Hawk

Good points, Simon! I think the attitudes you describe arise when people confuse craftsmanship with art. With very few exceptions, even the best model railroaders are craftsmen and not artists. To become an artist, you need talent in addition to a willingness to work really hard. For becoming a great craftsman, hard work will get you a very long way. This is a tad simplistic, of course, the border between arts and crafts is not razor sharp. I also think that making great models requires quite a bit of creativity. But that a project requires a certain degree of creativity does not mean that the result is a work of art. Well, I am starting to drift here. Maybe I should get back to modeling!

Thanks a lot! I honestly belive that when it comes to modelling, you can have it if you want it hard enough. That means a willingness to invest the neccesary time and money. Having custom made etchings made cost some money, and I could never have achived this without the help of my RSU. But the main investment is time. You would probably not belive how many hours I have spent in the workshop between the posting made on the 16 March and the one posted yesterday. We are talking several working days (in Norway, we are blessed with over a full week off during easter). I now that this must sound ridicilous to many of you, put parts have been remade several times, parts have been soldered and desoldered multiple times, etched parts have been melted into small lumps of sooty metal. Not to mention a significant amount of time searching for miniscule parts and fasteners dropped on the floor. The list goes on. I am certainly not the most talented modeller on this forum, but I might be the most stubborn one!

Thanks for all the encouragement! I have finished all the metalwork now, but the brake rigging almost finished me off... So many small rivets to be inserted in awkward places. But I consider this wagon a learning piece, and I think I have some ideas for mass-producing the parts for the string of mineral wagons I am going to tackle. Speaking of the brake rigging, my version of the Westinghouse Airbrake System is a bit impressionistic as I have no precise drawings for the piping and placement of the brake cylinder and air tank. There was quite a bit of trial and error. But I think everything is linked together now in an plausible way. Feel free to point out errors!

A little progress report on the work wagon. Railings for the end platform, vacuum pipes for the Westinghouse brake system and other bits of hardware has been added: Who knows, if the weather gets really nasty during the Easter holiday I might be able to finish the little ###### soon!

Still at it, but not much progress. Added tarpaper to the work wagon, and this is how it looks: Surgical tape, full strength Humrol n0. 67 and a liberal dusting of talc. Toned down the yellow a bit, as well.

Tried an DSLR (Canon EOS40D) for some model shots for the first time. I used a 60mm Macro, and while I knew that depth of field would be far less than the G12 due to the much larger sensor, I was shocked to see how little d-o-f I got! Even for a straight shot taken from around 20cm away I had to use 5 images even at f8.0. I really do not know if it is worth the hassle to use the EOS instead of the G12. Even in print, I think the G12 holds up remarkably well. But If I decide to use the EOS/60mm macro, I have to optimize my workflow. For studio shots it seems that i would need to use Live View and Helicon Remote if I shall not go mad from all the manual focusing. I would guess that most motives would need 10-15 images to get sufficient dof. Have anyone tried Helicon remote and got experiences they would like to share?

Another tidbit from the workshop. I am a great fan of using real glass for glazing model windows. Microscope cover slips (you can find them on eBay) are great for this purpose, but hey are really brittle and quite hard to cut. At least that was my opinion until I discovered that the key to sucsessfully cutting thin glass is using a really hard and smooth cutting surface. Forget about your plastic cutting mats, go for something like a sheet of aluminium. I use an el cheapo scribing pen, it costs about £ 4.00. To cut identical pieces fast I use a setup with a hinged ruler. I might have shown this little photo essya earlier, so bear with me if this is old hat! I dropped assembling the frames with the graph paper as underlay. Instead I taped the precut cover slip to the window. A piece of MDF that fitted inside the wagon body was placed in the bench vice so the glass had good support during the building of the frames. Even if the window openings are CNC-milled, the are a bit irregular after installing the first framing. This picture shows the window with the first framing, the actual window frame is yet to be installed: Here are 8 panes of finished windows panes for the work wagon. The Aliphatic glue ha been cleaned up, so they look quite sharp in my not so humble opinion:

