Wednesday 12 January 2011

Shafted!

I’ve been putting in a few more hours working towards finishing off my own model of the Romanian ballast wagon. I posted last week about adding some invisible details and that’s what I’ve been getting on with.

I say invisible, but what I really mean is the sort of details that you probably wouldn’t notice were missing if they weren’t there because you probably never realised they were there in the first place, if you see what I mean.

That’s how I’d class the levers / cranks which hang from the largest of the control shafts along each side of the wagon. It’s the actual shaft that’s the vital detail – you’d certainly notice if that wasn’t there.

It’s a fiddly task because it means making and then bonding some little bits of styrene at right angles to a horizontal rod. You’ve got to start by filing the end of a piece of styrene strip to the shape of the shaft – and the strip you’re working on is only 1.5 mm wide.

Next cut it to 5mm length and drill a tiny hole at the other end to receive a small piece of wire and file it to a wedge shape, rounded at the other end.

After you’ve made 8 of these they’ve got to be glued in place to line up with some more holes you’ve drilled on the doors at the bottom of the hopper. Oh, and make sure they’re all sitting at the same angle on the shaft. Like so...




Then, with some surgical tweezers, attempt to link these levers to the hoppers with some small lengths of brass with a little bend at one end to hook through the hole at the end of the lever and dab with superglue to secure.

And you end up with this...



Not that anyone will ever notice....

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