Wright writes.....

[DougN]

Clive, My comment for the size of hammer required for any job... if the first one doesnt work... move up.... then once you have reached the 32ton excavator with a hammer... it will never work again!  generally though once you have go to the sledge hammer it may have gone too far!

 

 

 

[Bucoops]

32 minutes ago, jrg1 said:

Hi Clive

Working in a factory that built diesel engines, locomotives, turbo-blowers, gas turbines and hydraulic motors, we were taught that the most important tool was a hammer.

 

My first job after uni was in a robotics company that was essentially run by the sales people. The most useful took we could have had was a bull**** detector but alas it didn't exist. However I soon learned I didn't need one as you simply took anything they said as such.

[PJT]

32 minutes ago, jrg1 said:

we were taught that the most important tool was a hammer

 

I think the name you're looking for is a 'Birmingham Screwdriver'.  That's what the Black Country Yam Yams used to call them to wind up the Brummies in Longbridge.

 

Pete T.

 

[Bucoops]

All this talk of bigger hammers reminds me of the time we were trying to undo the wheelnuts of a JCB type contraption (think it was actually a Ford). No impact gun or sockets so we used the right size snap-on socket and a breaker bar, No good - so added a scaffold pole to the breaker bar, still no good. Found a longer scaffold pole and We all put our weight onto it.

 

I can't remember the exact sound but we could tell there was a catastrophic failure imminent so prepared to drop.

 

We found just enough pieces of the socket to tell it was/used to be Snap-on and the size, and made use of the no-questions asked if it breaks we replace it warranty. Those were the days

 

I think we used oxy-acetylene in the end - kill it with fire.

[PJT]

2 minutes ago, Bucoops said:

I think we used oxy-acetylene in the end - kill it with fire.

... and that's the third in the golden trio of most useful tools: the gas axe.

 

Pete T.

 

[lee74clarke]

3 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

This must be a sort of 'mini' record. A whole page of Wright Writes without a single post from me! 

 

Many thanks for all the recent contributions. 

 

Going back to bits of hacked-off brass tube, though I don't claim to have any 'engineering' training (I went to art school and teacher training college as my further education), I reckon I can file the ends of the bits fairly true and square. One end will be virtually invisible (against the cab front/tanks) and the other 'disguised' by further wrappers. I'm also adept enough with a piercing saw to cut through the tube with 'reasonable' accuracy. However, though I have three vices (tools, I mean, not the legion of others), none has a 'V' in its jaws. 

 

Which brings me back to the provision of bits in some kits, where the instructions (not that I read them) should make it clear that, with the parts supplied and the methodology of construction employed, a high degree of skill/experience is required and access to a wide range of tools, often machine ones. 

 

I'm reliably informed that over 90% of loco kits are never finished (though, with the present crisis, this percentage might well come down). Many are started, then abandoned; the builders disillusioned and depressed because of their 'abject failure'. An expensive failure as well! Despite some disliking them, I find DJH kits (the post A1 ones) excellent, and have lost count of the number I've built. SE Finecast are also very good. Neither of these manufacturers' kits need access to 'more-sophisticated' tools to complete them successfully. Compare that with a B&M outside-framed tank I built some little time ago, where the frames weren't even drilled for the bearings - just rudimentary dimples provided. OK, I have a decent pillar drill, but is anyone here skilled enough to drill frames by hand? Or the ex-LNWR 0-8-4T (from a 'high-end' manufacturer) where the chassis was a nightmare to get running. Even the designer thought it perhaps 'too complex'. Or two loco kits where the coupling rods didn't match the bearing holes in the frames. 'Thar's not doin' it reet' (that's the best I can do at speaking Yorkshire) was the reaction from the designer after I'd made new rods, but that story has been told before.

 

Is there any mystery why RTR is so popular then? A discussion frequently aired on here, I know, but there are still too many dud kits out there.

 

Anyway, it's back to the NLR tank and the A3 today. I know which I prefer making......

 

 

Good Morning Tony

if you still need the brass tube turning to length, let me know and I’ll try and sort next week.

I keep my Myford lathe at work these days, it’s ‘precision’ days are long gone without me replacing bearings, but for odd jobs, it’s fine.
I have some brass parts to make up for a Hornby P2 chassis I’m messing around with, bigger motor installed and a revised set of valve gear to fit, which require some spacers turning.

 

Best Regards 

Lee

 

[PJT]

1 minute ago, PJT said:

... and that's the third in the golden trio of most useful tools: the gas axe.

