It seems that I can't post an image in a reply on Blogspot, so I'll have to do it as a separate post...
Phil said "If the wagon floors are plastic, bend the wires in to a U shape and push them through with a soldering iron. When you take the heat away, they are perfectly fixed in place."
Well, that was what I used to do :-)
Then I became a little tired of waving a hot soldering iron around in the close vicinity of a detailed and finished plastic or whitemetal wagon, or the up-down-up of trying to fix the two staples at the correct height to make it all work consistently.
So I sat down and had a bit of a think, and fired up CorelDraw. The result is this little set of etches that fold up into a bracket that takes the appropriate sized wires at a standardised height and spacing:
The whole sub-assembly is built up off the wagon, soldered together well away from anything that can be damaged, and with ease of working. Then it can be glued/melted/screwed onto the wagon floor:
Epoxy resin is my preferred method of fitting, as it fills the grooves that I drew into the bottom for grip, and goes through the holes to form little "mushrooms" that lock it in place.
Jigs for the loop and mount spacing are etched into the side of the fret (you can see them in the top picture) so that the bending of them from straight wire is consistent.
I forgot to write myself a reminder to mix proper epoxy though!
Cheers
Flymo
That's a very neat alternative to the MSE plates that I currently use Paul. When do expect to have them available for sale?
ReplyDeleteWhat a simple solution. Not attempted to install any Sprat & Winkle couplings yet but have some to try out. Will you have some jigs available at Scalefour North?
ReplyDeleteCheers
Ian
Looks very neat - Much better than any other way of glueing the couplings in place. I'll stick to the soldering iron though if you don't mind.
ReplyDeleteI've done a couple of revisions to the etch, to make minor tweaks to just make them that little bit easier. I'm hoping to send files for new artwork off to PPD in the next few days.
ReplyDeleteSo definitely by Scalefour North :-)
See you there Ian!
That's a very neat solution!
ReplyDeleteOn my Dad's stock we started with S&W couplings a few years back, but mounted with the coupling arms/loops at buffer level. Very reliable and very easy to maintain consistency but not too pretty. For reliability I wanted to use S&Ws on my new project, but mount the couplings lower down - this looks like a perfect aid to get consistency!
Hi James,
ReplyDeleteWell, the slightly tweaked design went off to the etchers at the start of this week, so I'm just waiting to hear a date from them when it will come back and I can test it again. After that, they will be available to all.
Cheers
Flymo