Help needed on L and T sections in plastic...

[gordon s]

I've knocked up a curved plate girder bridge from Peco and Wills components for my own layout Eastwood Town.  It's really a generic bridge and not based on any particular prototype, but hopefully will look OK in situ.

 

I've had to add additional panels to get the right length spans and am not sure what to do with the L and T braces that form part of these bridges.  I had a look at Plastruct components and ordered what I thought may be suitable, but having now received them, they are far too heavy.  Perhaps I ordered the wrong items, but either way, I'm not sure how to create these details.

 

Any ideas how to do these in plastic?  Are there other suppliers of these detail sections?

 

Many thanks in advance...

 

Here's a few pics showing the components.

 

 

 

 

 

[Torr Giffard LSWR 1951-71]

Gordon,

 

Evergreen have a great range of fine sections    http://www.evergreenscalemodels.com/

 

 

Dave

[kandc_au]

I'd suggest laminating them from thinner Evergreen/Plastruct/Plasticard or whatever you use.

One of the issues is that apart from brass, you cannot get these sort of things fine enough.

The plastic ones are to think.

Brass can be good but not always practical!

 

Khris

[kandc_au]

I'd suggest laminating them from thinner Evergreen/Plastruct/Plasticard or whatever you use.

One of the issues is that apart from brass, you cannot get these sort of things fine enough.

The plastic ones are to think.

Brass can be good but not always practical!

 

Khris

[Arthur]

As Dave suggests, Evergreen are a good source. With Plastruct, did you order the grey ABS stuff? That is quite heavy in section. The Plastruct Fineline styrene range is much better for 4mm modelling. The smallest T section is 1.2mm x 1.2mm in 0.4mm styrene, is that any use or is that what you have? I'm not sure that Evergreen offer anything much smaller.

 

The UK agents are EMA, here's the relevant page.

 

http://www.ema-models.co.uk/index.php/plastruct-fineline-styrene/tees.html

 

 

Netmerchants in Northern Ireland offer a good service on Evergreen, usually next day, and their stock levels are shown on line.

 

http://www.netmerchants.co.uk/section.php/1017/1/modelling_materials/74773235e441835637340ee9d91ca4b0

[hayfield]

have a word with Ron Heggs, he just builds these up in strips he cuts himself.

[gordon s]

Thanks.  I'll go and look at the Evergreen product.

 

The Plastruct product I have is white plastic and the section number is 90564.

 

Of course I should have given the dimensions of each section.  The L is 2.6mm wide and 0.8mm high with a 0.7mm thick rib.

 

The T is 4.35mm wide and 1.5mm high with the same thickness of 0.7mm.

[gazmanjack]

Evergreen Styrene : http://www.evergreenscalemodels.com/

 

They have a comprehensive range of plastic sheet, square rod, round rod, rectangle, I beams, H beams, 1/4 round, 1/2 round... The list is endless !

 

Cheers, Gary.

[gordon s]

Thanks again.  Forgot about the brass sections from Metalsmiths...

 

http://www.metalsmith.co.uk/metals-materials.htm

 

Also thought about the asymmetrical section of the T bars and perhaps the answer is to use an H section and then cut it through the centre section to end up with the correct width/height dimensions.

 

Please keep the ideas coming.  They are very helpful to someone way outside their comfort zone...

 

One of the problems I found when cutting small sections of Plasticard with a sharp scalpel, is that the material curls.  Perhaps there is a better method of cutting to avoid that? 

[Arthur]

Gordon, do you mean when cutting narrow strips off the edge of a sheet of plasticard or cutting pieces of section to length?

 

For the latter I use a NorthWest Shortline Chopper, a guillotine type device. Or put this into eBay search;

 

TC-100-M ROD & TIMBER CUTTER FOR MODEL MAKERS

 

Not tried that particular item myself but it's a similar looking device.

