Mangled Brass or a Brass Mangle?

Those of you who have followed my modelling adventures for a while may remember that all the way back in 2014 I bought a Hold and Fold tool to make assembling etched kits easier. At the time I said it was nice and easy to use and in the years since it's become an indispensable tool. Also in that original post I mentioned not having a tool for rolling metal. Over the years since I've not found myself needing to do much rolling, mostly just needing a slight curve in cab roofs etc. For those parts I've made do with using a metal bar to gently introduce a curve. That works, but it's difficult to be precise. What I've not needed to do, until now, was to turn a flat sheet into a cylinder.

To date all the steam locomotive models I've built have used either a tube or a casting for the boiler, but for Ivor the boiler has to be rolled from a flat sheet to form a cylinder which then has a circle soldered on one end, while the other attaches to the cab.

Given all the time and effort I've put into this build the last thing I want to do is completely mess up the boiler, and there is no way I could accurately roll that part using a simple bar so.... I've invested in a new tool.

This is a set of 6" rolling bars from GW Models. I would normally point to a website when talking about a new tool, but they don't have a website, in fact I had to ring to check they had any in stock and then post a cheque to pay for them. Even before I tried using them I was impressed. They are just a lovely bit of engineering in their own right.

For anyone who doesn't know how they work, essentially the handle turns the two bottom rollers and thetop roller can be moved up and down. So you gently feed the metal through the gap and turning the handle moves it through. You then move the top roller down a little and repeat. Each time you move the top roller down it produces a tighter curve. I did about a quarter turn of the bolts each time so that I slowly increased the tightness of the curve until I had the right shape.

Once happy you can undo the bolts and lift the top roller off which allows you to simply slide the part off the end. A quick check against the circle for the front of the boiler and everything looks good.

Of course I still need to solder it all together so there is still plenty of time for me to mess it up!

Given how easy it was to roll the boiler you will be unsurprised to know that I think the rolling bars are fantastic and well worth the initial investment. Obviously it won't get as much use as the hold and fold (most kits will have tens of folds and possible only one part needing rolling) but it's one of those tools that does it's job so well and easily that it's worth having in your toolbox.

Just Like Pulling Teeth

Six days before I got married I was sat in a dentists chair being treated by a trainee dentist. I'd managed to break a tooth and the remaining stump had to be removed. After half an hour of pulling on the stump he gave up and let the supervising dentist take over. She had the tooth out within about 10 seconds.

It turns out that removing gears and wheels from an axle is a bit like pulling teeth. Experience and the right tools and it can be a quick and (fairly) painless process. Use the wrong tools and it can be a slow and frustrating process.

When I built the first test chassis for the Hudson-Hunslet diesel I found getting the wheels off the axle exceptionally difficult. It's supposed to be possible using a set of pliers and a hard surface, but that didn't work well for me and in the end I destroyed one insulating plastic part and bent an axle. Now the wheels aren't two expensive (£1.25 per axle) but I wouldn't have to ruin too many before it got costly.

The solution of course is to buy a tool designed for the job, specifically a small gear puller. A number of people made suggestions but in the end I went with the NEEWER W010 gear puller. According to the box this seems to be designed for people building remote control helicopters but it seems perfectly suitable for railway modelling as well. It comes with five different size pins to allow for different sized shafts. There are no measurements given but three are completely round and measure (according to my callipers) 0.8mm, 1.58mm, and 1.85mm. There are also two pins that are mostly round but have a flat side, the round part of these measure 1.70mm and 2.7mm.

So far I've tested it by removing a wheel from an axle and pulling a worm from a layshaft both of which it did without any effort at all. If you are tempted by one be careful where you shop though. I bought mine from Amazon and paid £11.95 although the price does seem to fluctuate a little. If you look on eBay though they seem to be on sale for around £112! I think someone got the decimal point in the wrong place but amazingly the page suggests that they've sold at least 17 at that price. Some people really do have more money than sense.

Having the Right Tool for the Job

Work has been keeping me very busy recently so I've not had much time for modelling. Plus I'm still waiting on the next round of prototype parts for the small Hudson-Hunslet diesel I'm trying to build. This slight lull in modelling has at least allowed me to collect together a number of new tools that should increase the chances that the second prototype locomotive will work a lot better than the first. Given the lull I'm going to spread these out across a number of posts and today we start with a 1.51mm straight chucking reamer.

