying to solder up a belpaire firebox and despite many attempts I really wasn't that happy with the results. So, as much as an intellectual exercise as with any practical expectation of success, I thought I'd try and model the firebox, boiler and smokebox up in CAD and try to print it. This is very much a 'work in progress' but the results are rather encouraging. The layer lines at a .03mm layer height are virtually invisible to my eye and will disappear even fur
As I mentioned in my previous blog posting, the splashers on the J17 kit were designed to accommodate the most steam-rollerish of flanges, being almost 4mm in diameter larger than scale. Well I've managed to take them back off the foot-plate. file them down to size and refit them. They look to be about .5mm too large now but I'm ok with a little extra clearance for the springing.
Missing from the kit, but visible on the plans and photographs were the beading around the ba
So there I was feeling quite chuffed that I'd managed to get the wheels on the J17 chassis. There is a video which includes it running on youtube.
Then I started work on the footplate, I got the buffer beam and valancing on quite nicely and then turned to the splashers. I felt quite good about the job I'd done until I put the footplate onto the chassis and realised that the kit had exactly the same issues as the previously built J20.
Now I don't exac
For those who don't know what a J17 is, here is a picture.
They were a James Holden designed locomotive built for the GER between 1900 and 1903, a sort of half-way house between the lighter J15 and heavier J20.
As I hinted the J17 kit from PDK is also quite 'old school' by today's standards. The frames just had simple holes for the bearings, not even a half etched line as a nod that some people might spring or compensate their locomotives.
Progress today
