East Barnet Joint Stock - a workbench

[Chas Levin]

6 minutes ago, chris p bacon said:

I do it occasionally but I run the drill veeeerrrryy slowly as I made a hash of something  few years ago by being a bit gung ho with the drill.

Yes, you're not kidding! I've had a couple of nasty DIY moments over the years with improperly secured workpieces suddenly turning into catherine wheels on the end of a drill... What my school woodwork teacher would have said I shudder to think!!

I was extremely careful here though, partly because if I mess up the floor pan I'd have to order another etch.

 

Holding the etch by the edges in one hand though, with a cordless drill - which doesn't go anywhere near as fast as a mains one - going slowly, you can feel quite easily how the broach is biting on the inside of the hole and you can sense how much pressure to apply to avoid snagging.

 

Definitely beats blisters: why do they make the handles of these things in that way, with the plastic 'grid' sort of thing? Actually, I wonder if there's some sort of slip-on handle for them...?

[chris p bacon]

3 minutes ago, Chas Levin said:

Actually, I wonder if there's some sort of slip-on handle for them...?

I put mine in a tap holder sometimes to turn it into a 'T' bar

 

[John Isherwood]

2 minutes ago, Chas Levin said:

I wonder if there's some sort of slip-on handle for them...?

 

Carefully cut away the plastic handle, and insert the shank into a pin-vice - sorted.

 

CJI.

[Jon4470]

I also tend to use the Tap holder (as @chris p bacon suggests) to hold and turn broaches. My broaches have a square section of the shank just below the plastic handle which the Tap holder will grip. 
 

Some of the plastic handles have disintegrated on my broaches. So I have also used the pin vice that @cctransuksuggests…especially for the smaller broaches.
 

For opening up to a large hole I also have a tapered reamer…..to use with care as the hole can get rather big very quickly🙂

[Woodcock29]

Chas

My broaches don't have plastic handle coverings they're just square section so I always use a pin vice or tap handle as mentioned above.

Watching with much interest!

Andrew

[Chas Levin]

9 hours ago, Jon4470 said:

I also tend to use the Tap holder (as @chris p bacon suggests) to hold and turn broaches. My broaches have a square section of the shank just below the plastic handle which the Tap holder will grip. 
 

Some of the plastic handles have disintegrated on my broaches. So I have also used the pin vice that @cctransuksuggests…especially for the smaller broaches.
 

For opening up to a large hole I also have a tapered reamer…..to use with care as the hole can get rather big very quickly🙂

 

8 hours ago, Woodcock29 said:

Chas

My broaches don't have plastic handle coverings they're just square section so I always use a pin vice or tap handle as mentioned above.

Watching with much interest!

Andrew

 

Morning gents, it's beginning to as if I was one of the few remaining handheld broachers in England, isn't it? And it looks as if I went straight from handheld to motorised, missing out the tap holder / pin vice stage altogether. A sort of 'Great Leap Forward' in reaming terms, without any of the unfortunate historical, social or political associations of that phrase of course... ☺️

 

Interested to hear that you're using handle-less broaches Andrew. I saw those available when I was buying a set and thought the ones with plastic handles would be easier to use: I have now learned my lesson!!

Edited August 17, 2023 by Chas Levin

[31A]

1 hour ago, Chas Levin said:

Morning gents, it's beginning to as if I was one of the few remaining handheld broachers in England, isn't it? And it looks as if I went straight from handheld to motorised, missing out the tap holder / pin vice stage altogether.

Mine have plastic handles, or did have, and I used to hold them by hand until most of the handles cracked and fell off, so instead of spending money replacing them I hit on the idea of putting them in a pin vice - it seems I wasn't alone!  Didn't think of putting them in a drill, though ....

 

[Chas Levin]

Hello all, a quick livery colour question that I don't think has been covered anywhere: does anyone know what colour the Sentinel railcar wheel centres were please?

I've looked carefully at various photos in Yeadon and digitally and I'm fairly certain they were black (with white rims when newly ex-works) but if anyone has any other info (if by any chance for instance they were green, to match the lower body panels) please would you let me know?