 

Especially when you're trying to open 40 tons of steel press tool that someone left in store on a disused airfield runway for 5 years with barely a smidgen of grease or oil on it.

 

Pete T.

[Bucoops]

9 minutes ago, PJT said:

... and that's the third in the golden trio of most useful tools: the gas axe.

 

Pete T.

 

 

Also useful on sales people.

[Clive Mortimore]

33 minutes ago, PJT said:

... and that's the third in the golden trio of most useful tools: the gas axe.

 

Pete T.

 

Hi PJT

 

Part of the job we were doing in Northern Ireland involved removing the fiber glass armour off the Land Rovers, the bolts holding it on would be well rusted a can of WD40 (another wonder tool) wouldn't free them up so shearing them was the normal method. Every now and then the bolt head would round off , so fire up the ox-accetalne. I did this one day and smoke started to appear from all parts of the Land Rover. The insulation on the wiring loom was melting. Whoops. 

 

It turned out the crew had wired a transistor radio in the rear and the wires ran alongside the bolt and warming the bolt up the wires shorted as the insulation melted. I still don't understand why the rest of the loom went up. Neither did the REME Brigadier or anyone else did but they all agreed I wasn't to blame. 

[Northmoor]

2 hours ago, PJT said:

 

Oh, never a truer word spoken!

 

Looking back over the last couple of pages, funny how so many of us went through the same (or remarkably similar) experiences in our further and higher education.   It's lovely to read it and brings plenty of knowing smiles to my face as I do so. 

 

Shame it seems so much less acceptable nowadays to get your hands dirty as part of your learning.  Even if you don't intend to carry on at a workbench once you've embarked on your career, having first-hand experience of what you may be asking others to do is so vital - but so often lacking.

 

Pete T.

I'm another "agree"; as part of my degree at a Polytechnic (which practically tripped over itself to become a University at the earliest opportunity), we did do some workshop practice in the first year as a catch-up for those of us who'd no experience.

 

Much better was my sandwich year spent at a well-known railway engineering company, starting with six months in the R&D lab, which was basically designing and making press tools and gauges, learning VERY quickly from experienced machinists.  I've never done any machining since but still have some idea about what is and isn't possible to make.

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Bucoops said:

All this talk of bigger hammers reminds me of the time we were trying to undo the wheelnuts of a JCB type contraption (think it was actually a Ford). No impact gun or sockets so we used the right size snap-on socket and a breaker bar, No good - so added a scaffold pole to the breaker bar, still no good. Found a longer scaffold pole and We all put our weight onto it.

 

I can't remember the exact sound but we could tell there was a catastrophic failure imminent so prepared to drop.

 

We found just enough pieces of the socket to tell it was/used to be Snap-on and the size, and made use of the no-questions asked if it breaks we replace it warranty. Those were the days

 

I think we used oxy-acetylene in the end - kill it with fire.

My "funny" wasn't for the Birmingham (aka Glasgow) screwdriver but for the Yam Yams!

[PJT]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

Much better was my sandwich year spent at a well-known railway engineering company, starting with six months in the R&D lab, which was basically designing and making press tools and gauges, learning VERY quickly from experienced machinists.  I've never done any machining since but still have some idea about what is and isn't possible to make.

 

I'm a firm believer that you won't get better metalworking tuition than that from a toolmaker in a well-equipped tool room.  Similarly, for woodworking a pattern maker's shop is a wonderful place to learn.  Our pattern makers used to do a wonderful line in display cabinets etc. on the side, strictly for friends of the pattern shop - or as bribes for more senior management.  Unfortunately, the telling phrase in that last sentence is 'used to'; same goes these days for toolmakers, too.

 

I'm going to say enough of this (very happy) reminiscing, otherwise I'm sure we could fill the rest of the day, and this thread too.  And it is after all a modelling thread.

 

Nice digression though!

 

Pete T.

Edited May 6, 2020 by PJT
Spelling

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, PJT said:

 

I think the name you're looking for is a 'Birmingham Screwdriver'.  That's what the Black Country Yam Yams used to call them to wind up the Brummies in Longbridge.

 

Pete T.

 

I was always told they were Mancester spanners!

 

Anyway after cutting all the grass this morning I'm off to the shed to file down some crank webs to make them fit between some Gibson frames. That's another make of kit that comes with stock brass tube for boilers. The last boiler I built needed slitting down the underside and a 5mm piece of brass soldering in. Two other major dimensions were 5mm's out as well. I'll not mention the front bogie fixing the mods would ban me.

