East Barnet Joint Stock - a workbench

[Jon4470]

Chas

 

Very impressive attention to detail! Also something that I might follow on the next build (now that I’ve also got some of that copper strip).

 

jon

 

PS.  Next challenge for you is working hinges for the spectacles……..tongue firmly in cheek 🙂

[Chas Levin]

33 minutes ago, Jon4470 said:

Chas

 

Very impressive attention to detail! Also something that I might follow on the next build (now that I’ve also got some of that copper strip).

 

jon

 

PS.  Next challenge for you is working hinges for the spectacles……..tongue firmly in cheek 🙂

Haha - you tongue-in-cheek Jon, but I did actaully toy with the idea of modelling one of the windows open, as you see in that J50 photo Jonathan W posted. Trouble is, I always worry about robustness (even though I handle things extremely carefully, no-one else at home handles them and I never take anything outside the house!) and I didn't think I'd be able to fix an open window sufficiently well to chance it...

If my current plans work though, the copper rings will be very welled anchored by their 'sunbeams', so as long as the glue holding the plastic discs inside the rings holds well... I was about to finish that sentence with an observation that I haven't yet thought of a way to secure those plastic discs inside the copper rings other than with glue...

 

but: I wonder whether I could drill say 3 holes in the copper strip (0.3mm is about the smallest drill I have) so they'd be equidistant around the circumference once the strip is made up into the ring; then drill corresponding holes in the edges of the plastic discs and insert short pins of 0.3mm brass wire so that they just go into the plastic and still protrude outside the copper ring; then - with the briefest of brief touches of the iron - solder the protruding pins to the outside of the ring (to form those 'sunbeam' stabilisers I mentioned)? I'd still add a tiny ring of glue along the join between the copper and the plastic, but the plastic discs would also be kept in place by the pins which would be much better than just glue, which might dry out or fail over time... 🤔 The glazing is 0.5mm thick and provided the pins didn't go into it too far I reckon they wouldn't really show - in fact, if I just did two, one each side, they might pass for a hinge on one side and a handle on the other! Not quite working hinges though... 😉

 

Worth a try I think. After all, if the eyes are the windows to a person's soul, then surely cab spectacles are the windows to a steam loco's soul, aren't they? 

 

 

Edited September 8, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Jon4470]

4 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

Haha - you tongue-in-cheek Jon, but I did actaully toy with the idea of modelling one of the windows open, as you see in that J50 photo Jonathan W posted. Trouble is, I always worry about robustness (even though I handle things extremely carefully, no-one else at home handles them and I never take anything outside the house!) and I didn't think I'd be able to fix an open window sufficiently well to chance it...

If my current plans work though, the copper rings will be very welled anchored by their 'sunbeams', so as long as the glue holding the plastic discs inside the rings holds well... I was about to finish that sentence with an observation that I haven't yet thought of a way to secure those plastic discs inside the copper rings other than with glue...

 

but: I wonder whether I could drill say 3 holes in the copper strip (0.3mm is about the smallest drill I have) so they'd be equidistant around the circumference once the strip is made up into the ring; then drill corresponding holes in the edges of the plastic discs and insert short pins of 0.3mm brass wire so that they just go into the plastic and still protrude outside the copper ring; then - with the briefest of brief touches of the iron - solder the protruding pins to the outside of the ring (to form those 'sunbeam' stabilisers I mentioned)? I'd still add a tiny ring of glue along the join between the copper and the plastic, but the plastic discs would also be kept in place by the pins which would be much better than just glue, which might dry out or fail over time... 🤔 The glazing is 0.5mm thick and provided the pins didn't go into it too far I reckon they wouldn't really show - in fact, if I just did two, one each side, they might pass for a hinge on one side and a handle on the other! Not quite working hinges though... 😉

 

Worth a try I think. After all, if the eyes are the windows to a person's soul, then surely cab spectacles are the windows to a steam loco's soul, aren't they? 