And now for one of the most marginal modelling photo essays you might see this year. The topic is making gutters from brass tubing. For the work wagon I need gutters, but I have not found a source of U-shaped brass profiles in the correct dimension. So I decided to make my own from 2 mm brass tubing. In additon to the tubing I used 4 lengths of 1,2mmX4mm brass, double sided carpet tape (A tape that I use a lot in the workshop!) and a sanding block with rather course emery paper. A length of tubing steadied by two pieces of brass profiles. Press the tubing as hard as possible against the double-sided tape. I use a piece of wood and a C-clamp to apply pressure. But be careful not to deform the tubing. @ A sanding block with two pieces of brass attached with double-sided tape. They act as thickness gauges. Taping them to the sanding block instead of the same surface as the tubing prevents you from sanding down the gauges. Pretty obvious, really. But just the sort of thing that I tend to get wrong... The tubing sanded down so just a thin foil of brass remains. For some reason it is hard to sand away this foil. Remember to only sand parallell to the tubing, if you sand across, the tubing will most certainly turn. The foil is removed with a needle file, and the edges are cleaned up. The finished gutter profile. Hope that this might be helpful! The technique could also be used for making D-shaped profiles.

I did a test on both wood to metal (brass) and wood to glass. In both cases it was the wood fibers that broke, not the glue joint. So I recommend this glue for metal/wood and glass/wood without reservations. This might be old news for many of you, but for me it was a very convenient discovery!

When I apply glue to small wooden parts, I often use a piece of plate glass as a palette. With regular white glue, it is very easy to remove the hardened blobs of excess glue with a single edge razor blade. But when I tried to remove the blobs of Aliphatic glue it was almost impossible! That was how I discovered that it might be useful for wood to glass joints. I think I will try this glue for metal to wood joints as well.

A little practical tip this time. I need to build 8 window inserts with glazing for the work wagon, and the wooden framing for these windowsill be glued directly to real glass microscope cover slips used for glazing. I have earlier used some jewelers glue for this type of task, but this glue is messy, and if it ends up on the wrong places on the glass, it is hard to remove. So on the advice by Tobias Ljung (a very talented Swedish modeller) I tried this glue: The really good thing about this glue is that until it completely hardens it is fairly easy to scrape it off with a scalpel or similar tool. It is possible to do this without scratching the glass. So if some glue seeps out from under the wood it is no catastrophe. When the glue is fully hardenED, it sticks really well to the glass. The coverslip will break long before the wooden parts break loose! The framing was glued to the coverslip with graph paper as an underlay. This helps keep everything nice and square: If the free looks a bit rough, please remember that the windows are fairly small: A test mounting of a test frame on the wagon body: And that was the last thing that got done in the workshop in 2015. A very happy new year to all members on this forum, and especially to all of you that have inspired me to keep modeling! I hope we all will make great progress with our modeling in 2016!

First, a little color test. The test piece leaning against the wagon body has been given a wash of silver grey stain. In my opinion this tones down the red quite nicely, and the cracks does not look as fresh. On the actual parts I might dilute the stain a little. Second, a little distraction in the form of a work car. This is the closest the Thamshavnbanen ever came to a caboose. Even if it is not prototype at all, I think it will look real nice on the end of a ore train! Checking the model against the prototype, I see that I might have to tone down the yellow color a bit...

I took it for granted that all brake blocks were cast iron, but maybe it ain´t so? If no other evidence surfaces before I fire up the airbrush, I will assume they are cast iron, so I will probably go for iron oxide colors. I think I prefer airbrushing over pigments for this. It is a bit risky to try and deduct how a a railway wagon would have appeared without any photographic evidence. But I guess there would have been some dust on the higher parts of the wagon from the filling of ore. And some would probably be apparent on the underframe as the emptying of the wagons would read dust around the lower parts. So the weathering should be a mix of dust colors, a combination of brake dust, ore dust and dust from the right of way. I have some color pictures of more modern equipment than my wagons, and this might give a clue for putting together a palette: Since last posting I have also assembled another wagon. This one have working doors. These are just for show. It is nice to be able to stage pictures with the doors open, but I have no intention of trying to make wagons that are fully operational.

Thanks for the thumbs up! I am quite happy with the way this model is developing, but I still think some more weathering is needed. These wagons were loaded by dumping the ore from above, and this must have created significant amounts of dust. And there must have been quite a lot of braking dust on the wagons, there were long stretches of steep grades on the railway, it was downhill most of the way from the mines to the port of Thamshavn. Suggestions for a good Humbrol braking dust color, anyone?

