What's on your S Scale Workbench?

[ScottW]

My modelling mojo disapeared at the start of the year, coincidentally about the time the nice weather showed up. But I'm happy to report that it's slowly starting to come back to me.

 

Last year I started on a batch of three trader wagons but only got so far before starting another project. This is how far they got before putting them to one side.

 

 

After a bit of work over the last few weeks I've managed to get them finished ready for the paintshop.

 

Edited September 20, 2022 by ScottW

[Timber]

Have this small chassis on the workbench - hopefully will fit a motor and gearbox over the next few days....

Edited December 27, 2022 by Timber

[ScottW]

Finally finished

 

 

[Timber]

amazing

[Rosedale]

Marvellous, Scott! So crisp, detailed and superbly finished. Where did you get the lettering?

[ScottW]

Thanks for your comment, Paul. I used waterslide decals for the lettering, custom made by a chap in Cumbria.

[Timber]

Brecon and Merthyr No8 starting to take shape. 

 

The wheels are Ultrascale EM.  They spun me up some correct length axles.   Going forward I may print my own wheels.  The number of spokes is slightly wrong but given this is the first time I have made an OSF engine, I wanted to start with a system I know works.  I will be using their outside cranks.

 

Dome and safety valve off for casting in brass.  

 

 

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by Timber

[SteveCornford]

Hi Timber, might I suggest

A)  you remove the protective brown paper label from the wash n cure turntable so that more UV gets reflected up under your print when curing.

B) sit your print on an upturned glass tumbler on the turntable to make best use of the UV

 

C) resin print a section of s scale timber base from templot, cure, then measure the sleeper length,  and the length of the base over the two outermost timbers & compare with the templot designed template in order to measure resin shrinkage accurately

 

Cheers Steve

[Timber]

Cheers Steve - missed this as I have been distracted with some other activities.  I find that this elegoo water washable shrinks at a consistant 1.1% so I just add that to my Lychee slicer.   I also cure everything in water - it makes a very significant difference.   I just drop the prints in a jam jar full of water and put under UV for 2 minutes.   The saddle was printed at 15 um at a 45 degree angle - it took about 20 hours but it is very smooth.   

 

Photo was not great - my photography is not much better than my modelling.   The wavy lines on the sddle are under the surface.   I use a honeycomb technique to eradicate warping.

 

I have the brass boiler fittings now but have decided to rework the etch so waiting on this now before I fit the motion....

 

 

Edited May 29, 2023 by Timber

[jdb82]

11 hours ago, Timber said:

Cheers Steve - missed this as I have been distracted with some other activities.  I find that this elegoo water washable shrinks at a consistant 1.1% so I just add that to my Lychee slicer.   I also cure everything in water - it makes a very significant difference.   I just drop the prints in a jam jar full of water and put under UV for 2 minutes.   The saddle was printed at 15 um at a 45 degree angle - it took about 20 hours but it is very smooth.   

 

Photo was not great - my photography is not much better than my modelling.   The wavy lines on the sddle are under the surface.   I use a honeycomb technique to eradicate warping.

 

I have the brass boiler fittings now but have decided to rework the etch so waiting on this now before I fit the motion....

 

 

 

This is looking superb! I must get round to trying some larger prints instead of just the small parts I usually end up doing. Do you find the marks from the supports under the boiler are easily dealt with?

[apl31]

For over 50 years Ive been waiting for someone to produce an etch kit for my favourite engine -Furness Rly 2-2-2WT. As nobody has to my knowledge, and unlikely ever to in S scale, I decided to have a go myself. Im not sure if “kit” is correct term, more like a set of parts to aid a scratch build. I will need to 3D print firebox and some other parts.

I tried several 2D programs but found QCad worked best for me. The etch was printed by PPD and Im very pleased with the etch detail. I now need to find out whether I have designed it dimensionally correct. I have blue tacked a few parts together for the photo- the chassis frame and 3 part outer frame. As can be seen some parts are not folded yet or tabs removed.

Im going to finish my NER van before starting this etch, but Ill report any progress.

[ScottW]

Norman Pattenden started an S Scale 2-2-2WT a number of years ago which, I believe, was completed by Trevor Nunn after Norman sadly passed away.

 

 

No pressure. 🤣🤣

[apl31]

Isn't that beautiful.