One thing I wanted to avoid when designing the chassis for the locomotive was too much space for the axle and layshafts to move around as that would seriously affect the running. To try and ensure a sensible fit I designed all the holes to be the exact same size as the part that would fit through them. In fact all the holes are designed to be 1.5mm in diameter as both the layshaft and axles are 1.5mm. My plan was to then ream out the holes until I got a nice sliding fit. In fact my first attempt failed probably because I didn't ream out the holes far enough. Part of the problem was that I was opening out the holes using tapered reamers.

I own a cheap set of tapered reamers which allow me to easily open up a hole, but they don't give any control over the size of the resultant hole. Also it is often difficult to ream out a perfect cylinder given that the reamer is tapered and you can't always access both sides of a hole. I'd always assumed this was something we just had to live with until Jeff (in a comment on NGRM) introduced me to the concept of a straight chucking reamer which are apparently the tool for reaming out bearings. Given the wonderful chassis Jeff has produced I wasn't going to argue with him.

As you can see this reamer isn't tapered (it has a very slight taper at the point to help start the hole) and looks more like a drill bit. This allows you to ream out a perfectly sized hole, which as Jeff pointed out, is exactly what you want for a bearing. As both the axle and the layshaft are 1.5mm in diameter the suggestion was that I should buy a 1.51mm reamer. Unfortunately it turns out that while the wheels I was using are advertised as having a 1.5mm axle they actually measure out at just under 1.54mm so I was rather annoyed to find that they wouldn't fit through my perfectly reamed out hole. The layshaft fitted very nicely though. My annoyance was exacerbated by the cost of the reamer.

I have a set of 20 mini drill bits that cost me around £10 and a set of 5 tapered reamers that I think were about the same price so I was rather shocked to discover that the cheapest 1.51mm straight chucking reamer I could find (part number A01510BAM from Toolex) would set me back £25! Now you can see why I was annoyed to find the axles were larger than advertised. My initial plan was to use the reamer for the layshaft holes and then open up the other holes in the second prototype using the tapered, but less exact, reamer. Since then, however, I've tweaked the chassis design and it would now be very difficult to ream sensible bearings using a tapered reamer due to the size of the bearing holes and access to both sides of the holes, so I've now invested in a 1.55mm reamer as well (part number A01550BAM) and on a quick test with some scrap this produces a perfect hole for the axles.

So two new tiny tools for almost the cost of a small locomotive kit, but hopefully they'll allow me to produce a number of my own models, which might in turn become kits and cover the cost. Not sure how successful this will be, but I can guarantee you'll get to read about the journey.

Tool #3

Unlike the hold-and-fold I talked about in a previous thread this tool didn't cost me anything as it was included as part of the kit for the RNAD crew van I'm currently building. It is, however, a very useful tool.

I mentioned before that the body of the RNAD crew van fitted into two slots in the 3D printed floor. This tool is provided as part of the fret of etched parts to allow you to easily check that the holes are fully opened out so that the body fits easily. Once you have done this the instructions say you can discard it, but I realized that it would be extremely useful for something else.

The end of the tool is pretty much the same size (width and thickness) as the end of the Greenwich couplings. This makes the tool ideal for checking that the slot for the coupling is fully open. I had previously been using an off cut of the etched fret the couplings come in, but this was a bit fiddly and had led to me cutting my finger, but this tool works perfectly on my recent 3D printed wagons so I'll definitely be holding on to it.

Tools: Hold and Fold

When I started to get back into railway modelling the only tools I had were some rather worn paint brushes and a set of small screwdrivers (useful for fixing my glasses), and so far I've added small tools to the collection as the need has arisen. So I've now got a modelling knife, a set of small drill bits and a pin vice for using them, a set of small files, a set of tweezers, and a razor saw. None of these have been expensive and none of them are particularly interesting. My new tool is, however, both more expensive and interesting and so warrants a post of its own.

As I mentioned recently I don't have a tool for rolling pieces of metal to shape but having now tried to do so I can see me buying a tool to help. The same thing happened when I had to fold some of the etched brass parts for the Baguley-Drewry kit (specifically folding the wiper blades was a bit of a nightmare) and so I invested in a new tool before building the Quarry Hunslet; a Hold and Fold from Avonside Works.

Given that it's called a Hold and Fold, you probably don't me to explain what it does or even how it works but... it lets you easily hold and fold metal parts. A number of different sized tools are available ranging from 2 inches in length all the way up to 14 inches. While I could easily shape any of the parts from the kit I'm currently building on the 2" model, I opted to buy the 4" version as I think that will be big enough for almost any model I ever want to build. If you want to have a look at the others then the best photos are probably on the product page at Eileen's Emporium.

So far I've only needed to bend one piece of the kit, the lip on the edge of the cab roof, but it was very easy to do accurately and I'm impressed with the feel and quality of the tool. Certainly something I'd recommend.