 

Jamie

Edited May 6, 2020 by jamie92208

[Tony Wright]

2 hours ago, lee74clarke said:

Good Morning Tony

if you still need the brass tube turning to length, let me know and I’ll try and sort next week.

I keep my Myford lathe at work these days, it’s ‘precision’ days are long gone without me replacing bearings, but for odd jobs, it’s fine.
I have some brass parts to make up for a Hornby P2 chassis I’m messing around with, bigger motor installed and a revised set of valve gear to fit, which require some spacers turning.

 

Best Regards 

Lee

 

Good afternoon Lee,

 

That's very kind, thank you.

 

I'll carefully measure the lengths required and mark where it needs cutting. I'll then get back in touch - and leave the bits on the doorstep!

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Tony Wright]

Some modelling this morning.....................

 

I took a look once more at the NLR tank, cut some bits for the frames out of the fret.............. and put it back! At least for the time being.

 

I decided to get on with the SEF A3..............

 

 

Tender frames made-up. It's always good to have a 'here's one I made earlier' example; just to remind me how I did things.

 

 

Saddle in place, and two halves of the boiler to clean-up and solder together. A bit of flash, but not too much.

 

 

Boiler fixed on, and basic tender body in place.

 

Time for testing....................

 

 

 

 

 

I have no idea how to put moving footage on here, so these shots will have to do. 

 

The new loco just whirled this 13-car rake around with ease (it includes some heavy kit-built cars). Very little (if any) extra ballast will be required. 

 

 

A bit 'naked' I know, but I thoroughly-test all the locos I build throughout their constructions. 

 

While I was mucking about taking panning shots, I took the opportunity to capture the fastest of them all at speed.

 

 

Pro-Scale/Peabody/Wright/Rathbone - she doesn't half fly!

 

 

[petrovich]

6 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Some modelling this morning.....................

 

I took a look once more at the NLR tank, cut some bits for the frames out of the fret.............. and put it back! At least for the time being.

 

I decided to get on with the SEF A3..............

 

 

Tender frames made-up. It's always good to have a 'here's one I made earlier' example; just to remind me how I did things.

 

 

Saddle in place, and two halves of the boiler to clean-up and solder together. A bit of flash, but not too much.

 

 

Boiler fixed on, and basic tender body in place.

 

Time for testing....................

 

 

 

 

 

I have no idea how to put moving footage on here, so these shots will have to do. 

 

The new loco just whirled this 13-car rake around with ease (it includes some heavy kit-built cars). Very little (if any) extra ballast will be required. 

 

 

A bit 'naked' I know, but I thoroughly-test all the locos I build throughout their constructions. 

 

While I was mucking about taking panning shots, I took the opportunity to capture the fastest of them all at speed.

 

 

Pro-Scale/Peabody/Wright/Rathbone - she doesn't half fly!

 

 

Mallard at speed is a lovely image Tony.

[MarkC]

When I first came to sea, an essential part of the Main Engine toolkit was a 28lb sledgehammer. Otherwise known as "Zanussi" on one ship...

 

Mark

[Tony Teague]

Might I pose a question to the assembled and very experienced brains on this thread please?

 

I have had this SR Ballast Plough & Brake Van in my fleet for a while; it was built from a Marc Models kit by Mike Radford and is a pretty reasonable model of an unusual prototype but I have always been aware that it is in the wrong livery (it also has the wrong wheels):

 

 

I recently decided to bite the bullet and removed the body from the chassis for repainting; once completed I started to re-assemble but I hit a problem. The body is held to the chassis by two 8BA bolts which tighten against nuts soldered above the flood inside the open ends of the van, and one of these became unsoldered. The picture below shows the location of the two captive nuts - or rather one, as the right hand one is missing:

 

 

I have made several attempts to re-solder a nut in place but the inside of the floor is not clean and is almost impossible to access (see third pic.); I don't want to apply too much heat as I don't want the van to fall apart! I have used a nut held in place on a cocktail stick but it needs to be held down against the floor and as soon as heat is applied it just falls off the stick! In one of my attempts I managed to solder a nut to a bolt but neither was ixed to the floor, and so I had to cut through the bolt with a piercing saw!

 

 

I can of course rely on just one screw holding the top on, but ideally I'd like to find a solution and get both ends fixed properly!

 

Can anyone suggest a solution that might just work? Any help appreciated!