(I've also posted this on the Sentinel Livery thread we started a while back - apologies for doubling up but some epopel might look at one and not the other...).

[Jon4470]

Hi Chas

 

I have assumed that these wheels were black. However, I don’t think that I’ve seen any written reference to their colour, one way or the other. 
 

The green and cream excursion stock had a similar colour scheme to the railcars. This excursion stock had teak centres to the wheels (according to Harris). 

Having said that, when looking at photos this evening, I can’t see the teak paint on excursion carriage wheels….the under frames are too dark to make out the details!

I don’t think green centres to the wheels is very likely……logically they’d be black or teak. 
 

Hope this helps.

 

[Chas Levin]

10 hours ago, Jon4470 said:

Hi Chas

 

I have assumed that these wheels were black. However, I don’t think that I’ve seen any written reference to their colour, one way or the other. 
 

The green and cream excursion stock had a similar colour scheme to the railcars. This excursion stock had teak centres to the wheels (according to Harris). 

Having said that, when looking at photos this evening, I can’t see the teak paint on excursion carriage wheels….the under frames are too dark to make out the details!

I don’t think green centres to the wheels is very likely……logically they’d be black or teak. 
 

Hope this helps.

 

 

Morning Jon, thanks. I'd incline towards black too. I hadn't thought of teak but that would seem like a slightly odd looking colour scheme to me; I wonder if there are any pictures anywhere of the excursion stock in which you can make out teak wheel centres? Or even black and white pictures where it can be seen that the wheel centres are a different colour to the green sides?

 

Anyway, you're right I'm sure that green is very unlikely here: I was grasping at straws and I knew it sounded wrong when I wrote it. One of the things that puzzled me is the number of models (mainly NuCast of course) you can find photos of online where the wheels are silver, or bare metal. I know that's how the majority of motor bogies' wheels are supplied and it might mean they just hadn't been painted when the photos were taken, but I thought perhaps there might be a prototype reason too...

 

Needless to say the one contemporary colour photo I know of - Eagle, in 'The Big Four in Colour' - is far too dark below the body to make out the colour of the wheels.

[Chas Levin]

On 07/08/2023 at 22:13, Bucoops said:

Curveball - apparently the NER Bo-Bo electric (BR 26500/1) has 6'6" bogies according to here -

 

http://www.clag.org.uk/wheelbase.html

 

Perhaps @Michael Edge may be able to rustle something up?

 

Michael was indeed able to help - thanks again for the suggestion Rich and thank you @Michael Edge:

 

 

This is the correct 6'6" wheelbase for the Sentinel and the length of the sides will be fine too - it won't need shortening as would a couple of the other possibilities I'd looked at. The upward projecting pyramid-shaped middle section will need lowering, but that shouldn't be an issue.

The main thing is that this will produce a far more accurate 6'6" bogie than my scratchbuilding would have done!

 

I'll also look at using the very nice and shiny cosmetic sides behind the white-metal ones from the NuCast kit: they'll be almost entirely covered up but what is visible might supply a little rivet detail to help the appearance...

 

Meanwhile, the Palatine Models 6'4" twin torsion bogies have been put by for future use on either an electric loco project or a tram one, while their 8'6" version has gone into the box with an RDEB GNR coach kit that came without bogies, so nothing's gone to waste.

[Chas Levin]

Meanwhile, in looking at the size and shape of the floor cut-out to allow the motor bogie to pivot, I decided to build a mock-up in plasticard, rather than start hacking the beautiful Worsley nickel-silver etch about. Having made a plastic replica of the floor and made a 4mm hole for the pivots of two Beetles, I then laid them upside-down on the plastic floor with a piece of Hornby R2 radius track, also upside-down, so I could mark the limits of excursion of the powered bogie on the underside of the plastic - and that gave me the shape to cut out:

 

 

As I cut it out, I realised that rather than using the cut out piece itself as the cranked floor platform, a piece c.2mm larger all round could then sit on top of the cranking spacers:

