Work in progress: Scratchbuilding a mineral wagon in 0-scale

[Hawk]

Long time no post, but the last months of modelling time has been spent redesigning the etching artwork. The second generation of etchings has now arrived, and the the test build has gotten under way.

 

I took my chances and ordered etches for 20 wagons, and so far I have not discovered any major flaws.

 

One of the changes I made was to have the fasteners for the long rods that goes parallel to the wagon line up proper.

 

Here is the test assembly:

 

 

It might look trivial, but if you look closely you will see that there is in fact a rather complicated relationship between the parts involved.

 

The present state of the wagons:

 

 

And about those etches for 20 wagons, my latest estimate is that it will take at least 60 hours to build one wagon. I have to find ways to speed up construction!

Edited August 11, 2023 by Hawk

[The Nth Degree]

Very nice! Are they you spring/axlebox castings?

[Hawk]

Very nice! Are they you spring/axlebox castings?

No, these casting were produced by a very fine Swedish modeler named Erik Walde. They were casted by Kore Brass from Erik´s hand built masters.

 

They are not entirely correct for my wagons, but close enough.

[Nelson Jackson]

Wow this is inspirational, the amount of detail is incredible, such fine work, well done.

[Hawk]

Wow this is inspirational, the amount of detail is incredible, such fine work, well done.

Thanks a lot for the encouraging comments!

 

I really hope that my postings can inspire others to try their hands at scratch building. It is a lot of work, but fun too!

[ScottW]

I have just picked up on this thread and all I can really say is "Superb".

 

A true work of art, keep up the good work.

 

Scott

[Hawk]

On 19/04/2015 at 22:38, ScottW said:

I have just picked up on this thread and all I can really say is "Superb".

 

A true work of art, keep up the good work.

 

Scott

 

Thanks, Scott!

 

A little progress report as well. (I am not even sure if it justifies a post, but here goes anyway)

The opening mechanism for the side doors have been riveted together, and the connection to the hinges has been beefed up with two 1mm X 0,35mm washers: 

 

 

There are four such connection points for each wagon, and it was a pretty straightforward job to solder the washers to the etched part. You might argue that the washers are not strictly necessary but I think the joint looks much better when the washers+etched arm are thick enough the fill the forked gap in the blackened hinge entirely. Without the washers, there would have been a lot of "slop" in the connection. 

 

Here are the three other arms for the first wagon: 

 

 

 

In this extreme closeup it might be easier to see that this is a sandwich consisting of a 0,25mm nickel-silver etched part between two 0,35mm thick brass washers cut from 1mm brass tubing: 

 

 

By the way, I sincerely believe that I could never have soldered this assembly without my RSU and soldering cream. I don't think I would have been building metal models at all without this equipment. The Four Track Models RSU is my best modeling investment ever!

Edited August 11, 2023 by Hawk

[Spitfire2865]

Your passion for detail and authenticity is inspirational. I saw this thread a while ago and then lost it. Glad Ive found it again.

I think your use of miniature rivets is brilliant, and the hinges and everything. Not even mentioning the planking.

These wagons will rival museum pieces when finished.

 

I cant wait to see future posts.

[Hawk]

On 23/04/2015 at 04:53, Spitfire2865 said:

Your passion for detail and authenticity is inspirational. I saw this thread a while ago and then lost it. Glad Ive found it again.

I think your use of miniature rivets is brilliant, and the hinges and everything. Not even mentioning the planking.

These wagons will rival museum pieces when finished.

 

I cant wait to see future posts.

Thanks for the kind words and the interest in my work!

 

A little more work has been done on the wooden parts. Sides for the first wagon has been glued together. I thought this was gong to be a demanding process, but it turned out that it was far easier to glue them together than I thought. The challenge was to keep the tongues and grooves visible on the ends, since these will have the ends of the board visible.

 

The process I followed was to spread a thin film of white glue on a plate of glass, and carefully touch it with the tongue of the board. This way glue was only applied to the top of the tongue, and with a little care no glue oozed out between the boards. I was careful to not apply glue to the last 3-4 mm at each end of the boards to avoid that the glue hides the tongue and grooves. After working so hard with the T&G boards, it would be a shame to hide them under glue!

 

 

 

I also had to do all final sanding and painting before assembling the ends for the same reason. I am happy that the T&G´s are visible on the final parts. It is a quite subtle detail only seen by hawk-eyed observers and in extreme close ups, but I like it!

 

The red side of the sides are brush painted with Humbrol 70 thinned 75/25 with white spirits. Before painting the read all sides of the wood was treated with silvered stain thinned 75/25 with isopropanol (rubbing alcohol). EDIT: The Silverwood stain has shown not to be lightresistant, so it has bleaced significantly. So I cn no longer reccomend this stain.

 

Next up is to add all the brass hardware to the sides.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Hawk

[Hawk]

On 02/05/2015 at 01:15, Hawk said:

Next up is to add all the brass hardware to the sides.

Ah, the brass hardware... Maybe the most frustrating task in this project has been the drilling of all the 0,35mm holes in the brass castings. Cast brass is pretty hard stuff, and the drill bits break at an alarming rate. I prepare a lot of the castings some months ago, but it seems I "forgot" to drill a lot of the necessary holes.