 

If it's cutting strip off sheet. I've tried traditional guillotines without success, paper cutters, which have a blade in a sliding head, are a bit better. The simplest method is to not cut the very start and very end of the strip so that the strip, when cut 'off' is still attached to the sheet at either end. Clearly, it cannot curl up. Just nick through the ends to free it, I'm not saying you'll get no curl but it will be considerably reduced.

[kandc_au]

When I suggested laminating them I was thinking along the lines of buy the thin strips, cut ti length and then glue the T piece of strip to the base piece,

So all you are really doing is cutting to length and glueing with solvent.

 

Khris

[kandc_au]

Arthur,

Just looked at the rod and Timber cutter you posted about.

To me, it looks more versatile than the Micro-mark one, which I believe is a knockoff of the North West one anyway.

unfortunately you pay for the versatility.

 

khris

[Loxborough]

I find that pretty much any supplied plastic sections (by which I mean T, H, I, L etc) end up looking much too heavy. As an example, the finest T section listed on the EMA site gives roughly a 90x90 T section built up out of 30mm steel. Not an efficient use of materials, and thus not particularly prototypical. (I would crucify any engineer who suggested building something like that!)

 

My best suggestion would be to buy strips and glue them, particularly as you need assymetrical sections. Your T section, for instance, would build nicely from 4.7x.75 and .75x.75. If you are concerned about the thing being a little over size then I would recommend filing the excess .35mm off rather than cutting.

 

Do not try cutting an H section down the middle; there lies the road to madness (if my experience is anything to go by...)

 

Having said all of which, I would personally go for brass every time...

 

Hope this helps.

 

G

[Arthur]

Arthur,

Just looked at the rod and Timber cutter you posted about.

To me, it looks more versatile than the Micro-mark one, which I believe is a knockoff of the North West one anyway.

unfortunately you pay for the versatility.

 

khris

Khris,

 

Yes, I'm not familiar with the Micro-Mark cutter but the drawback of the NorthWest one (you may know this if you have one) is that you cannot cut an angle mid strip, you can only cut at the ends. There is a stop preventing the strip being pushed right through at an angle. Right angle cuts are no problem.

 

It's difficult to be sure from the photograph but the eBay listed one might avoid this drawback.

[gazmanjack]

Just had a look at the plate girder bridge on one of my layouts. The L sections look about 2mm deep x 2mm wide. This could be replicated with Evergreen styrene no. 292 (2mm angle) and no. 124 (2mm x .5mm strip) or no. 114 (2mm x .42mm). If smaller is needed, you could use no.291 (1.5mm angle) and no.123 (1.5mm x .5mm strip) or no.113 (1.5mm x .42mm). Just cut to length and butt the strip upto the outside of the angle for the T sections.

 

Cheers, Gary.

[Fat Controller]

Am I correct in thinking that most structures like this wouldn't have been fabricated from stock rolled sections, but used either bulb-section (the flattened T-section in the original post), other specially-rolled section, or simple fabrication? In which case, going with fabricated strip, cut to size from sheet, would be the best option. Even without a specialised cutter, you can achieve a high degree of uniformity with a decent cutting board, sharp craft knife (never stint on blades) and a steel rule. I emphasise the steel rule, as some more recent ones are aluminium; very pretty and shiny, good for marking out, but a pain in the proverbials when used to guide a sharp steel blade.

[hayfield]

Thanks again.  Forgot about the brass sections from Metalsmiths...

 

http://www.metalsmith.co.uk/metals-materials.htm

 

Also thought about the asymmetrical section of the T bars and perhaps the answer is to use an H section and then cut it through the centre section to end up with the correct width/height dimensions.

 

Please keep the ideas coming.  They are very helpful to someone way outside their comfort zone...

 

One of the problems I found when cutting small sections of Plasticard with a sharp scalpel, is that the material curls.  Perhaps there is a better method of cutting to avoid that? 

 

 

For very thin plasticard try first a gentle pass with a sharp scalpel, then either bend to snap off or cut through it except the first and last inch which can be snapped or cut off.

 

For thicker material I use a Tamya plastic scriber.