jdb82

Managed to grab an unexpected half day off work (courtesy of the Sultan's Golden Jubilee) yesterday, which gave me some time and an excuse to crack on with an all too rare, mid-week building session.

Having soldered the front of the cab between the tank sides, I attached the back to the cab, and the back bunker plate. I deviated from the instructions here a little bit, as I reckoned it would be much easier to fit the bunker plate first, as there would be more room for my unwieldy swinging of my soldering iron. This seemed to go OK - the back of the cab just needed a small amount filing off to make the perfect fit.

Next, the tank tops were folded to 90 degrees and soldered up, and worked with wet&dry paper to blend the seam. Not much needed to be done though - my soldering technique is developing   Just a little solder to take off where it joins the front of the cab, as one of the locating holes for a tab needed filling.

Got some small detailing on the tanks to do next, and then I'm waiting on a couple of replacement parts (the smokebox wrapper and firebox wrapper) before I can do much more on body itself. 

Back bunker plate was curved over some wood dowel and my leg

Back of the cab attached

Tank tops soldered on and cleaned up - just a bit more work where they join the front of the cab needed

placed on the running plate to give me a sense of progress!

Starting to look like a bit of progress now. Soldered on the beading around the cab opening - I had thought this was going to be trickier than it turned out to be. Turns out a bamboo skewer is pretty good for pushing the beading round the corners, as well as using them to grip things without burning my fingers. I tacked the beading first, and then ran a seam of solder round the rest.

Next, I soldered the cab front between the two tanks. Think I'm finally refining my soldering technique, as there was very little cleaning up needed. Sitting this assembly on top of the running plate, and things are really starting to take shape. Next I need to bend the back to the bunker, and attach the cab back.

Was quite pleased with this! Simple things......

There is an etch which comprises a rectangle of brass with a series of holes on a diagonal line, thus making a wide range of distances from the hole to the edge of the rectangle, simple effective way of making window bars and welded handrails of varying lengths.

 

The same effect can be achieved by drilling holes in a bit of hardwood, which is just as well, as I can't remember the etch supplier.

 

Best

Simon

The item you refer to is the Bill Bedford Handrail Bending Jig, available from Eileens Emporium

 

Jinty 

Grrr.....actually looked at one of those over the summer when I was back home for a few weeks, and decided against it! Can't remember why. I'll attempt to craft one myself when time permits and have another go.

Added spectacle rims & bars this morning. May well remove the left hand set (done first) as I found that bending the bars first, and then soldering them in gave a more polished look. Though looking at prototype photos, the bars on the real locos were bent all over the place!!

Cleaning up...

 

The ideal solution is not to need to, by using only enough solder to fill the joint, plus whatever you need to wet the iron, and to apply it from a hidden surface.

 

This is a counsel of perfection, which despite a dozen or so brass locos, and similar numbers of coaches and wagons, I have yet to achieve, but towards which I strive... if you want to see "bl00dy h3ll, that's good", look for the Finney 7 threads on here and Western Thunder. An example here:- http://westernthunder.co.uk/index.php?threads/the-next-project-b1.5991/page-7#post-153734

 

So what can we mere mortals do? A few suggestions, all of which I've tried over the years:

 

Firstly, put on as little as possible;

Cut small lengths of solder (say 1mm) and lay these against the joint, rather than using the reel

Use solder paste where it is appropriate

Apply the soldering iron from behind, whenever possible.

Good flux, clean metal, clean solder, hot iron.

Iron with lots of heat capacity. Decent size bit, ideally sharp, chisel edge.

 

Secondly, alternative heating;

Micro flame blowtorch / cook's blow lamp. Very effective when used with the short lengths of solder. Be careful of uneven heating causing buckling. Don't panic if it does. Unsolder (very quick!), clean up & try again.

RSU - resistance soldering unit. Allows you put huge heat into a very small area very quickly. Works well with short lengths of solder and solder paste. Also allows you to use the electrode to hold the item in place whilst the solder cools. Brilliant for lamp irons & similar fiddly bits.

 

Thirdly, getting it off;

Desolder braid - basically woven copper mesh, coated in flux. Apply with a hot iron, solder comes off the joint and into the braid, cools, cut it off & throw it away. Very effective, rather expensive, very easy to singe your fingers!

Desolder pump, apply to hot solder, trigger the pump, excess is drawn into the pump. Great if you've got a blob!

Fluxed bit of fret waste. You can sometimes draw off excess solder onto another piece of metal. Cheaper version of solder braid.

Fluxed surface of kit. You can draw a thick fillet of excess solder onto a flat part of the kit, it turns it silvery, but it's only a few atoms thick, and won't show through the paint.

