scfcphil

Best of luck Mike. Will be thinking of you Phil (another Stopfordian)

Mike Perhaps I should explain how I arrived at my current method which, to be honest, is still evolving. Like you I've been building wagons for around 50 years but in my case in P4. About 2 years ago I was diagnosed with an eyesight condition which meant that I could no longer see sufficiently clearly to attach the nuts to the outside of wagons (in 4mm I never used to bother with bolt heads n the inside). Hence, I decided to have a go in 7mm (Scale7) and to be honest I wish I'd made the change years ago. Also, as an aid to accuracy, I took the plunge and bought a Silhouette Portrait cutter. This dictated the adoption of the lamination method as the cutter will only go through 20thou material. The process is basically to draw the side and end for a wagon in your chosen drawing package. I won't go into details here as there's plenty of information available on the subject in other threads on this site. A cutting drawing is then made containing six sides and six ends. This is sent to the cutter and six very accurate sides and sends result. It is possible using different drawing layers to mark plank lines and doors etc on the inside and outside surfaces but these have to be manually scribed (deepened) with a scrawker. However, they are marked out far mare accurately than I can do manually. As regards glue, following a discussion with Geoff Kent who was demonstrating at a show I visited some years ago, I started using dl-Limonene. This is a lot less fierce than MEK and gives you more time to ensure alignment when laminating. I now use it for nearly all styrene assembly but, as the drying time is longer than MEK, you have to be a bit more patient. You can get it from Hobby Holidays online but I understand that it is available in industrial quantities on a well-known auction site. Given the age of some of the vehicles you build, I doubt if anyone knows how big the coach bolts were. In my period of interest (1915-1920) most of the PO wagons were built to either the 1897 or 1907 specs. Fortunately these are available and show that the bulk of the bodywork was held together with 1/2" bolts. I understand that a bolt head in 7mm scale should be 0.65mm (so my 0.6mm is slightly too small). For some reason the side door catches were fixed with 5/8" bolts the heads heads of which should be 0.82mm. Given the advances in technology at that time, I could believe that 5/8" bolts were used during your period. Unfortunately I don't have any photographs of wagon sides under construction at the moment, but I'll take some during the next build and post them if you're interested. Phil

Many thanks Mike. I've looked back through the thread and found the relevant post. I'll give it a try but as some of the ironwork is represented by 1.2 mm washers, holding them for drilling should prove interesting My usual method is to laminate the sides from three layers of 20 thou but before laminating, to detail the inside while it's still flat. This does allow accurate placement of boltheads but brings other problems like getting round bowing and warping. I'll give your method a try. Many thanks again Phil

Mike I'm interested by your technique for applying bolt heads to the inside of your wagons. I understand that basically you drill through the wagon side from the outside and cover the hole with the outside ironwork. However, how do you fit the inside ironwork accurately enough to ensure that when the rivet representing the head of the coachbolt is fitted, it sits in the centre of the iron. My interest is in wagons slightly later than yours where the inside washer plates behind the corner irons are only 1.5 inches wide (0.875mm in 7mm scale) and the bolt head is 0.6mm dia so there isn't a lot of room for misalignment. How do you go about maintaining sufficient accuracy to ensure eveything lines up? Phil