 

So I had to brace myself for another drilling session. But this time I made a little modification to the drilling setup.

 

This is how I initially set up the work:

 

 

While the brass plate keeps the workpiece quite firmly in place, you can not feel it when the drill breaks through the casting and into the holder plate. And if you try to bore all the way trough casting/plate/casting I can almost guarantee you that the drill will break. This means not only wasting a drillbit, but also a quite annoying job with a dremel motor tool to free the casting from the plate.

 

To succeed with this rather delicate drilling job you have to drill two holes, one from each side of the fork in the casting. Replacing the brass plate with a piece of stripwood gives an immediate feedback when the drill breaks through the brass, and I also think that the softness of the wood acts as a cushion.

 

This is the new setup:

 

 

The success rate increased immensely using this setup. You build, you learn!

Edited August 11, 2023 by Hawk

[Hawk]

Time flies, and progress on the wagons have been rather slow. But I have finally made the brake shoes for the first wagon. My first idea was to make the brake shoes entirely from etched parts, and there is a picture of this design a couple of pages back. But then I realized it would be a perfect design for a wagon that eventually will lead to short circuits. 

 

So I decided that the actual brake shoe should be machined from an insulation material, and the hanger made from a etched part. I got myself a lathe dusted off, and I turned  a ring with a slot for the etched part. 

 

Here is a little photo-essay on the process: 

 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by Hawk

[sej]

Hi Hauk:

 

Beautiful work and very informative, thank you.

 

Could you give us an outline of how you made your bending bars? And where do you get those serious looking drills?

 

Cheers

Simon

[Hawk]

Hi Hauk:

 

Beautiful work and very informative, thank you.

 

Could you give us an outline of how you made your bending bars? And where do you get those serious looking drills?

 

Cheers

Simon

The bending bars are machined from steel. I was fortunate enough that a friend made two pairs for me.

 

But basically you need 2 pcs. of rectangular bars of your prefered length and a cross section of about 5mm X 30mm.  You also need a second pair where one of the edges are bevelled. Ideally the should be 44 deg. so you can "overbend" the etchings 2 deg. In my experience the metal springs back a little, so 44 deg bevels give a perfect 90 deg bend.

 

The bars need to be drilled to take the thumbscrews. One bar needs threaded holes. NB! Remember that you need to shift the holes sideways so that the thumbscrews do not crash when bending.

 

Before my friend offered to make them, I searched in vain for a steel ruler of sufficient thickness and a proper bevel. If someone finds such a ruler it would be quite easy to make brakes like this.

 

I get all my small drillbits from eBay. They are cheap, and for some obsure reason most Chinese and far east sellers offer free postage. The drill are meant for PCB drilling in CNC machines, but in my experience they work just fine for regular drilling. I use  drillbits with 1/8" shanks. I prefer to use collets instead of chucks with my light Proxxon drill press, and I also use a CNC-router that only takes collets.

[Hawk]

On 29/05/2015 at 10:21, Hawk said:

The bending bars are machined from steel.

Here is a sketch of the bars:

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by Hawk

[sej]

Cheers Hauk, my drills are on their way from eBay. Thanks very much for the info and diagram of the bars too.

 

Regards

Simon

[Hawk]

Cheers Hauk, my drills are on their way from eBay. Thanks very much for the info and diagram of the bars too.

 

Regards

Simon

 

I am happy that my information was useful!  It is a pleasure to be able to contribute to this fantastic forum.  

Edited July 4, 2015 by Hawk

[Davey]

Absolutely stunning workmanship and attention to detail. I love to see people tackling the more obscure and unusual railways. Amazing

[spikeyfaz]

Very impressed with the 100 or so rivets you had to put in! Did you turn these yourself, or did you buy them in? Be interested to know what diameter the rivet-head is. I have an 0 gauge crane tank which will need several hundred rivets and am not keen on using a rivet press. Your method might be the way to go.

Regards

Mike.

[KeithHC]

Hi Hauk,

Firstly what a magnificent model so far and making me very envious. Have you started on a layout for these wagons what are your plans? I have seen a couple of video's of the preserved line and it looks very interesting and one on my bucket list to see. Keep up the work.

 

Keith HC, Dursley

[Hawk]

Very impressed with the 100 or so rivets you had to put in! Did you turn these yourself, or did you buy them in? Be interested to know what diameter the rivet-head is. I have an 0 gauge crane tank which will need several hundred rivets and am not keen on using a rivet press. Your method might be the way to go.

Regards

Mike.

 

Rather surprisingly, you can get turned rivets from a number of sources.

Currently I get my rivets from Hassler Profile in Lichtenstein: http://www.hassler-profile.li/

 

He is a reliable guy, I send him cash in letters for payments, and have had no problems so far.

 

Even if the site is only in German, you can order in english.

 

What you are looking for are "Messingnieten", you find them under Home> Produkte> Schrauben... > Nieten> Messing Nieten

 

You can choose from 0.6, 0.7, 0.8 and 1.0 rivethead diameters. For this project I used 0.6mm.