 

 

Sounds a bit like pin hole surgery to me😀

 

On a serious note, I’m whether you may not need to drill into the plastic (or at least not drill every hole). My thinking is that, if the plastic is a reasonably tight fight and the pins are pushed through the copper strip and soldered, then the pressure of the pins on the plastic maybe sufficient to hold it in place. 
It would avoid trying to drill multiple holes accurately.

 

Jon

[Chas Levin]

Haha - 'pin hole surgery': love it! 🤣

 

It's a nice thought Jon, but the trouble is that my super-duper patented Chas Levin Plastic Disc Cutting Tube (TM) method as detailed in earlier posts doesn't give discs with edges perpendicular to the disc surface. It gives a disc with a slightly angled edge, the sort of thing you'd get if you took a cone of plastic and sliced off the lowest layer. That's why I ended up with a curved edge on these first ones, making them smaller by working on the very outer edge with the slightly wider circumference. Now, I can try and take the edge back to straight / perpendicular, but I doubt I can get a really accurate flat edge because it's a very small disc (6mm) and difficult to work on.

 

That means there'd always be the danger of the plastic slipping against the pins and pinging out, especially under pressure.

 

I don't think drilling will be too difficult, especially if I'm only doing two or three holes per disc and only drilling in half a mm or so. I think the best way will be to drill the flat copper, then make up the copper rings and then put the plastic discs inside the rings, using the holes in the copper to mark where to drill the plastic... 🤔

 

It's worth trying I think: maybe worth making a small batch of plastic discs too, to allow for drilling accidents. It'll be very pleasing if it works, which is always my justification for having a go at something!

[Chas Levin]

Stage one of the second set of cab windows has been completed - fiddly but do-able!

Having cut some more plastic discs using the largest cutting tube (to give extra material so that I can take the circumference back while keeping the sides perpendicular) I've given them protective masking tape covers (cut with one of the smaller tubes), seen here in front of some spare discs I cut at the same time, in case my first edge drilling efforts wreck some of the discs:

 

 

The final diameter of 6mm gives a circumference of 18.85mm so rounding it down to 18, I decided holes 6mm apart would be near enough equidistant around the sides and marked a pair of suitable length pieces of the copper strip. It occurred to me at this point that if I kept each strip with it's own disc, minor variations in the placing of the holes wouldn't cause problems because each disc would be individually drilled to match it's own piece of copper... I've tried this before though and it's surprisingly easy to forget amd mix things up, so we'll see:

 

 

 

 

With the copper strip held steady, there's still a marked tendency for the 0.3mm drill to wander before biting and as the strip's only 0.62mm wide there's not a lot of land either side to play with, so a small indentation with a pin provided a steadying influence on the drill:

 

 

Amazingly, I drilled six holes using the same 0.3mm drill, no breakages! And here's the result:

 

 

One slight issue is that the much reduced material either side of each hole is apt to bend more easily and sharply than the full width when the strips are held in place round the 6mm steel rod to have their ends soldered, but I did some re-shaping after these photos were taken by rolling a smaller than 6mm steel rod inside the copper rings so they now look more evenly circular than here:

 

 

The next stage is to reduce the plastic discs until they're a snug fit inside the copper rings, then drill and pin them...

Edited September 12, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

A few days away in Norwich, including a visit to the Bure Valley 15" gauge Railway:

 

 

Work on the C2 spectacle windows (spectacles?) has run into some flak and I may have to bail on my fancy copper frames and go back to the standard piece of clear glazing across the inside of the spectacle plate - the jury's still out on that one.

 

The drivers do now have axle end covers though (thanks again to @Daddyman for his excellent disc cutting tip), plain black as per the prototype, seen here during a chassis running test (caution: may contain lead):

 

 

The edges need a little tidying up and varnish will hide the glue residue and match the finish to the surround, but in checking photos I also realised that all the axle end covers - drivers and bogies - have a small hole or indentation at their centre. Now how much easier would they have been to do, had I spotted the need for them before fixing the covers in place? 🙄 I must develope the habit of really thoroughly studying prototype photos before making things!