Norman and Ross Pochin were very skilled people.  I saw Trevor's amazing NER long boiler close up on  Blakey Rigg at Jarrow last month. 

Luckily these days 2D and 3D designing can help us lesser mortals produce something reasonable.

[Rosedale]

And now for something completely different. I have recently started using my AnyCubic Mono 4K printer to learn the delights of this dark art. First up was to print some parts designed by Aiden Love for a NER Bouch Brakevan which is now under construction for Blakey Rigg. 
But I have started planning for a new Irish Broad Gauge layout, a MGWR/GSWR small junction inspired by Crossdoney. I'm scratch-building a carriage truck and need a carriage to go on it. I found a Fusion design on-line for a Brougham carriage which I paid for and down-loaded. I then re-scaled all the parts in the design to 1:64. I had a few bad prints but refined the supports in the Lychee slicer until I was able to produce a decent set of parts. It's very small and I may change the colour, but I am very pleased with it. Alongside horse-boxes and butter vans, I will have a variety of vehicles to be taken off the backs of passenger trains and shunted into the end-loading bay (when it get's built!). 

[apl31]

Pleased to see your getting to grips with printing after the initial problems we all had and still have.

[Beechnut]

Another loco is needed for Emwell, can you ever have enough? This is a J67/1 which will be used to pull my newly completed W&U bogie tramcar.  I can’t lay claim to any 3D printing, just drills and files, and a little bit of etching.

 

Brendan

 

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by Beechnut

[Rob R]

Pray tell (if you can) whose etchings?

[Beechnut]

Hi Rob

 

I have a friend who does them. His main interest is air braked wagons but given a dimensioned drawing can produce anything. For the ex GER 0-6-0 we used the Iain Rice MRJ piece, and for the bogie tramcar the 1982 MRC Annual supported by the photos in Peter Paye’s The Tollesbury Branch. 
Despite having etchings for the coach I found it a difficult and time consuming build, everything except the ends, sides and verandahs is scratch built. There’s two etches on the fret representing the two carriages on the branch, there are very slight differences in the panelling. Unfortunately Phil had a computer meltdown during the final design stage which misaligned the drop lights on one side of the unbuilt carriage. It’s hardly noticeable on the etch and if anyone were interested in further etches it would be corrected. I did make a duplicate set of bogies and a few other bits but it will be a few years before I pluck courage to tackle another.

A six wheel ex Stoke Ferry brake is next but I’ve not found a drawing so far.

The loco chassis, although basic, is dimensionally correct and provides rods and brake gear which makes life a lot easier. There’s no spacers since split frame seems to be the default in S scale. I use 1.6mm double sided PCB 3/4” wide.

 

Brendan

 

 

[Rosedale]

Good clean work. Very impressive and quick use of SSMRS Parts!

[Beechnut]

Some progress today, not all in the forward direction. The NS sides which represent the tanks, cab and bunker, and wheels pressed onto axles. The latter operation resulting in the failure of one axle, no bad thing really as it obviously wasn’t sound. You can see the repaired axle in its jig whilst the epoxy cures on the left of the picture.

The sides were cut out as 90 x 30.5 rectangles, dimensions taken off the rescaled drawing. The straight external cuts are made using my ancient Burgess bandsaw and chain drilling and filing for the cab entrance.

 

Brendan 

 

 

[Beechnut]

Not a lot of progress today. Cab front and back, bunker and roof, the latter being a pain to make due to the changing radius of the roof profile. Progress will get even slower going forward due to the details that need adding, they take just as long to make as the big bits. Also there’s a line of rivets on the cab front where the roof line was modified, I’m thinking of getting a GW rivet press as I wasn’t that impressed with the examples I made on my J69.

 

 

[Beechnut]

Even less progress today, just the boiler which started life as an 11/4” diameter valve spindle!

 

 

[ScottW]

Great stuff, Brendan. Nice to see some old school modelling. 👊

[Beechnut]

And here’s me thinking it’s cutting edge. No progress at all today due to attendance at the Land Rover series one owners club annual rally at Packington Hall celebrating 75 years of the marque.

