Signs of Life

Given how sporadic, or none existant, posts have been over the last year or so I've no idea if anyone is still reading this blog, but believe it or not there are signs of some modelling happening!

Some of you may remember that for Christmas all the way back in 2016 I was bought a kit for building an OO guage model of Ivor the Engine. This was a nice present and the first from my then newly born son, Toby. Well Toby, is now five and a half, and I now have a second son, Thomas, who is 14 months old. What I don't have though is a completed model of Ivor the Engine.

The last time I blogged about the kit was almost four years ago in August of 2018 when everything had gone horribly wrong: I'd broken the wheel holding tool for my lathe and the wheels I had made, although correct to the instructions, didn't fit in the model. At that point I put the kit away in a box, never expecting it to be four years before it would appear again.

So where are we know? Well, fohrmann-WERKZEUGE were very helpful and sold me replacement parts for the wheel holding tool which saved me quite a bit of money over buying a complete replacement. Of course any money saved was then spent on having new set of wheels produced. These are essentially they same as last time (lost wax brass castings using 3D printed waxes all done through Shapeways) albeit slightly smaller to solve the main issue that arose with the originals.

So far all I've done is separate the wheels and drill out the axle hole to 2mm, but as you can see roughly placing them against the chassis suggests that they will fit this time, especially given they will be fractionally smaller once I've turned them on the lathe to properly profile the edge and add the flange.

I've no idea when I'll get to do more work on the wheels but hopefully it won't take four years before there is more to report.