 

 

Much better - here's the result, only taped in place, to allow removal later so that the aperture could be used as a stencil:

 

 

 

And here's some further testing, to make sure the bogie can move as needed, including those pesky wires clearing the aperture sides:

 

 

 

 

This mock-up was done in 1mm plasticard for rigidity, as the size and shape of the aperture was the thing I was measuring and 1mm card was much easire to manipulate. I also made a version in 0.4mm card - the same thickness as the NS floorpan - to check the ride height more accurately, but that thickness of plasticard doesn't have the rigidity of NS so some longtitudinal stiffening struts will be needed if I also use it to check the ride height and mounting of the unpowered bogie:

 

[Bucoops]

Excellent :)

[John Isherwood]

3 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

Meanwhile, in looking at the size and shape of the floor cut-out to allow the motor bogie to pivot, I decided to build a mock-up in plasticard, rather than start hacking the beautiful Worsley nickel-silver etch about. Having made a plastic replica of the floor and made a 4mm hole for the pivots of two Beetles, I then laid them upside-down on the plastic floor with a piece of Hornby R2 radius track, also upside-down, so I could mark the limits of excursion of the powered bogie on the underside of the plastic - and that gave me the shape to cut out:

 

 

As I cut it out, I realised that rather than using the cut out piece itself as the cranked floor platform, a piece c.2mm larger all round could then sit on top of the cranking spacers:

 

 

Much better - here's the result, only taped in place, to allow removal later so that the aperture could be used as a stencil:

 

 

 

And here's some further testing, to make sure the bogie can move as needed, including those pesky wires clearing the aperture sides:

 

 

 

 

This mock-up was done in 1mm plasticard for rigidity, as the size and shape of the aperture was the thing I was measuring and 1mm card was much easire to manipulate. I also made a version in 0.4mm card - the same thickness as the NS floorpan - to check the ride height more accurately, but that thickness of plasticard doesn't have the rigidity of NS so some longtitudinal stiffening struts will be needed if I also use it to check the ride height and mounting of the unpowered bogie:

 

 

When I did my Kitmaster Midland Pullman power cars, they were provided with deep longitudinal beams to brace the plastic floor.

 

This would be more difficult with the open nature of your model.

 

CJI.

Edited August 31, 2023 by cctransuk

[Chas Levin]

5 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

When I did my Kitmaster Midland Pullman power cars, they were provided with deep longitudinal beams to brake the plastic floor.

 

This would be more difficult with the open nature of your model.

 

CJI.

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear John: these plastic floors are only test pieces, replicas to check clearances, ride heights and so forth. The Worsley Works etches do include a floor and it's designed in the same way as Comet coach kits, with a fold-up piece along each edge (to locate inside the sides) and a tabbed solebar strip that solders into slots, pointing downwards, so between them, those two features keep the floor flat. The WW etches are in 0.4mm (15 thou) nickel silver too, so rigidity shouldn't be an issue.

Here's a crop from an earlier photo, showing the etched floor:

 

 

One of the reasons I've been trying to plan out everything to do with the bogies, underframe gubbins etc at the start is because while the floor is still flat and part of the larger etched piece, as you see it in this photo, I figure it's easier to cut out pieces, drill holes and do any other modifications.

I've been learning too about the Comet coach construction process. Comet publishes a pdf explaining how their system works, but I didn't find it very easy to follow quite what happens with those flanges and the solebar strips (no criticism of Comet or their document intended, more me then them I think!) and I found very little material online about it either, because the only other builds I could find didn't show the start, the basics.

So, when I get to that stage, I'll include some photos and explanation, in case anyone else finds themselves wondering about the same things I did.