Edited October 1, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Bucoops]

Those holes are for mounting the axle in a lathe so they will be conical in shape :)

 

https://blog.railwaymuseum.org.uk/sir-nigel-gresley-overhaul-update-41/

 

 

[Chas Levin]

11 minutes ago, Bucoops said:

Those holes are for mounting the axle in a lathe so they will be conical in shape :)

 

https://blog.railwaymuseum.org.uk/sir-nigel-gresley-overhaul-update-41/

 

 

Thanks Rich - very interesting link too, I hadn't come across that before.

Some careful work with a small drill to follow...

Noting that the holes in the Gresley photos on that blog are seemingly left as bare steel I lookied more closely at a high resolution C2 photo and saw the same thing.

I find it quite difficult to see 'everything at once', so to speak - in other words, I'm constantly going back to photos I've already studied and finding new detail I'd not previously noticed: is that the same for other people?

[Bucoops]

2 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

is that the same for other people?

 

Very much so!

[31A]

On 01/10/2022 at 21:57, Chas Levin said:

I'm constantly going back to photos I've already studied and finding new detail I'd not previously noticed: is that the same for other people?

 

Yes!

[Chas Levin]

Thanks Steve, Rich and everyone who clicked on 'Agree': I feel much better already! 🙂

 

It is quite odd though, that we can look at a picture and completely fail to notice something but then, once our attention is drawn to it - reading about that particular feature for instance - it leaps out of the photo at us. The human brain: you couldn't make it up...

 

I guess it's a skill we you can cultivate though, 'reading' photos, scanning for detail and so forth: food for thought...

Edited October 3, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Compound2632]

If you are leaving the spectacle plate rings as bare copper, is it worth varnishing them to stop them tarnishing or even going green over time?

[Chas Levin]

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

If you are leaving the spectacle plate rings as bare copper, is it worth varnishing them to stop them tarnishing or even going green over time?

Yes, good point Stephen, thank you; I'd been thinking about how tarnishing might in fact darken them down a bit which would probably look quite good, but you're right that verdigris would probably not look so good...

 

I have now got back in the saddle with the glazing; it's funny how reading something you've written makes you think more about it and after reading my own post from Saturday I realised it would be a great pity to give up on these ringed windows, as they should look so much better than a single piece of plastic stuck to the inside of the cab wall. It wouldn't be the end of the world of course and the techniques I've learnt will be useful on other jobs, but even so...

 

The 'flak' I ran into concerned soldering: I found I was pushing things a bit far in trying to solder the little pieces of 0.3mm brass wire into the holes in the rings and into the sides of plastic discs. No matter how careful I was, the iron's heat caused some deforming of the plastic, shrinking it away from the iron tip a fraction of a mm and distorting what had been a pretty accurate circle, enough to show quite clearly. Not only that, but although I'd joined the ring using 188 degree solder, one of the holes was too close to the join and adding one of the pieces of wire parted the ring! 😧

 

I only tried it with one of the specs though, so I'm now in the process of making a replacement for that one. This pair are also fractionally smaller than the previous ones as the spec holes are actually 5.8 to 5.9mm and 6mm specs were sitting against the inside faces of the holes, instead of sitting just inside the actual openings. I didn't fancy trying to reduce the circumference of my piece of 6mm steel bar though, so I found a scrap piece of 6mm aluminium tube in a spares box which was easy to reduce and which is equally impervious to solder.

 

 

It's another occasion where the ceramic tipped tweezers were worth their weight in gold, holding the ends of the copper strip together for soldering: they're very fine tips but very strong and rigid.