 

 

[flubrush]

I had been doing a fair bit of wheel work over the winter and I meant to show some of it on here,  but got involved with rebuilding a garage roof. :-)

 

I've been making wagon wheels with 3D printed centres.  This is a follow on from my making wheels for the Parts shelves in 2019 when it looked as though I couldn't get supplies from our suppliers.  But Paul has got supplies from Slaters,  so the emergency is over. :-)     I actually managed to produce almost 100 axles back then,  but I had a lot of problems getting the TIR of the wheels within acceptable limits.    The Slaters wheels had a TIR of up to 0.003" so I aimed for that,  but had a lot of scrappage due to loads of wheels out of limits.

 

I decided to have another go at producing wheels on axles to see if I could get around the problems,  and this time I would do all the work on the lathe.  I had been using jigs and press tools for the previous work and thought that might be where my problems lay.

 

So I made up a magnetic chuck to hold the wagon wheels in the Cowells,  using a nice big bit of brass bar that I dug out of scrap box.

 

 

Here are the bits - main chuck body lower left with two holes for magnets.  Above the body is the back cap to keep the magnets in,  and the two small neodymium magnets top right.

 

 

The body with the magnets inserted.  It's important to maintain an air gap between the magnets and the wheel flange so that you can get the wheel back out.    Once the magnets and the tyre stick together,  they are the very devil to part. :-)   You can see the very shallow ridge on which the flange sits to hold the wheel tyre true and away from the magnets.

 

 

The back of the chuck with the rear cap in place.

 

 

The chuck with a wheel in place.

 

One unintended plus for the magnetic chuck - you can eject a wheel and insert another one with the lathe still running.

 

 

Here's a wheel being pushed out with a rod through the headstock.  The magnets still hold the wheel against the chuck and it's easy to pick off the wheel while the chuck is turning,  and also to put another wheel in place.   This is quite important if you have got a fair number of wheels to do.  Each wheel has three separate operations - centre drill,  drill through for undersize axle hole,  then open up with hand reamer and each operation is carried out on each wheel.   So if I'm doing two dozen wheels,  that's sevety-two wheel changes,  and it wont do your lathe motor very much good switching on and off for every change - unless you've got a clutch on your lathe - I haven't. :-)

 

 

Here's my test bed for wheel concentricity - a bit basic but it does the job.   The axles have parallel journals since I'm using sprung "W" irons.

 

And after all this I was still getting out of tolerance wheel sets!!!   Until I decided to check the parallel journal axles and found that the journals were not concentric with the axle outer diameters.  The axles had been supplied with the the wheel tyres but I had never thought to check them for TIR.  They are actually 1.9mm diameter rather than 2mm and I suspect that the problem might have been gripping them in a 2mm collet.   I tried it with the DA collets in the Cowells and they did not chuck up concentric.  However,  one benefit is that if the wheel centre is out of tolerance,  you can rotate the wheel on the axle until one error cancels the other out. :-)

 

If anyone is also interested in making wheels with 3' 1" diameter tyres,  then I have hundreds of them and I can get them to Paul so that he can supply them from stores at some suitable price.

 

I have also been looking for a source of 2mm rod to make some more axles and it's not an easy material to source.  Susie pointed me to some EN1PB rod sold by MK Metals and I got some of that.  It machines beautifully,  but it is a bit rusty (pre-weathered :-) ) and is only 1.9mm diameter.   I also sourced some 2mm rod from far Eastern suppliers,  marketed as axles for model cars.  Here's a typical supplier

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166076025159?hash=item26aae70947:g:ZKMAAOSwZLJkVKCB&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA0Lu93FyEUVgMaPvYiCnI9KSBGCF13inkroREQen45FT0YvMW9CMovmjg69RVoNJYf5CdLs8RsX2Jqa%2FD4dXjpDCbwvCj0%2BqJPunmFyy5tbOgHCXRsBB2HJ%2FbrkiRlWKWZhw82Mg%2F0TImH2YnthmafaDX0EKsJVh5Y1hDURvWN%2FLNhBsaGBTtbXQyOsxEmKGB2tOIXlpq4%2FVeL1jQac0ni9rLLEhJg0bEougAWenqDIXQPxGt5I5ZvvviYJjQt7FxfydmZUnB8Gw6HurcV0HnqlA%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR7Cf5vieYg

 

This material machined fairly well and the rod is plated and spot on for 2mm diameter.

 

I'm also going to machine reduced diameter wheel seats on the axles,  which,  if done at the same time as the parallel journals will mean that the journals are concentric with the wheel seats. :-)   I have heard it said that that is why Slaters have reduced diameter wheel seats on their products. :-)

 

Jim.