 

Fourthly, cleaning up;

Scrapers are better than files. Files clog and mark the work, Scrapers can be bought (dental tools are perfect) or ground up from any hard metal, such as a broken needle file (safety glasses!), old hacksaw blades, etc. Even a "sharpened screwdriver" will work pretty well as solder is very soft. Curved scalpel blades work well too.

Glass fibre pen/pencil. Brilliant. But do it outside, otherwise you'll have shards of glass on your workbench, and in your hands, and it hurts. Don't breathe the broken glass dust either. Ideally, wear a space suit...

Toothbrush & Shiny Sinks (or Vim, any scouring cream / powder of your choice) & rinse in hot water.

Ultrasonic bath, expensive. Effective.

 

Hope this helps

Best

Simon

Thanks Simon, I love this forum! A wealth of information everywhere you turn! 

I'll definitely get some scrapers - I've been using a curved craft knife blade, but I'm still finding that I'm scratching the brass. De-soldering braid sounds like a must too, so I'll get some when I'm back in the UK next. I will also endeavour to use less solder! I've kept telling myself that from the start, but not following my own advice!

The back of the cab and the tank sides are next on the instruction list, although it will probably be the weekend before I get my hands on it again......work gets in the way!

John

Done a few bits of detailing this weekend - spent a bit of time on the springs, as suggested by Simon, and although you can't really tell from the photos below, they now look much better. Bit of solder from the front that needs removing, and then they'll be done. 

Constructed the oil pots and attached them to the running plate without any problems. The sand boxes were next - simple job of folding up and soldering together. All was very satisfying, until I came to solder these onto the running plate, and then I used way too much solder, which has left me with lots of cleaning up to do. 

Might need to do a different part of the build first though.....seem to have done a lot of cleaning up recently! I think it's fair to say I didn't give enough credit before starting this build, to how long this process takes! Lets say I'm learning to  be more careful to start with, to save myself time later.... Still, this model is all about teaching myself how to do things, and better to make the mistakes now than a couple of models down the line!

Good work so far!

 

I guess they go the way of your second photo, i.e. Convex, but the answer has to be on a photo somewhere.

 

I do think your springs need a wee bit more attention on top. The problem with laminated springs is that they are typically laminated "the wrong way", in that the real spring comprises a series of more-or-less horizontal strips, but the typical model comprises a series of vertical "silhouettes". The trick is to make the latter look like the former, and that means that, in particular, the tops have to be really quite smooth, and I'd suggest that it's more important to polish out the edges of the laminations than to maintain the size, though you'd want to keep the shape as best you can.

 

Hope this is helpful.

 

Best

Simon

Very definitely helpful! I was thinking the same - they are attached quite well, so some polishing shouldn't be a problem :-) As for a photo, all the photos I have managed to find so far are all taken from below the level of the footplate, and therefore I can't tell which way up the base plates need to be :-( I'll keep looking

Spent quite a while trying to remove some of the scratches I'd foolishly put onto the footplate - now it looks much better. To speed the process up a bit, I, probably very unconventionally to the purist, adapted a sanding drum on my mini-drill and wrapped a strip of wet&dry paper to it, secured with a small blob of super glue. Set at about half speed, this took the tiniest amount of brass off the footplate, just about removing most of the scratches. Worked very nicely :-)

Next question is probably quite basic for someone with more loco knowledge than myself. At the bottom of the leaf springs, the instructions say to fit the rectangular bases. However it's not clear whether the flat surface goes at the top, or the bottom to form a kind of tray. Hopefully the photos below will help explain.....

These are the base plates for the leaf springs

​Should they go this way up........

Or this way?

Obviously nothing soldered yet! Look forwards to receiving your wise words of wisdom 

John

This is a nice loco to build. I have done one the short tank version, I have a few build photos if you need a hand.

 

These were built with a flange less centre wheel. Don't know if you are going to bother with yours but I turned the flange off not sure if Slater's do one for it.

Hi Peter, any photos you have would be appreciate! Having some reference points would be really helpful. I have a few photos of the real thing found online, but not found much by way of kit pictures. 

I hadn't really thought about removing the flange....I need to keep things relatively simple on this one, but I'll definitely look to see if Slaters do one or not. Would be a good excuse for me to get a lathe though ;-)

First go at laminating today - the leaf springs are made up of 3 brass etches, with a fourth half-etch adding the detail. Not sure if I went a bit overkill with the solder; I tinned each surface first, before applying more flux and soldering round the edge of each layer. Seemed to work though, although it looks a bit clumsy in parts. Needs a bit more cleaning up with the file.

On question though: whilst cleaning up the solder on the footplate, the needle file causes some light scratching to the surface of the brass. You can see them on the photo below. They appear to be very shallow, but will it be noticeable after it's all been painted up, or should I try and smooth them out with various grades of wet&dry paper?

Nice job so far Martin.