I've been using a hole punch to make 6mm discs of masking tape (who actually knew that the standard paper stationery hole punch produces 6mm holes? I didn't...) by putting some masking tape onto a piece of 0.2mm plastic card, punching some holes and then peeling the tape discs off the plastic discs and sticking them on the glazing discs. This not only protects the plastic while I'm working on it (which I discovered while making my first set is necessary to avoid marking the plastic too much) but it also provides a central 6mm circle to aim for while filing round the edges of the disc:

 

 

It works very well - here's the previous pair before the soldering damage to one of them:

 

 

I plan now to fix them just using the Glue'n'Glaze adhesive and to trust in its holding power! The cab roof is bolted on after all (though I'll reinforce the rear footings with a small dab of contact adhesive) so it could be removed if re-fixing the glazing becomes necessary in the future...🤔

[Chas Levin]

The C2 wheel centres now have their centre holes; in real life, if you look very closely, in the right light, you can see that the bogie axles' holes show silver (steel) and the drivers' show brass (cosmetic end covers). I intend to ignore this!

 

[Chas Levin]

Another job on the C2 that's been occupying some time concerns a mystery spot that I noticed - quite out of the blue - on the apron of the steam dome late last year; here's a photo of how it looked at the time:

 

 

I'd been busy with all sorts of other aspects of the model - not to mention life generally - when I suddenly noticed this pimple-like thing. I assumed it must always have been there and that I'd over-looked it, thought I couldn't imagine how. I went back over the build progress photos I'd taken and I was even more mystified - here are photos of bare brass, primed brass and the first stage of painting and it's quite clearly not there:

 

 

 

 

By February it had grown further:

 

 

I realised then that in spite of what I thought had been careful cleaning and preparation, some small impurity - most probably flux - must have remained and was causing some kind of chemical reaction beneath the surface.

To say I was not pleased would be an understatement! 😞

However, I decided to leave it to finish reacting and then attempt to remove the resultant blemish and make good the paintwork. That took some patience... However, I'm happy to say I succeeded (assuming I have in fact left it long enough to have fully finished its reaction of course, which only time will tell!).

 

By July it had expanded minutely further, starting to split the green paint, though thankfully in a very localised way:

 

 

And by early September the split was a little more pronounced, but it had remained unchanged for a couple of months:

 

 

I decided at this point to take off the top of the protruberance with a pair of Xuron flush cutters, which revealed - after some very careful smoothing with the corner of a very fine sanding stick - a fairly flat surface but with the tiniest pinprick hole:

 

 

After some priming, filling and filing, this was the result:

 

 

And after some re-touching of the paint (I made sure to use the same aerosol of GNR Light Green to match, spraying some into the aerosol cap and using a 10/0 brush to touch it in) here's how it looked:

 

 

And here's the final result, after some unifying varnish coats - the close-up exaggerates the orange-peel effect but shows that the touched-in area has blended well and in real life it's invisible:

 

 

So... the moral of this story is in two parts: first, make sure you clean up really properly after soldering; and second, if something worrying does happen to your otherwise finished and painted surface, don't panic - paint and varnish can hide almost anything! 😊

[Chas Levin]

The finishing line's in sight, with only the work on the cab roof left to do, so I did a trial fit of the roof today and couldn't resist a quick photo-op:

 

 

[Chas Levin]

The reason for the trial roof fitting was to make sure it sat correctly after painting and varnishing - the last fitting was before those things had been done - as I don't want to be messing about fettling the fit once the cab's been glazed, for fear of disturbing the glazing (which is still being worked on).

I went back and took another look at some C2 and C12 photos to check exactly how the cab roof sits and - in another embarrassing example of spotting things I'd previously missed - I found some areas of lining I'd never noticed before, running along the lower cab roof edges, where they meet the tank top surfaces at the front and sides. I found too that I could see in one photo where the semi-circular areas on the lower side areas of the cab front, to the sides of the spectacles, are also lined: basically, the lining is pretty much continuous round the whole roof, something I should have realised would be the case, based on other locos and what I've read about GNR (and LNER) lining practice.

Not a problem of course, as I'm happy to crack out the lining kit again, but very lucky I saw it at this point.