 

100 rivets cost CHF 9,50.

[Hawk]

On 05/07/2015 at 10:59, KeithHC said:

Hi Hauk,

Firstly what a magnificent model so far and making me very envious. Have you started on a layout for these wagons what are your plans? I have seen a couple of video's of the preserved line and it looks very interesting and one on my bucket list to see. Keep up the work.

 

Keith HC, Dursley

Thanks a lot!

Havent started a layout yet, only a coouple of dioramas so far. But I would love to build a layout some day, there are so many great scenes to model on this line.

 

Here is a little photo-essay, courtesy of Digitalt Museum. The photos go from port Thamshavn in the north to Løkken in the south:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot to keep a modeler busy for some years!

Edited August 11, 2023 by Hawk

[Hawk]

Long time no progress, but hopefully tings will move faster now that the modeling season is approaching.

Since last time I have CNC-drilled all the holes for the brass fittings and milled the triangular openings in the ends.

 

The two first images shows the fittings just pinned to the wagons with no glue:

 

 

 

 

I was a bit unhappy with the blackening, so I gave them another round of Birchwood Casey Brass blackening. As I might have mentioned before i dilute this stuff quite a lot, about 1:100 this time. In my experience, if you use the stuff full strength it blackens the metal immediately, but it is just black crud that is easily scrubbed away.

 

Here are the freshly blackened parts after a rather thorough scrubbing with a stiff paintbrush and water:

 

Funny thing is that I had a mix of castings already blackened once and plain brass castings, and I could see no difference in the depth of the black color. I left the parts in the bath for a couple of hours. The fluid was lukewarm.

 

A little trick I tried this was pinning the parts to a blue insulation foam block and just putting it face down in the blackening fluid container. I dont know if this helped, but I there was almost no black crud this time, and maybe when the when the parts just float around face down like this it is harder for the crud to build up on the parts. Maybe this is just BS, but I am certain that the 1:100 dilution is the way to go if you want a blackening that is not just black crud.

 

Question time: Does anyone have suggestions for the best glue for brass to wood? Thick ACC?

Edited August 11, 2023 by Hawk

[Hawk]

I have not given up my modeling, but as I am now building three wagons in parallell a lot of the work done lately have been covered in earlier posts.

 

 

But the last nights I have been breaking som new ground on the brake cranks.

 

 

This looks like a rather simple task, but it took three nights to make three sets of cranks.

 

The first challenge was to find a way of holding the 1mm nickel-silver rod firmly without deforming it when doing threading.

 

I ended drilling a 1mm hole in a piece of brass and soldering the rod temporarily while doing the threading.

 

Second, I needed to find a way of holding the 1,5mm brass rod (the little "hammerhead" at the bottom of the 1mm threaded rod) while drilling a 0,8mm hole through it. Earlier I have tried to punch a starter dimple at the round side, but this is really hit and miss. My solution was to file a V-shaped notch across a piece of brass. Then I drilled a 0,8mm hole at the bottom of the notch. Now I soldered a piece of 1,5 rod in the notch, turned the whole affair and used the hole in the bottom of the notch as a starter hole.

 

Here are some pictures that might make the procedure more clear:

 

 

 

 

The crank at the top is 0,6mm nickel silver rod connected to the main rod through a modified Alan Gibson handrail knob. The hole in the knob was enlarged to 1mm, and then slid onto the 1mm rod. The shank of the knob was then sawed off and the stump filed smooth. It would of course have been easier to start with a plain brass ball, but where do you find 1,5mm brass balls on a wednesday night?

 

The next challenge was to drill a 0,6mm hole across the handrail knob for the crank. So I made another jig in brass. This time the V-notch was drilled with a 0,6mm hole, but in addition I drilled a 1,8 dimple for the knob.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All this took some time, but I was very happy to find a way to do this actually works.

Maybe this posting is a little overkill, but as it took me some head scratching to work this out, I hope that others might find it useful!

Edited August 11, 2023 by Hawk

[Spitfire2865]

I hope with all the effort youre going through, youll be able to tighten down the brakes and lock the wheels.

Once again, youre machining skills are astounding.

And for many, working standard brakes are too much work. You just went and outdid everyone with Functioning screw handles.

 

Though please post more of your work. It truly is inspirational and even if its just restating at times, it still is a joy to see.

[Hawk]

I hope with all the effort youre going through, youll be able to tighten down the brakes and lock the wheels.

Once again, youre machining skills are astounding.

And for many, working standard brakes are too much work. You just went and outdid everyone with Functioning screw handles.

 

Though please post more of your work. It truly is inspirational and even if its just restating at times, it still is a joy to see.

Well, initially I was not planning to make working brakes. But as you can see, quite a bit of the threaded rod will be visible, and should therefore be included. And when I had made threads on the rod, it would have been a waste not to thread the piece that it goes through. So in the end, it would be quite possible to make working brakes. I plan to make at least one wagon with working brakes, just to see if it can be done. The tap and die used was M1 by the way, so they are not *that* small!