[Chas Levin]

I used the plastic test floor as a template to mark the floor cut-out for the power bogie on the Worsley Works etch:

 

 

 

And then set to work with a piercing saw, a tool I'm never entirely comfortable using and use very seldom, but for which there isn't an easy substitute:

 

 

Here's the raw result, where you can see that I did my best to stay visibly inside the pencilled line - to allow for more accurate filing later - and did fairly well, except for a slight bulge along one of the long sides:

 

 

And here's the result after some preliminary cleaning up:

 

 

Actually, there's no real need for great accuracy or neatness, because this void will of course be invisible, underneath the 'car. Not only that, but the raising rim to give the cranked floor will obscure the edges further, but I enjoy trying to be accurate and I'm sure it helps train my skills.

The corners I've left curved, because they're easier to do that way - using a rounded needle file - and the bogie corners go nowhere near them so there's no need to take them back to square.

 

I've been giving some thought to how to build the cranked floor section over this hole: I was initially going to use brass rod with a piece of NS sheet slightly larger than the hole on top, all soldered together (an exact repeat of what I did with the plastic test floor in the photos upthread, in fact) but I'm thinking about some sort of mechanical fixing in addition to the solder, possibly even something to allow removal for maintenance.

The spacing will be 4mm; 3.2mm is to lower the floor-to-railtop from the 18.25 mm the Beetle produces, with the 0.8mm to allow for a washer. I'm going to try using PTFE washers, obviating the need for oil, so that none can find its way into the Beetle below.

I couldn't initially find any 2x4mm brass or NS bar and thought I'd have to use two layers of 2x2mm, with all the possible problems of one layer shifting as I soldered the other one, but then I found something that I think will be even better: 2mm by 4mm brass rectangular tube! I'm sure it'll be perfectly rigid enough for this purpose, particularly once it's all soldered up, and the far smaller mass means it'll need nothing like as much heat to solder in place, which will make it less likely to buckle the floor pieces...

Anyway, that's on the way right now so I'll post pictures of it when it arrives.

[micklner]

Well done , even easier is drill holes in each corner, then saw from one to the other.

[Bucoops]

Agreed, very neat. I really struggle with piercing saws. Go through a crazy amount of blades.

 

These were suggested by someone else on here - designed for plastic but work very well with flat brass or nickel silver - https://www.olfauk.com/product_qr/OLF_PCS

 

 

[Chas Levin]

1 hour ago, micklner said:

Well done , even easier is drill holes in each corner, then saw from one to the other.

Thanks Mick and yes, that's what I've always done in the past, but with this floorpan I'm nervous of distorting or damaging it so I thought given that I'd already made the large centre hole I'd just go from there.

The nickel silver is pretty rigid but the whole piece - with the still captive edge flanges and solebar pieces - is oddly unstable and I had visions of a drill catching and twisting the whole thing in a split second. And you know how once a flat etch has been bent, you can never quite get it dead flat again...

Edited September 6, 2023 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

1 hour ago, Bucoops said:

Agreed, very neat. I really struggle with piercing saws. Go through a crazy amount of blades.

 

These were suggested by someone else on here - designed for plastic but work very well with flat brass or nickel silver - https://www.olfauk.com/product_qr/OLF_PCS

 

 

 

Thanks Rich - I used the second finest blade on this, going very slowly, and actually did the whole thing with one blade - definitely a first, as I too normally go through a few for each job!

That Olfa thing is very interesting, thanks for posting the link - it looks like one of those scrawkers that people make from hacksaw blades, doesn't it?

I'm going to get one, because I've never made a scrawker as I've always thought that filing down a hacksaw blade would be unpleasant work, so I've gotten by with a Stanley knife for heavy work and a scalpel for finer materials, but neither is very satisfactory...

Edited September 6, 2023 by Chas Levin

[John Isherwood]

1 minute ago, Chas Levin said:

 

I used the second finest blade on this Rich, going very slowly, and actually did the whole thing with one blade - definitely a first, as I too normally go through a few for each job!

That Olfa thing is very interesting, thanks for posting the link - it looks like one of those scrawkers that people make from hacksaw blades, doesn't it?

I'm going to get one, because I've never made a scrawker as I've always thought that filing down a hacksaw blade would be unpleasant work, so I've gotten by with a Stanley knife for heavy work and a scalpel for finer materials, but neither is very satisfactory...