 

Tony
 

 

 

 

 

 

[gr.king]

Solder the nut to a new rectangular piece of brass sheet then epoxy the sheet onto the top of the piece that is already fixed inside the end of the van? Put the screw in, and the underframe, to line it up correctly before the epoxy goes off?

 

Paint the top of the new piece "floor colour" before fitting?

[t-b-g]

I have had success chemically blackening a bolt, using my favourite flux (Templers Telux) which doesn't eat through the blackening. One possible alternative would be to solder the bolt in the body and put a nut under the floor.

 

Soldering the bolt in should be much easier as you can apply the flux and solder under the plate.

[john new]

As a regular bodger my suggested solution will not match the purists but looking at the problem why fit the body by bolts at the open ends? A small wooden block glued across inside the van as a false floor will be invisible and simple wood screws going into it from underneath through the chassis/floor will hold it together. 
 

Just a thought, based on a process I first used on some old H Dublo coaches fixed that way decades ago when I couldn’t work out how to re-rivet the bogies back on.

[Paul Cram]

Put the bolt through the hole and solder in place from the bottom.

[Willie Whizz]

On the subject of using tools, forty years or so ago, my father-in-law (who had received a bit of basic engineering training as a new conscript in the late-War Royal Navy) taught me this:  "Allus' use the biggest tool that's little enough to do the job!".

 

Which took me a while to fully appreciate, but once I worked it out has stood me in good stead ever since ... basically, provided the tool isn't so very big that you haven't the room to properly swing, pull, push (etc.) it at all, then 'the bigger the better' - because the larger tool will be more economical of effort, and less likely to require excessive or even dangerous force by the operator to achieve the objective.

[Tony Wright]

I decided this afternoon to try some more panning shots. 

 

The failure rate is enormous (some 40 exposures before one is anything like half-decent), but some do work......

 

 

Fairly successful, I think. This is a Golden Age A4.

 

 

Not quite so crisp is this DJH/Geary A1 as it races southwards. 

 

 

Another A1, this time DJH/Wright/Rathbone glides by on the Down Queen of Scots. 

 

 

And another DJH/Wright/Rathbone A1 combination heads north, this time on the Down Flying Scotsman. 

 

 

Perhaps slightly too blurred, but the best I got of 60504 (Crownline/Wright/Rathbone). Despite their poor reputation as vehicles, the Thompson Pacifics could certainly run fast. 

 

 

And a V2 (Crownline/Wright/Rathbone) speeds northwards.

 

 

Another V2 (Nu-Cast/Comet/Wright/Rathbone) takes an Up express through Bytham at high speed. 

 

Getting the numbers crisp is very difficult with these type of shots, and it's really a case of setting the camera on burst mode, with a shutter speed of around a 40th of a second, with a wide open iris, trying to follow the loco as it runs by (at high speed). 

 

A mixed bunch, I think, though since the essence of the ECML is high speed, then worth pursuing? 

 

Has anyone else tried panning? 

 

When the panning does work to good effect it can be quite striking.

 

Striking enough to be the subject of DJH's advert in the current Modeller......... 

 

DJH liked the smoke effects, but I remain ambivalent. 

 

 

[Tony Teague]

3 hours ago, gr.king said:

Solder the nut to a new rectangular piece of brass sheet then epoxy the sheet onto the top of the piece that is already fixed inside the end of the van? Put the screw in, and the underframe, to line it up correctly before the epoxy goes off?

 

Paint the top of the new piece "floor colour" before fitting?

 

3 hours ago, t-b-g said:

I have had success chemically blackening a bolt, using my favourite flux (Templers Telux) which doesn't eat through the blackening. One possible alternative would be to solder the bolt in the body and put a nut under the floor.

 

Soldering the bolt in should be much easier as you can apply the flux and solder under the plate.

 

3 hours ago, john new said:

As a regular bodger my suggested solution will not match the purists but looking at the problem why fit the body by bolts at the open ends? A small wooden block glued across inside the van as a false floor will be invisible and simple wood screws going into it from underneath through the chassis/floor will hold it together. 
 

Just a thought, based on a process I first used on some old H Dublo coaches fixed that way decades ago when I couldn’t work out how to re-rivet the bogies back on.

 

3 hours ago, Paul Cram said:

Put the bolt through the hole and solder in place from the bottom.

 

Many thanks chaps!

 

I knew that this was the right place to post my question.

 

One way or another I shall finish the job tomorrow.

 

Tony