Jazz 7mm Workbench

[jazz]

Now tha't stirred up some interest    I had read somewhere in my research that No1 had been instrumental in a succession of 2-4-0 tank locos. Obvious this info has been flawed.  Cheers for setting that one straight.  Yes, it will be the 1914 version as depicted in the drawing and the photos in the aforementioned russel book.

 

Ozz, thank's for the offer of help for the chimney. I do now have all the main castings here. Thanks to help from Warren Sheppard, Roxey Mouldings and my own scrap box. Slater's have provided the wheels, axle bushes and pickups. Roxey also provided the M1620 Mashima & 26:1 gearbox. So I'm all set to go

 

The only real challenge as I see it, is replicating all those rivets on the frames.

 

The W1 would be an interesting loco to build, but not on my radar.

 

But first, I will have to complete and prime the Duchess, so that is the w/end taken care of.

Edited January 5, 2014 by jazz

[jazz]

OK. Now for the build of the Dean 2-4-0T.  Firstly, I must have been having a serious senior moment thinking this loco being the insiration of the metro tanks.  I have already built the 517 class which appeared two years before the Dean Experimental No1.  Oh well, onwards we go. 

 

 

To start the build, I have taken this shot of the basic tools that my scratch build employs. One could get by with just these few as I had orginally started many years ago.  This is, course, assuming you do not possess a lathe, indeed as I still do not.  Therefore what cannot be turned with files and drill are bought in.

 

In addition to these tools I have a pillar drill, a selection of steel rods for forming bends. A  number of genuine high quality dentist drills. A seletion of drill bits, tatanium coated. Various thickness slitting discs. Nuts, bolts and washers from 14BA to 6BA. Taps, reamers (parallel and taper),  Steel, brass and nickle wire and sheet.  Various solders and soldering irons. Large and small mini drills and accesories.  All these are by no means essential for scratch but help me do all my building work. There are still many more tools I would like, including a small lathe, especially if I am going to do more scratch building

 

Some would say the model therefore is not scratch built. Agreed not entirely, true, but I think it to still be a scratch built model. Indeed, how many scratch builders buy in wheels rather than make their own?  Where do you draw the line.  

 

I digress.  I am starting the build with the making up the gearbox. The fold up type are perfectly OK as long as great care is taken in the assembly. (The ones Roxey supply are my favourites).  I carefully clean up the frets with a fine needle file, paying particular attention to the tab area. Making sure the tabs fit snug and all the way into the slots. Next fold the frets. (I have made a small set square for this job from a piece of brass.)  Now add the bushes, again, careful reaming of the holes, making sure the bushes set all the way in and are flush to the frets.   I use a lenght of 3/16 rod to assertain they are absolutely square and horizonal to the frets. Solder the joints when all is square and true.   (If the rod turns freely in the bushes after soldering you have done correctly)

 

Here is the unit ready for the loco.

 

 

 

 

 

Now on with the main pain-in the -butt, the coupling rods.   I have laminated four lenghts of nickle silver strips and centre punched the coupling rod bush holes at 9' centres. Using the pillar drill to open these up I split them into two rods and mark out the profile of the rods. Now to start the slow and tenious job of fretting them out.  So it's off the WB now.

 

 

Edited January 5, 2014 by jazz

[N15class]

I find the Roxey fold up gearboxes are one of the best of that type. They the only one I have not thrown at least one in the bin.

Looking forward to the posts on this build. I suppose it will be all finished by Tuesday?

[jazz]

Finished by Tuesday?   (Which Tuesday, I ask?)

 

OK. Between priming the Duchess and painting the chassis black, I have made the coupling rods for the Dean.  I had mentioned I was going to split the two roda fret them out. Testing how easy it would be to fret all four laminations in one go, found it no harder and probably eariier to go ahead and cut all four together.

 

Here we are clamped to the WB over the V cutout doing just that. 

 

 

All finished after spending a fair amount of time with various files making the final profile.  Note the rods have a fish belly profile.

 

Using a Very hot soldering iron and a sharpe utility blade the two pairs of rods were split prior to the final clean up. The rods are as good as milled, I think, as I can barely see the laminations, especially on the all important top faces where the iron was used the fuse them together.

 

 

 

Now it's on with the sub frame. This will be 18 thou brass, as will the body.