With the usual apologies for poor quality enlargements (and for any possible copyright infringement, hopefully not too much of a problem as I'm only showing small cropped areas for study purposes) here are sections of three photos, two showing the bottom of the cab roof sides where they meet the tank tops - where there's clearly visible horizontal white lining - and one showing the front corner of the cab, where you can also see white lining along the lowest horizontal edge of the cab's front wall - how I missed these areas I don't know, though in my defence, I would say that many contemporary photos were taken by someone standing on the same ground level as the loco, restricting what can be seen of the tops of the side tanks:

 

 

 

 

Thankfully it's not too late to add them in as the roof is a bolt-on assembly. It also turned out to be a very useful discovery in another way: having gone for the bolt-on cab roof to allow interior detailing (thanks again David for the suggestion), it does mean that the joins between the roof and the tank top surfaces aren't soldered and therefore have to be dealt with in some other way.

Having spotted the lining along those lower edges, I wondered whether there was also beading? As mentioned above, most contemporary photos were usually taken from ground level but I found one shot, I'd guess taken from a bridge, where you can clearly see the presence of beading around the bottom of the front corner of the cab roof assembly. It's a later LNER 'C12' version of the loco, but I think it must surely be safe to assume the beading's an original feature:

 

 

It also looks to me, from this last photo, as if those small sections of beading are angled - chamfered, almost - with a wider base than top; perhaps 'sloping sides' is a better term?

Clearly, soldering pieces of brass section to the foot of the painted and varnished cab roof isn't an option and they'll have to be glued after the roof is in place, but that does have the advantage that they can be positioned to cover the roof-to-tank-top gaps fully.

I also realised that while I can do the extra pair of curved lining sections on the cab front before assembly, I'll have to do the horizontal sections around the foot of the cab roof after assembly and with the new beading in place as otherwise, I shan't be able to judge exactly where the white needs to go to sit above the black beading. Mind you, that does mean I can use the new beading edge as a guide for the ruling pen.

I shall spend some time this weekend studying all the C2 and C12 photos I have, really, really carefully, to try and make sure there isn't anything else I've missed!! 😅

[Citadel]

On the second photo is the pattern from a very dedicated and creative cleaner and his rag?  If so, clearly beyond the call of duty.  Maybe that’s your next project 🙂.

 

Your C2 does look absolutely splendid. 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Citadel

[Chas Levin]

15 hours ago, Citadel said:

On the second photo is the pattern from a very dedicated and creative cleaner and his rag?  If so, clearly beyond the call of duty.  Maybe that’s your next project 🙂.

 

Your C2 does look absolutely splendid. 

Thanks Mike and yes, I've read that the pattern you see there is from cleaning - or perhaps more properly polishing - paintwork.

 

I do find it strange though, because when I clean and/or polish things, I try to remove any kind of pattern formed by residue (polish, oil, smears etc) which I'm sure eveyone does and I'm sure they did too; in which case, is that pattern where a slightly abrasive cleaning substance has been used and it's actually hwere cut those patterns into the paintwork - very shallow cutting of course, but still there: are we looking at the Edwardian version of T-Cut?

 

If it is something like T-Cut, I'd still have to say that where I've seen professionals polishing car bodies (and where I work, we are opporsite a car body repair shop where they frequently work in front of the building) they usually go to great lengths to buff up the paintwork after using an abrasive polish, to remove those kinds of marks...

 

Maybe the photographer popped along in between the polishing and the buffing? 🤔

[Compound2632]

48 minutes ago, Chas Levin said:

Thanks Mike and yes, I've read that the pattern you see there is from cleaning - or perhaps more properly polishing - paintwork.

 

It's not unusual to see such patterns in 19th century photos of locos on shed. My understanding is that the grease - tallow? - was applied to protect the paintwork - it formed a protective layer over the varnish.

[Chas Levin]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It's not unusual to see such patterns in 19th century photos of locos on shed. My understanding is that the grease - tallow? - was applied to protect the paintwork - it formed a protective layer over the varnish.