 

You can't file a hacksaw blade - a grinding wheel is needed.

 

I was always taught that the handle of the piercing saw should be BELOW the workpiece, and the saw teeth set up so as to cut on the DOWNWARD stroke.

 

Thin metal can be temporarily glued to plywood, to help prevent snagging of the blade and distortion of the metal.

 

The saw tooth spacing should be less than the metal thickness.

 

CJI.

[micklner]

15 minutes ago, Chas Levin said:

Yes, that's what I've always done in the past Mick, but with this floorpan I'm nervous of distorting or damaging it so I thought given that I'd already made the large centre hole I'd just go from there.

The nickel silver is pretty rigid but the whole piece - with the still captive edge flanges and solebar pieces - is oddly unstable and I had visions of a drill catching and twisting the whole thing in a split second. And you know how once a flat etch has been bent, you can never quite get it dead flat again...

Good point re bending !! A lot depends on the metal thickness involved.

 

I would'nt recomend a scrawker for this job. For it to work, you have to bend the metal,  you then have to snap apart on the lines created, and still drill corner holes as well and still cut at least threee sides for it to work !! .  It will give guide lines ,to make it easier to saw the metal.

The scrawker is excellent for making etched lines on kits deeper, before any bending/shaping occurs  e.g corners

[Chas Levin]

22 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

You can't file a hacksaw blade - a grinding wheel is needed.

 

Ah - that may be what I'd read and what put me off trying: I don't have a grinding wheel!

 

23 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

I was always taught that the handle of the piercing saw should be BELOW the workpiece, and the saw teeth set up so as to cut on the DOWNWARD stroke.

 

That's interesting John, thank you. I did find it quite awkward, with the handle above, but it didn't occur to me to try it below: I'll try that on the saw's next outing. Although that photo shows the saw vertical, that was just how I left it while taking the photo and most of the time, it was at a slight angle and I had it cutting on the stroke towards me, which I think would be the same as you say, cutting on what would be the downward stroke.

 

27 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

Thin metal can be temporarily glued to plywood, to help prevent snagging of the blade and distortion of the metal.

 

That's a nice idea too, a bit like soldering multiple pieces of thin metal together to work on them; another one to try out next time!

 

32 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

The saw tooth spacing should be less than the metal thickness.

 

CJI.

 

Now that brings back memories of school metalwork classes - I think we were shown that at school, in the dim and distant past (1970s for me). I'd certinly forgotten it until you mentioned it though John!

I went for the second finest blade, because the finest I had looked as if it would take until the middle of next week to cut through the metal, but my worries of snagging or twisting ruled out anything with larger teeth.

 

Going very slowly and carefully is a key thing I think; one way I make that easier is by carefully choosing suitable music to accompany the work. I pick something I like listening to, something I look forward to relaxing into, so I'm in no hurry for it - or the job - to end... 🎶

[Chas Levin]

33 minutes ago, micklner said:

I would'nt recomend a scrawker for this job. For it to work, you have to bend the metal,  you then have to snap apart on the lines created, and still drill corner holes as well and still cut at least threee sides for it to work !! .

 

Yes, there's the problem I think for this job: that you'd be having to bend the scrawked metal afterwards (is 'scrawked' a word? It is now!).

Still @Bucoops's Olfa cutter is going on the shopping list, as it'll cure my occasional Scrawker Envy.

Edited September 6, 2023 by Chas Levin

[Bucoops]

5 minutes ago, Chas Levin said:

 

Yes, there's the problem I think for this job Mick: that you'd be having to bend the scrawked metal afterwards (is 'scrawked' a word? It is now!).

Still @Bucoops's Olfa cutter is going on the shopping list, as it'll cure my occasional Scrawker Envy.

 

I've cut out a few shapes from flat sheet with it without issue, no bending needed, you just "scrawk" away until you break through. I relatively light touch can produce a nice satisfying swarf curl. It's also as Mick says very useful for making half-etch lines deeper.