flubrush

I've used Drill-Service for the last five years with excellent, fast service. I use their cheaper carbide slot drills as well and they are fine for the work I do. I also use Drill-Service for items like centre drills and hand reamers. Jim.

Ebay. http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R5.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xmethyl+.TRS0&_nkw=methyl+ethyl+ketone&_sacat=0 Jim.

I saw Trevor's new layout a week or two ago and it's back to the size of Wicken so in the achievable bracket again. All the track is down and working and a good start has been made on the buildings so it might be appearing on the exhibition circuit in the not too distant future. Jim.

I recce'd the Dursley station area several times in the 1980s for my layout of the station and the only original feature you could see then was the edging of the passenger platform which was apparent. The whole area of the station had been levelled to provide a warehousing and a manoeuvering/parking area for goods traffic and the edging stones were flush with the surface. Listers original sawtooth roofed buildings were still standing then - i believe they burned down later on in the 1980s. I also think I remember a small road under bridge to the west of the station which was still standing. I meant to try and walk the track bed, but I never got the time to do it. Jim.

Steve, Would your loco have a brass star round the smokebox handle? :-) Jim.

You might be able to make a riser block to lift the vertical head a few inches to give a bit more table clearance. This has been done on small knee mills like the Centec 2A to give a bit more elbow room between spindle end and table. I'm surprised that the top spindle speed is so slow. It looks like it is a Seig machine and they might have been able to use the motor setup on their KX1 mill which gives a top speed of 7000rpm - still not ideal for very small cutters, but a lot better than 2000rpm. But it does look like a nice small machine. Jim.

Just a minor nit-pick. :-) The S Gauge Society in the UK changed its name to the S Scale Society a few years ago to reflect the fact that several of its members modelled gauges other than standard gauge - like 5' 3" and 3' 6". So we are now a scale society. :-) Jim.

They actually had a metric gear set for their lathes, which I got for mine many years ago, but have never used. The additional gears provided were 21T, 27T, 32T, 33T, 36T, 38T, 39T, 42T, 48T, 63T. At the moment I can't find the gear setup chart which involved the use of all these gears - I'm sure there would have been one to accompany the set. I don't know if Myford ever supplied a 127T gear wheel. I think there would have been problems using one on the banjo - certainly on my ML10. I can just squeeze a 100T gear on the leadscrew end but it severely restricts what gears I can use on the banjo. Jim.

Ray has given the method for using the Myford one and the reason they supply them like this is probably because they can't guarantee reasonable accuracy with a one piece chuck. I went through a saga some years ago when trying to get a one piece ER25 holder to fit my ML10 spindle nose. The run-outs were worse than my three jaw Burnerd and I had the item replaced twice times with similar poor results. I even got my spindle nose checked independently to check that that wasn't the problem. I finished up getting a backplate version of the holder from Arc Euro and a four jaw backplate from (the original) Myford and machined the backplate to suit the holder, and I got good accuracy at last. The fit on the spindle register is quite critical and all the one piece holders I got seemed to be a very easy fit on the register which probably meant that the chuck was tending to line up on the spindle thread rather than the register itself. I also use an ER25 holder on a 2MT taper, mostly on my milling machine to hold cutters, and this is quite accurate with minimal run-out. The only drawback with this item is that you lose the ability to use the bore of the lathe spindle to work with long stock. Jim.

Jeff, It's a low wattage, black heat heater designed to go in an enclosed space to maintain an even temperature. Here's a web page detailing several types of various wattages. http://www.piano-tuners.org/piano-accessories-shop/index.php?l=product_list&c=6 With a lathe, you would have to use a lathe cover and put the heater somewhere under the lathe and the cover. A piano heater won't be much good in the open. I prefer an open convector heater keeping the whole workshop at a minimum temperature above dew point so that all the tools and bits and pieces in the workshop are protected, not just the lathe. Jim.

For the moment the oil and a cover will probably keep it safe from condensation and rust but keep an eye on it since a lot of condensation over a period can start to wash the oil layer off. If the lathe is on the Myford style stand, something like a piano heater in the bottom of the stand and under the cover will keep the lathe relatively warm as well as theair under the cover. A method I use in my garage workshop is to insulate the workshop then use a small electric thermostatically controlled convector heater to keep the workshop above the dew point when not in use. This stops condensation forming and also keeps big lumps of metal - like the lathe - getting very cold in winter which is asking for big trouble with condensation when things start to warm up. I set my heater to keep the workshop at least at 45F/7C and this seems to have worked well over winters for about twenty years. When I want to work in the workshop, I just turn the heater up a bit. [Edit] Just to add, don't use an open flame gas or paraffin heater in the workshop. These heaters generate copious amounts of water which will only add to your problems. Jim.

I don't think the top rake altered all that much on the Myford tools in practice. When new, the tools were pretty well horizontal when set up on centre and if you sharpened them by grinding the front face, the level of the top face stayed much the same as did the top rake. If you do all the grinding on the top face of the tool then the top rake will alter unless you make allowances for this and adjust the ground top rake to compensate. I've got a full set of the Myford boat tools which I got with my ML10 about forty years ago and I still use them regularly. Carbon steel can often give better results than HSS or carbide tooling. :-) Jim.