Edited January 5, 2014 by jazz

[JeffP]

Good grief! How long does it take, and how many blades, to fret those out?

What blades do you use Ken?

[mswjr]

Yea tell us about the saw and blades please Ken,i build 5 inch gauge and cutting,filling,milling ect is easy in that scale,but when it comes to cutting the small stuff its another ball game,

           thanks Garry

[jazz]

Hi. The fretting  out of the rods did not take too long, about 1.5 hours. It was quite easy really, the rods were clamped to the cutting board and fretted with the small hand fret saw. It was a case of slow and steady and repositioning the rods to keep the blade in a comfortable position so as not to have awkward angles. Just the one blade was used.  I used etched bosses from the scrap box to mark out the rod ends, that made it so much easier than trying to do it with washers as intended. (That is until I found the bosses.)

 

The fret saw is from Squires and they advertise it as 'high Quality Fixed Piercing Saw Frame'.  I cannot argue with discription as it certainly does the job and is a modest £6.99.

 

The blades are, again, Squires. They are carbon steel with hardened teeth. 25 TPI & 15 TPI  The 15 TPI I mainly use on plastikard.  £3.10 per pack of 12. They do stirling work and seem to last forever.  I fact careless use breaking them before wearing out seems to the norm for me.

 

I had intended show these basic tool for my scratch building at the very start but forgot.  Of course I do have a few others that I have collected over the years but not absolutely essential.

 

I do assume that you will not have a lathe and therefore buy in all the castings required. Indeed I am lacking a lathe but cannot really justify one as I now scratch build very few models.  Straight forward things like whistles and the like I easily turn them in the drill clamped securely in the mini drill press and good quality files.  I do have a large pillar drill and various bending and folding devises, bending rods and other aids. I have large and small mini drills, large and small soldering irons and and a lot of small hand tools. Broaches, reamers, taps and so on.    Again all these are not crucial, they just make life a lot easier.  I started many years ago with even less than shown in the photo.

 

Edited January 5, 2014 by jazz

[stephenashton]

The fret saw is from Squires and they advertise it as 'high Quality Fixed Piercing Saw Frame'.  I cannot argue with discription as it certainly does the job and is a modest £6.99.

 

The blades are, again, Squires. They are carbon steel with hardened teeth. 25 TPI & 15 TPI  The 15 TPI I mainly use on plastikard.  £3.10 per pack of 12. They do stirling work and seem to last forever.  I fact careless use breaking them before wearing out seems to the norm for me.

 

Hi Ken - I've been following your thread avidly over the last twelve months or so. There's some lovely modelling here. I've stuck my head above the parapet today because these posts are really useful. A fret saw is virtually at the top of my wish list for new tools and these details will be invaluable, plus you've provided some useful tips as to how to use it too! Thanks for sharing this information. I'll be watching the rest of the build with interest ... Stephen 

[jazz]

Stephen, pleased to be a help.  Fret saws are easy to use, I find the important thing is the have the work securely clamped and kept the saw absolutey upright. Do not try to force or twist the blade.  If you are cutting a curve take it very easy with very little forward pressure. Let the blade do the work.  It will take more time having to keep reclamping as you progress along the work but it saves a lot of snapped blades and you are able to cut much more accurately.  For angled cuts I drill a small hole in each corner large enough to turn the saw.

 

You do not need anything fancy for a saw top. I use a rectangle piece of ply 5mm thick.  A smallish V cut into the edge about 3cm deep and 1.5cm wide at the mouth is quite sufficient.

 

 

Now to days work, I am tied up doing the final assembly on the Duchess now the paint has dried.  I hope to have time later to cut the sub frames on the Dean

[Kenton]

 

Now it's on with the sub frame. This will be 18 thou brass, as will the body.

Is there a reason for doing the rods before the frames? I can't call myself a scratch building expert (hardly even a novice) but would have thought frames first and to use them to align the rods, perhaps it is confidence in measuring, lack of in my case.

[jazz]

Well, I guess some may orefer to do it that way round.  Personally, I like to make the rods, cut out the frames then use the rods as a template for the axle holes. That way I never have a problem with the rods binding and everything's in perfect alignment.