My preferred starting point is the coupling rods. It is from there that everything else on the chassis depends but there is nothing wrong in building the basic foot plate first as well. On my latest build (A3) you will see that it was necessary to bend up the basic footplate early to ensure that clearance issues with the cylinders and motion parts were maintained during the chassis build.

 

From your description of your solder flow problems, it sounds to me that your soldering iron may not be producing enough heat to keep the solder melted enough to allow it to flow. In my experience a minimum of a 50w iron and 4mm tip are needed. The Antex 50w TCS with a 4mm tip is about the smallest iron I would consider using but if you can lay your hands on a 80w temperature controlled solder station, you will have a tool that should cope with anything you want it to do.

I am looking forward to seeing the rest of your build.

 

Kind regards

Sandy

A temperature controlled soldering iron which actually gives you the temperature of the tip (and not just some random number) would be ideal - not cheap, but if you do loads of soldering, it would be a worthwhile investment in tools.

I bought a second hand Antex 660TC with a 50W iron over the summer - I tend to have it at about 350 degrees for most work. I'm using a 2.3mm tip at the moment, which whilst fine for the smaller parts, I don't think it was big enough to retain the require head for the thicker parts such as the buffer beams (these were made from 2 lengths of laminate brass etch). I have a 4mm tip now, so I'll have a play around with that.

The advantage of a small gas torch is that disassembly becomes much easier.

Remember anything that can be soldered can be unsoldered.

If it doesn't look right, or isn't on square take it off, clean it up and redo.

Doesn't take long.

 

Learning to tack solder first can save a lot of simple errors.

Also in future always build the chassis first to ensure good runnning. This is not to make life more difficult, but sometimes adjustments are required concerning wheel/motor clearances and it is much easier to do when unassembled.(Don't ask how I know).

 

A final note, there are lots of postings on this website by talented builders with copious photographs.

Just do a search for Sandy, Jazz, N15 etc. Worth any number of text books.

Sound advice. In future, I will start with the chassis. The only reason I didn't this time was because I hadn't really soldered anything other than wires before this, so thought it would be a good idea to start with something that didn't matter quite as much if it all went wrong!

Thanks for the advice Martin - got most of those things in my mind now; just need to get my hands on some scale drawings.

Was a bit undecided as to what to start with. The instructions say to begin with the footplate, however I've read a fair bit of advice which suggests starting with the chassis. Given my novice status though, I thought I'd better start with something more simple and less crucial (?) than the chassis, and opted to follow the instructions. First job was to solder on the front buffer beam. Made a bit of a mess on top where it joined the footplate. I think I'm using too small a tip on my soldering iron (2.3mm) for the larger parts such as this - it seemed to take a fair bit of persuasion to get the solder (145) to flow. It seemed to partly solidify at first, before melting again and then eventually flowing. 

Also learnt I need to be very careful where the flux ends up; it turns out that solder and rivets are not friends ;-) A bit of cleaning up with the craft knife, files and fibreglass pen sorted this out though.

Next came the valances, which to my surprise, I made a relatively neat job of! The rear buffer beam was attached next. That was the nice 'easy' stuff done - now onto the more fiddly parts of laminating the leaf springs. Maybe I'll stick to my small iron tip for this bit!

Was quite pleased with this - I think I'm using way too much solder, but I guess I'll learn to judge this better with experience

Whatever I can find! By far the most useful is a toolmakers clamp. Similar to this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Proops-1-x-2-Toolmakers-Clamp-M0210-/352004246679

 

Masking tape as well gets used a lot. For the splashers I taped the clamp to my heatproof board, opened the jaws enough to use as a backstop for the curved splasher tops when sat on their side, then slid the splasher side into place and held it there with a small piece of tape. Then splashed some flux on and with a very hot iron (400c) gently poked at it with the solder on the tip of the iron.

 

A couple I had to do a couple of times.

 

For other bits I've used fingernails, the opposite end of the flux brush, scrwedrivers, pliers, whatever.Needle files are quite good as they also grip a little bit.

 

Hope that gives some ideas? Yours is 7mm? So some of the bits a little bigger than 4mm - but no doubt still some fiddly stuff!

Yep, mine is 7mm. I'm finding even this fiddly, so goodness knows how you put together 4mm kits! Thanks for the ideas - I'll give'm a go. I'll see what I can find by way of a toolmakers clamp....I live in Brunei at the moment, so sourcing your 'less standard' DIY tools is somewhat challenging!

Had a week off work but back this week. Brass arrived so have fitted a piece to screw the motion bracket to. Still not really worked out how to fix the loose bits - mainly really not sure what to do with this bit as it doesn't apparently fit anywhere. Looking at pictures it just dissapears into the gloom...

 

IMG_20170907_084940 - Copy.jpg

 

So back to the superstructure - and got some fiddly bits done, in this case the splashers. They still need trimming to size. Pleased with myself that I remembered to ensure there was a left and right of the front ones!