Ohhhhhh: I never thought of it being grease or tallow; thanks Stephen! That explains it, since as you say, that photo is certainly not unusual for the time.

They certainly were keen on protective layers, weren't they? Tallow, over varnish, over paint, over metal...

[Chas Levin]

Right: stage one of Operation Cab Roof Enhancement completed - here's a quick game of 'Spot the Difference':

 

 

 

A bit of cotton-bud cleaning up to do in two or three days' time but otherwise, a fairly good match I think; next job is the beading.

 

I went back and had another look at the photos where the sections of lining I've just done don't seem to be there and they still look like they're missing, but I have to conclude it's down to dirt and soot. They are low down and on the front facing cab wall, so I can imagine smoke and soot particles naturally depositing in those areas, caught in the angle between the cab front and the rearmost end of the boiler...

[Asterix2012]

Could the beading be angle iron?

[Chas Levin]

10 hours ago, Asterix2012 said:

Could the beading be angle iron?

Interesting question and yes, it might be.

I wonder if it was angled like that for rainwater run-off? It does look different to the other beading round the roof and the tops of the side tanks - they look flatter, and narrower.

 

Measurements of my model reveal that its beading appears as slightly different widths on the front and the sides however, so some care will be needed. It was flat NS strip, part of the original LRM etch, mounted along the side and top edges of the cab roof, so it appears in full width when viewed from the side or top, but in profile when viewed from the front. It'll need to be matched in both places, so the new pieces look right next in context.

I'd have preferred to have primed and painted a single length of strip, then cut and adjusted the pieces to fit, but I think other than a dusting of etch primer, two different width pieces will have to be cut up, fitted and fettled, then glued in place and then painted. A little fiddly, but we don't want to spoil the ship for a ha'pe'th of tar (if I've got that phrase right?).

Edited October 16, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

Cab spectacle glazing for the C2 has moved on to the final phase🥂. First job was to replace the window I'd spoiled through trying to solder wire pieces to the copper rim and as before, I cut the disc of plastic using a larger cutter and then filed it down using progressively finer Albion Metals sanding sticks, going very carefully so as to preserve the circular shape, until it fitted inside a replacement copper rim:

 

 

 

 

The size of the window was made to site just inside the inner rim of the opening in the spectacle plate / cab front, so that glue can be applied round the rim where it protrudes backwards, inside the cab (and where it'll be invisible), so that the window rim appears from the front to meet the inside of the opening, as on the prototype:

 

 

 

And after a first application of glue to tack the glazing in place and check positioning, here's how it looks:

 

 

 

 

In spite of my best efforts and in spite of leaving the masking tape in place as long as possible, the surface of the plastic is still a little marked; I hope to get away with passing that off as a subtle form of weathering, a representation of the dirt and debris that adheres to front facing windows on a steam loco. This glazing material is brilliant in a number of ways but if it does have a disadvantage, it's that it is a little easy to mark; needless to say though, it looks far worse in strongly lit close-up like this than in real life!

 

Anyway, I'll add more glue inside the spec plate once the initial application has set; I'm using the Deluxe Glue'n'Glaze again, partly so that any seepage will dry clear, but I may top it off inside the cab wall with a fine ring of araldite. I'll then finish off the copper rims with a coat of varnish (thanks again for that suggestion @Compound2632).

 

The tiny lengths of beading to go along the lower edges of the cab sides and front are also being fabricated. I wasn't sure how different thicknesses of different materials would look in place, so I made up three sets of pieces, one each in 0.25mm plasticard, 10thou brass and 0.5mm NS etch off-cut but in the end, the brass looked right:

 

 

 

The plan is, once the gluing of the glazing is finished, to fix the cab roof in place and then glue on these pieces of beading, fill any gaps at the ends where they meet the vertical beading, paint them gloss black to match their neighbours and then add the missing white lining above them...

Edited October 23, 2022 by Chas Levin