[Kev_Lewis]

Well, I guess some may orefer to do it that way round.  Personally, I like to make the rods, cut out the frames then use the rods as a template for the axle holes. That way I never have a problem with the rods binding and everything's in perfect alignment.

 

That's the same way the late Geoff Holt describes doing his in his excellent books.

[JeffP]

I have a fret saw/piercing saw like this one: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brand-NEW-Adjustable-Jewellers-Type-Saw-Frame-144-Piercing-Blades-1-0-To-6-0-/231124129869?pt=UK_Crafts_JewelleryMaking_GL&hash=item35d012584d

 

The good thing about it is, if you do break a blade, you can usually alter the saw to take the broken blade and continue.

I think mine cost nearly as much as this one, WITHOUT blades, back in the late 70's.

[Kenton]

 

Well, I guess some may orefer to do it that way round.  Personally, I like to make the rods, cut out the frames then use the rods as a template for the axle holes. That way I never have a problem with the rods binding and everything's in perfect alignment.

I can see the reasoning just that in my view there is a greater chance of vertical error using the smaller "face" of the rods. I have always placed more importance on axle alignment than the rods which IMV can be tweaked to fit. I guess both are valid and it comes down to what you are used to doing.

[brian335]

Hi,

I hope you will pardon my intrusion on this learned topic but I'm a (very) new boy on the block and wondered if you would mind identifying and explaining the use of  some of the tools in that picture you posted. In particular I'm puzzled by three

1. First is just below the callipers and looks like a scribe at one end but what's the flat end for? 
2. And second, to the right of the square is a yellow handled object which looks like a mini-weeder
3. Finally, the bars at the bottom, clearly some bending and / or folding arrangement

Thanks for all your hard work in producing this series of articles.

 

Brian

[N15class]

I always made the rods first too. Even if the frames and rods were all soldered together and drilled at the same time. Then the rods can be used to set the bearings correctly. I do not think it is very good engineering to make oval holes in the rods to get them to fit the bearings. Much better to have a larger hole for the bearing, when soldered in it does not matter. if sprung the hornguides are easy to move for or aft.

[jazz]

Kev, I have never had the pleasure of reading Geoff Holts books. I cannot recall reading any books about building models. My training was more on the practical side with help from visiting renowned modellers such as Joe Moss and others.

 

Jeff. I really like the look of that fret saw. In fact I do need one larger one than my current small one. So I bought it. Thanks for showing it.

 

Kenton, I'm not sure about the vertical error issue. The rods are firmly clamped in postion in the frames and dilled through with the same size drill as a pilot hole for the axle bush. Everything is absolutely vertical.  I do agree with Peter in that it's bad practice to tweak the rods to ease tight spots. Tweaking the bushes before soldering permantly in place is best.

 

Brian. #1.  It is a scribe. I have never used the flat end but as it's sharp it is for scribing.

          #2.  That is the indispensible OLFA knife.  Used for scouring metal sheet, plastic sheets etc to allow bending and snapping off to get quick dead straight cuts.

          #3.  Exactly correct. the are Metalsmiths bending bars to form various radii bends. Such as the flair in the tops of GWR tenders, or forming the rounded tops of Belpair fireboxes.

 

 

I did actually get to mark out cut and drill the sub frames late this afternoon.  As all the wheel sets have push on axes, they will be very difficult to get the wheels off the axles once fitted. Therefore I am making the axle holes so the wheel set can be dropped out at any time. The leading and trailing axle will have springing downwards only. The centre axle will have full springing movement.

 

Before splitting the frame lamination I will elongate the axle holes as necessary and drill out the holes for the brake gear. After I have made the brake hangers of course.   So onwards tomorrow.

 

Edited January 6, 2014 by jazz

[jazz]

A bit more done today.  Basically it comprised of marking out, cutting out and laminating the brake hangers as they are double hangers.  Tomorrow will be soldering together the parts made today.  Completing the remaining brake gear, this will have to be removable to drop the wheelsets out when needed.

 

I have made the rear axle, which is the motorised one, to be held in place with bolt on keeper plates. The other two axles will just have soldered on keeper plates as the likelyhood of having to ever remove them is remote.

 

[N15class]

Did you mark straight onto the nickel or do you stick a drawing on and cut around that? Also are you using plunger pickups?

 

The fretting out is very neat.

