RSS Fetcher Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 As they say the devil is in the detail ... The body is now in 3 sub components : Footplate, Boiler, Cab & Tanks Bunker And now comes the slow task of adding the minor components and details to these to achieve a complete model. The first part to be "detailed up" is the Footplate. To this I need to add the springs and axle boxes for the leading wheels, the buffers, the vacuum and steam pipes and finally the lamp irons. I had already turned up the buffers - I make these as 3 separate components, a small square "plate", a turned buffer housing, and a steel buffer head and shank. The 4 buffer housings were sweated onto a sheet of 0.006" nickel sheet, and each of these trimmed out to give a housing on a small square plate just a little bigger than the rear of the housing. In turning the housings, each had a 0.8mm hole drilled centrally down it's length to accommodate the buffer shank. The buffer heads and integral shanks were turned from some 3mm diameter steel rod, and the shank was made a few mm long and 0.75mm diameter. The head/shank will be glued into the housing once painting has been completed. Each buffer housing was soldered in place on the buffer beams. The leading wheel springs sit on top of the Footplate, and to help to get them the same size and shape I drew them up in Inkscape, and the resultant printout double sided taped (probably should have glued it) onto a piece of 0.028" nickel sheet that had two pieces laminated together. The spring shape was them carefully fretted and filed out using the printout as a guide. Once The spring shape was filed to shape and size, the face between the "hangers" at each end and the central strap that holds the leaves of the spring together was filed away to leave these elements standing proud of the spring leaves (I haven't tried to represent the individual spring leaves in 2mm!!!) Once filling was done the laminations were separated to give me the 2 springs. The photos below show these steps : The axle boxes were then made up from a piece of milled nickel strip (as used to be sold by the 2mmSA for crossheads), as this was a flat "T" section where the upright of the T being just the right width to fit in the horn guides in the footplate valances. A strip of 0.008" nickel silver sheet was cut to the same width as the upright of the T, and was rounded off at one end. Because the outer round plate of the axle box in my modelling period appears in photographs to be polished brass, a small 1.5mm disc of 0.005" brass was "belted out" of a suitable piece of sheet material - actually, a piece of 1.5mm silver steel was ground flat at one end and used as a punch to stamp out these discs on a piece of lead sheet. These 3 parts were soldered together and the whole thing cut and filed to length. Because there is a small gap at the top of the horn guide when the axle box is fitted, a piece of 0.45mm steel wire was soldered to the back of each axle box to represent the prototype link between the axle box and spring above. the photo below shows the individual elements of these axle boxes (left) and a completed one (right) : The Footplate sub-component with the springs, buffers and axle boxes in place (the lamp irons (well sockets - the GWR lamps in my chosen period having a spigot that located in lamp sockets that were about 4" square) have also been attached at this point - these are simply made from 1mm brass rod filed square at one end, and a flat filed into the rod behind these cubic sections to provide the steel fixing plate which was fixed to the Footplate) : This final photo shows how the footplate looks with the boiler/tank assembly bolted in place (the fixing is actually 2 12BA bolts screwing up into the bottom of the sandboxes at the front of the side tanks. The next stage is to apply the detail to the Bunker assembly - this will comprise the bunker coal rails, the cab hand rails, the lamp sockets on the bunker rear and the brackets for the irons. Just how much of this will get done in time for the 2mmSA AGM next weekend remains to be seen :-) Ian Attached thumbnail(s) View the full article Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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