The Olfa cutter has helped me out as well. I cut some planking on styrene with an engraving cutter on my CNC machine and the finish of the lines was a bit ragged and following the lines with an Olfa did the job. The planking lines were only a thou or two deep so you take it easy or you can drag the cutter off the lines. I found that the weight of then cutter on its own was enough to do the job and the blade stayed in the lines. Jim.

We're not stopping you. Jim.

I've just checked his book and he mentions the problem, starting at the bottom of the first column on Page 30. In fact, I forgot that he recommends holding one end of a side on a table edge with the side projecting out into space and letting the weight of the side make it flex down into a curve. Jim.

I mentioned much earlier in this thread that styrene sheet does expand when cutting with a knife - especially the thinner sheets used for panelling lacework. It has been a known problem for years and I remember discussing the matter with a demonstrator at a London exhibition in the 1960s when he recommended cutting the panelling layers first, then sticking them to the body side layers and then cutting the window openings to match. David Jenkinson gives a neat way round the problem, where you glue the thinner panelling layers onto the main body layers whilst holding them both in a curve with the longer panelling layer on the outside of the curve. You keep them curved until the Mekpak has set then return them to their normal straight shape. I did use this method and it worked very well. Jim.

David, I've just checked and the brass I use is clock brass, which is CZ120 and it has a 59% Copper and 38% Zinc makeup. The other 2% is lead which is there to aid easy machining. I get the feeling that the high copper content of the Shapeways brass might render it a bit soft and it might be a bit of a cow to machine - like copper is. I think I remember that milk is a recommended cutting oil. Simon has covered a lot of the points on push fitting. I use the method since I want a good current path from metal wheel centre to axle for split axle pickup and it also means that I can machine the complete wheel on a mandrel before fitting. Other methods that might be possible for wheel fitting is to use cyanoacrylate adhesive, which has become common in the larger modelling scales. However, this glue does require a clearance between wheel seat and axle to work properly which may give problems when fitting. It might be possible to bore a short length of the wheel seat to be a good fit on the axle and machine the rest of the seat to a larger diameter to give clearance for the adhesive so that the wheel can be concentric with the axle. Another method used in larger scales is the two part axle with one part having a stub end which fits in a socket in the other part. The axle parts are force fitted in the wheel centres and the two axle parts are locked in position by a taper pin. I haven't researched whether the taper pin sizes available might work with the 1/8" axles used in S scale. there might also be problems with this method in providing split axle insulation, especially in the driven axle with the gear wheel. Yet another method might be to use the method that the 2mm scale people use, where the wheels have a short spigot or axle fitted and these are a force fit into an insulated muff. Jim.

David, That looks very good. Are you going to try machining it to see how it reacts? I remember having problems some years ago with Gibson lost wax brass centres when the brass was too soft to provide a reliable push fit. Jim.

And that's the reason I've been using a milling machine for coaches. I had hand built coaches using the Jenkinson system for quite a few years but when I started on the Drummond four wheelers three or four years ago, the results, to me, were dire - probably an accumulation of age, dodgy eyesight, etc., i.e. in the seventh age of man. The milling machine takes a lot of my present shortcomings out of the equation. I've been following your "bodging" thread with interest since it is another way of achieving success, looking at what you have built, and a lot less expensive!! I might just get myself a cutter to use with the milling machine. Jim.

Andy, It's only about 17% larger than 4mm so you don't gain much advantage in size when making fiddly things. Jim.

Andy, My coaches are in S scale. Jim.

Andy, On the Drummond Caledonian four wheelers, the outer beading on the ends was in from the sides. I cut the ends to the outside of the beading and the sides butt joined on to them with the beading edges disguising the join. I find that this way of joining sides and ends can help a lot when dealing with the complex curves you often get on pre-Grouping coaches. I haven't thought about matchboard ends - the Caledonian didn't go in for that. Jim.

Oops. I should have said that my glazing is added from the top... ...as in this example of a Drummond four wheeler. Jim.

Andy, When joining up sides and ends of coaches with panelled ends, I arrange for the thickness of the sides to be the same as the outer panelling on the ends, and reduce the width of the ends by the thickness of the outer panelling. Then the sides can be butt joined with the joint disguised by the panelling. This is the end of a Caledonian 48ft coach. The closer corner is a bit out of focus, but the far corner shows the join with the side providing the end panelling. The whole end still needs a bit of finishing to disguise the joins on the horizontal panelling, and the tops of the sides need a small amount of filler to complete the arc shape of the ends. Jim.

I am using very small diameter carbide cutters to do the work - typically 1mm and 0.5mm diameter - so I have to go easy to avoid breakage since my spindle top speed is 7000rpm. I am using 30mm/min at 0.05mm depth of cut at 6000rpm for the 0.5mm mill and 50mm/min at 0.1mm depth of cut at 6000rpm for the 1mm cutter. These are very light loads for the KX1 and might be OK for your router. I had been using higher feeds originally - typically 120mm/min - 180mm/min, but cutter breakage got a bit too high for my pocket and I've got a pile of broken shanks to prove it. It means that it takes a while to machine one wheel but \at least you can get on with other things while the mill is getting on with it. :-) Jim. Jim.