[jazz]

Hi Peter. I do mark out directly onto the metal. That's OK as the marking out ends up on the inside when the model is built. I will be using paper templates for the riveting on the outside frames. A negative copy will be made for the oposite side of course. I will use doubl sided tape to stick the tempales on. Goof off will be used to remove the tape. (Goof off is an American product, Halfords sell a similar product but is much more expensive)

 

The fretting is done in the fashion I was taught by the old masters. I mark out to the exact measurments, then cut close to the mark on the waste side of the line. Then I clamp the part in the small folding bars (Seen on the left of the rolling bars in the above photo )and carefully file down to the mark. Finish off by running the file sideways along the edges. This give a smooth scratch free surface. Very important on coupling rods and when freting out laminated parts.

 

Yes, I am using Slater's plunger pickups on this build.

Edited January 7, 2014 by jazz

[jazz]

Hi All. There is not going to be any accolades for a fast build on this one. There is a lot of figuring out how to tackle the build issues. Nt least the problem of removable brake gear that is easy and unobstrusive. I wanted to have the brake hangers rigid to prevent any movement causing shorting out on the wheels. That meant the cross beams and centre pull rod and out pull rods to be removable. The solution is bolt on cross beams and a centre pull that will swing clear of the axles. Bolts holding the outer pull rods too.

 

Of course hand making all the small bits, cranks etc etc plus working out the possitioning of all the parts is very slow work.

 

Here is the chassis well under way but still a fair bit to do on it. Plus the cross beams to make from brass tubing.

 

Edited January 8, 2014 by jazz

[N15class]

Looking good now it is going together.

 

I sometimes use a tube attached to the top of brake hanger, the right length to hold the hanger the right distance from the frames to align with the wheels, with a short stub or wire the same diameter as the tube ID, in the frame. The finished brake gear then can be unclipped, A little clear nail varnish holds all in place on final assembly.

[jazz]

Hi Peter. I have used that method too in past. Except for the nail polish trick, that's very neat. I have not been at the WB today, but back on it tomorrow.

[jazz]

HMG, this is taking so long, I will see the next millennium before it's finnished. I made paper templates for the rivets on the frames. This was achived by using the scale drawing paped to a light box and traced the out line onto a sheet of paper. A copy was made using the scanner. The copy had to be rezized as it copied too small, on my program this meant increasing the size 32%. That sounds a lot considering it was only 2mm short in length.

 

Then using a side on photo, added the rivets to the the first copy using the light box. That was then turned over and the second copy taped over it taped over to add the rivets. That gave templates for both frames. Then it was the turn of the rivet press.

 

I say I used a light box, it was in fact a substitute, just the laptop with a blank page showing. Just as good as my old lightbox which found a new home years ago.

 

The wheel sets were assembled with the gearbox in place. Before pressing the wheels onto the axles axles washers were added to eliminate side play. Great care is needed doing this so as not to have tight wheels against the bushes. It's not easy removing the wheels from the press fit on the axles.

 

Attention was then turned to the springs. Starting with the spring hangers I laminated to sets of three sheets and marked out the outline of the hangers on one set. Cut out that set, them laminated that set to the second set and cut the remaining three hangers. (Hope all that makes sense.) That only give six hangers. This is because the last pair are different and will be prepared tomorrow.

 

The running plate has Been cut out and now just needs the cutouts for the driving wheels and the fixing bolts adding. Then I can start the body, which will be a doddle compared to the chassis.

 

In the photo will be seen the six brake hangers readt for splitting.

 

[jazz]

A Good day today, I feel as headway is being made now. I just have the leading wheels axle boxes to finish and attach and then on with the body.

 

Being an outside frame has added various complications as I wanted to make the wheels easy to remove. I have the problems with the brake gear and now the outer frames have been made removable too. Using 10BA bolts the frames are easy to remove to drop the wheels out.

 

The springs themselves are Warren Shephard much modified. The front and rear spring are of different lenght and I cut everything off them to ende up with just the leaf spring. The dampers where fabricated out of brass tuble & wire as soft soldered to the hangers.

 

The bolts holding the frames are the front will be hidden by the springs that are above the running plate. The rear bolts will be inside the bunker.

 

The work done so far.

 

 

 

Edited January 12, 2014 by jazz