Not as much progress lately as I would have liked, but the first wooden body have been assembled. Installing the hardware is a pain in the a, but the results are good enough. I think. The wooden plans have been roughed up a bit. Unfortunately a bit too hasty, I should have worked more carefully to get an even, worn look. Hopefully the final weathering will blend things together a bit. As it is, the contrast between the wood and metal parts is a bit too much. Close up pictures are really a harsh critic...

Thanks! I have heard about CHDK but found it a bit overwhelming, but the tutorial you linked to made things a bit more comprehensible. Will definetively try it.

I use the cameras controls only. When I use my fairly stable tripod usign the "align layers" command show no signs of the camera moving between exposures. But when I use my "gorillapod", a small tripod that I use when I want to place the camera on a layout, it is clear that there are minor movements in the camera between exposures. But "align layeres" takes care of this. A remote would be really nice, though. But those I have seen are only for shutter release, you can not change manual focus, exposure etc. What would have been perfect is a function that takes a series of pictures with 8 clicks further focus for each of them. Would speed up things tremendously!

I have just started experimenting with focus stacking for increased depth of field. Here are my two first attempts: I use a Canon G12. The picture taking part of the process is totally manual. I set the camera to manual focus and focused on the closest part of the motive. I moved the focus 8 "clicks" for each exposure. With the G12 this results in around 14-15 exposures. The images were shot at f 5.6. All the magic is done in Photoshop CS4. This version of Photoshop was the firs version to include this functionality, and I would guess that the last version of the software gives even better result First I used the "Load files into stack" function. Then is uses the "Auto Align Layers". This is not really necessary if you have a good tripod, but I sometimes use a small flimsy tripod and then the camera often shifts a little between exposures. The auto align takes really good care of this! "Auto Blend layers" is next, I just use the preset settings, and almost like magic the layers are blended into one image with tremendous depth of field. But I would guess that there could be more to this process than my simple procedure. I would love to hear from others that have tried focus-stacking for model railway photography! Feel free to post your own results in this thread.

The describtion of the jig & drilling routine was perhaps a bit confusing without images, so here is a little visual support material. First a photo of the jig. As you can see it is no more than a milled slot the same width as the diameter of the grab iron wire. Ideally, it should be 0.5mm wider than the diameter of the wire, but I used a 0,6mm milling bit for the 0,5mm grab iron wire. Next we have the grabiron placed in the jig. The holes have already been drilled on this one: During drilling I cover the grabiron with a piece of wood. I know that I probably should fasten it with a couple of small clamps, but I like to live dangerous so I just hold it by hand while drilling: Made another set of grabirons, a longer type with four mounting holes. This jig had to be milled with a 0,4mm milling bit. Such drillbits are extremly fragile. So I ended up using 1 mm/s feed and just 0,1mm cutting depth. This way I managed to mill a slot the neccesary 1.8mm deep. I consider myself lucky that I only broke one milling bit during the process. But with a little more CNC-experience it should be possible to do tasks like this without loosing a single milling bit. I made the flat areas a bit oversize, and they will be filed a bit narrower before mounting. Hope this migh be of some help for other facing making some irons!

Grab irons were this weekends challenge. They are formed from straight 0,5mm nickel silver rod. I bend them using pliers and bench vise. The flat ends where the holes for the rivets are drilled are flattened using an arbor press. This is what they look like before drilling the rivet holes: It is very seldom that a task turns out to be less hassle than I think, but drilling the holes in the grab irons was one of them. I thought that i would have to mill a fancy jig with lots of recesses and stuff, and solder the irons in place for the drilling, first with a 0,25mm centre drill, then with a 0,4mm regular drill. I did need a jig, but it was no more than a 8 mm long and 0,6mm wide slot in a piece of brass. No soldering was necessary, i just covered the iron with a small piece of wood, and drilled right through it using the 0,4mm drill only. Easier done than written, I really should have some pictures of the process. I used the CNC router both for making the slot and doing the drilling. But at least I have a picture of two grab irons test-fitted to the end beam. They are not soldered, so they sag a bit. When they are properly soldered, I dare say they are going to look as good as I hoped!

I have been a bit unsure about the forum etiquette when it comes to cross-posting. But If it isn´t frowned upon, I could post a summary of this thread on the 7mm+ modelling forum as well.

Just bumping the thread with a picture of the brake handle mounted on the wagon. Yes, I have noticed the electrocutioned rivet. It will be replaced, and it is a reminder that the RSU must be handeled with care.... But I had a lot of fun playing with that handle. I turns really nice!

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!

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!

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?