 

IMG_20170907_085017.jpg

Soon I'm going to be getting to the point of soldering up some fairly fiddly bits on my model - what have you been using to hold the small parts of brass together to stop them moving when you introduce the iron? Burnt fingers or just tweezers and gravity? They look really good, and I imagine if I try that there would be bits of brass sticking out all over the place!

Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0 canal tank

Many moons ago when I was in my teens, I built an N-gauge layout in my bedroom. Hours of quiet fun, inspired by my uncle's passion for railways and my dad's DIY and artistic skills, left me with many fond memories. Sometime during that period, I remember reading a Railway Modeller article about a model railway called Ivydale All-Hallows (December 1996), which featured a heavily weathered 7mm scale Manning Wardle. Not sure what it was, but something caught my eye with this diminutive little loco, which was beautifully scratch-built. I knew then that one day, I wanted to build something similar.

Whilst my modelling hobby faded somewhat, as university and then work and travel took over, the desire to one day get into brass kit modelling, and eventually produce something of the standard I saw in RM over 20 years ago, burned strong in the mind. 

Needing to start off with something relatively simple, I recently purchased a 7mm Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0 (short tank, that would have worked on the Manchester Ship Canal) from the old Agenoria range. This was recommended as a decent starting point for someone with no brass kit building experience, and I intend to 'teach' myself (hopefully along with the teachings of the many experienced modellers using this forum) the art of brass kit building using this kit. 

Not expecting it to be all plain sailing, and I'm sure I'll make a complete mess of things many times throughout the build, but I guess that's all part of the learning process. I'll attempt to post regularly, as I love following other people's workbench projects on RMWeb, and have gleaned many a helpful tip whilst researching before buying the kit.  

Currently living & working in Brunei, finding everything (or indeed anything!) I need is somewhat challenging! So after a summer of purchasing tools, supplies, equipment and a certain amount of excess luggage, I'm now ready to begin :-)

Any words of advice, constructive criticism (be gentle!) or thumbs up are welcome   

The brass and nickel-silver etches

Not much chance to do anything the last couple of days, but I've slotted the frame and the cylinder frame fits quite well. Not quite got it in exactly the right place yet though. I've also started the motion kit as this fits with the cylinders. First attempt at laminating and I'm reasonably happy:

 

IMG_20170712_135703.jpg

 

However if you look at the lower left you can see it's a fraction of a millimeter out at the centre joint (I've not opted to articulate as it's a non-compensated chassis). I don't think it's too far out to notice without looking for it though so am leaving it as don't want to risk wrecking it trying to move it. Using drill bits I managed to at least keep the holes aligned.

Daft question here from a novice.... I'm just about to get to this stage with my kit - all the parts of the rods are soldered together solid, right? It doesn't make it too clear in the instructions, but I have assumed each one is soldered together to form one long rod for each side of the loco, with no articulation at the middle.

John

Been away for a few days and came back to your J50 looking mighty fine!

Any tips for rolling a boiler? Not evening that task as I don't have a set of rollers.....

Hi Dave,

I'm looking forwards to following your build here - I'm a complete novice when it comes to kit building, and I'm hoping this will be quite useful for me. I'm about to start building a Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0 short tank which would have worked on the Manchester Ship Canal. Although your J50 obviously isn't the same, it's not a million miles away from the long tank version of the Hudswell Clarke. The instructions I have are a bit sketchy, so I'm hoping following your build could be quite useful! 

Once I start, I'll be posting regular updates, probably with a heap of questions to go along with it ;-)

Enjoy the build,

John

Manning Wardle L Class. There's a bit of information here.

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/96588-manning-wardle-l-class-drawings/

 

 

 

Jason

Good man! Thanks!

Look forward to following your build. Are they e-bay purchases btw

 

Best

 

Guy

Not from eBay, no - I emailed Mike Williams directly after I found a contact address on the Agenoria Facebook page. I knew roughly what I wanted, and he still has some etches in stock, and can get etchings and casting of others. It's taking quite a while for them to arrive, but patience is a virtue!

I'm new to both kit building locos and forums in general, so please excuse any naive statements/questions, or lack of forum etiquette! 

I have recently purchased 2, 7mm kits from the Agenoria range: a Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0 Canal Tank (AM9), and a Manning Wardle 0-6-0 L class. I intend to use the Hudswell Clarke as my 'teaching' kit; that being the one I will teach myself how to build brass kits and make all the mistakes on, before moving onto the Manning Wardle which will be used on my planned layout. 

To help with the detailing side of things, I am looking for photos online, or books I could purchase, which I could use a reference material. If anyone could point me in the right direction, I would be most grateful :-)

I will be posting regular updates of the build in a separate area of this forum.