Jennifer Who?

[NickB]

Jon,

Not for the first time, I am in awe of your patience and dedication. With a similar number of rivets on an LNWR tender, I could not face the idea of drilling, inserting and setting them, though it would have been the Right Thing To Do, and impressed them instead. Still took a fair old while, of course.

I've never set much store by solder of different melting points. Many years ago I bought a 1kg reel of 60/40 cored solder and I am still using it. Doing things in the right order, clamping where necessary, and using just enough heat to flow the solder through the join seems to work (most of the time).

Nick

 

[Ian@StEnochs]

I’ve moved back to this project and have spent a few hours cleaning up the tender etches. Having decided to push the rivets out in the strapping and then solder in pace, I ordered three different solders varying in melting point. The idea being that the highest would be used first followed by the others as work progressed. The first strap to have its rivets pushed out was the single piece on its own. As riveting progressed, I noticed that it was starting to curl up. I kept going with the thought that I would gently flatten it before soldering it onto the side. Not only had it curled but, it had also deformed sideways and worst of all, it had stretched! When I offered it up to the side, of course the corresponding rivets no longer lined up. Also, I was unable to get rid of the sideways kinks to my satisfaction. Luckily, I have a spare so, all is not lost.
Thinking how to get over this, I decided to rivet all of the straps in place with 1/32” copper rivets yes, I know, after ordering the solder too. For the tender alone I will need a minimum of 1,024. I have managed to order 900 from Polly Engineering (their complete stock) but will still need at least 124 to finish off the tender. I’ll still need som as spares and, I don’t know how many, for the loco. I did search the interweb and Polly was about the only supplier of 1/16” copper rivets. Brass are available but with copper being softer there is less likelihood of distortion from hammering. If anyone knows of a supplier of 1/32” copper rivets would they please post their address here.

Jon

Ps. I did take a picture of the bent strap end on but for some reason it wouldn’t attach here. There is the one below however.

View attachment 227538View attachment 227539

Impresive work Jon. Getting so many holes in straight lines and spaced properly is an achievement in itself. Instead of rivets have you considered just adding wire stubs and rounding the end. I have been doing that on a couple of 7mm firebox fronts.

The body is 3mm brass with 0.7 holes and brass wire soldered in. The wire is cut back so that only 0.6 protrudes, filed back with a piece of piano wire lying on the surface which rotates when the file touches it. The photo is very much from the original.

The ends are then rounded off with a Hollow Burr in my mini pedestal drill. These Burrs are intended for Jewellry makers and come in a range of sizes. A couple pictured below. Mine came from Cookson Gold but other suppliers are available.



The also come in usefull for rounding the end of handrails.

Ian.

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Nick
You’re probably quite right about the solders. Sometimes I jump in feet first and this is probably one of those times. Still, I won’t be running out of solder for a while though. I’ll not set the rivets on the inside but simply pean them over into a slightly chamfered hole and the clean back with a file where they would otherwise show or interfere with a different component.

Ian
I like your idea of creating dummy rivets, they certainly look the part. I may just look at Cookson gold as I like those domed burrs.
I won’t be using your method on this tender as the rivets are on their way but maybe for another project.


I’ve been going over my notes and drawings for the loco today. I seem to have made the loco chassis overly long meaning that the boiler is going to be 11’ 4” instead of 10’ 6”. Maybe I should re title this project, A Freelance Early Loco. Too late to do anything now. This afternoon I cut the boiler out of a piece of 1 15/16” copper tube. I have a 2” piece of brass tube that I would like to have used but the extra 1/16” would have made things a bit tight re the firebox. The copper was fairly knocked about but after cutting to length, I spent some time running over it in the lathe with various grades of abrasive paper. I didn’t want to use any cladding on this one hence the clean up job. I’m going to try and get a decent finish on it when it comes to the painting stage. I also thought that I’d make the boiler bands separately, paint them and then clamp them onto the boiler with a simple screwed bracket underneath where, hopefully, it won’t be seen. The picture below shows the tube cleaned up alongside the off cut.

Jon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

considered

Ian
Which size of half round burrs do you have?

Jon

 

[Ian@StEnochs]

Ian
Which size of half round burrs do you have?

Jon

I have 0.8, 1.00, 1.2 & 1.4 which covers most applications in my scale. So much easier than trying to round the end of a wire with files and abrasive paper. They also come into their own with the bigger rivet heads on loco frames.

Ian.

 

[Jon Nazareth]

I have 0.8, 1.00, 1.2 & 1.4 which covers most applications in my scale. So much easier than trying to round the end of a wire with files and abrasive paper. They also come into their own with the bigger rivet heads on loco frames.

Ian.

Thanks, Ian.

Jon

 

[michael mott]

Impresive work Jon. Getting so many holes in straight lines and spaced properly is an achievement in itself. Instead of rivets have you considered just adding wire stubs and rounding the end. I have been doing that on a couple of 7mm firebox fronts.
View attachment 227582
The body is 3mm brass with 0.7 holes and brass wire soldered in. The wire is cut back so that only 0.6 protrudes, filed back with a piece of piano wire lying on the surface which rotates when the file touches it. The photo is very much from the original.

The ends are then rounded off with a Hollow Burr in my mini pedestal drill. These Burrs are intended for Jewellry makers and come in a range of sizes. A couple pictured below. Mine came from Cookson Gold but other suppliers are available.

View attachment 227583

The also come in usefull for rounding the end of handrails.

Ian.

A great tip Ian thanks.

Michael

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Some 1,200 holes drilled and each one de-burred both sides, what a job. Still, that’s behind me now and I can get on with some riveting. The copper rivets, 2,000, that I ordered arrived today. With the prompt from MSWJR, I phoned up the suppliers and increased my order thereby ensuring that the heads are all of the same size.

Jon

 

[mswjr]

What a horrible job deburring all those holes, Great job though it will look good with all those rivets, so go on then tell us how many drills you broke.

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Oh ye of little faith. All were drilled using a Geoffrey Thomas pillar drill with a 0.8mm drill and I didn’t break one

Jon

 

[simond]

Jon,

you have much more patience than I.

I got bored doing the rivets on an N6 coal wagon, and I only had to draw a quarter of them, as the computer can mirror them With a couple of clicks.

It’s obviously a labour of love, and it looks great!

best
Simon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

I’ve made a start on the riveting and it’s going okay. I held this top strap in place with a few 16BA screws before I set to but even then, once I started riveting, I noticed that it was bowing out. Because of this, I placed rivets at intervals and then riveted between the gaps placing them centrally. The next rivets went in between those gaps and so on and so on until the strap was fully riveted. The heads look a bit large to me but we can put that down to 1840’s over engineering. Once painted, they may recede a bit, fingers crossed.
I machined up a stake from hard nylon with a small depression at its end. The rivet head sits in this which prevents any damage to it.

Jon

 

[NickB]

You mean you're not going to machine each rivet head down to the right size? Now that is disappointing

Nick

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Damn, never thought of that one, Nick.

Jon

 

[michael mott]

I'm Impressed Jon, That does look superb!

Michael

 

[Jon Nazareth]

One side finished. I filed off excess rivet flush on the inside face as I thought that working with a flat surface would be an advantage. I can’t remember how I built the tender for my locomotive Enigma(Lion) so, I’m making it up as I go along.
It’s getting weighty too. I’m going to weigh the second side before riveting to see what the increase in weight is.
I did think about 1/64” rivets but that thought only came to me halfway through this session of work.

Jon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

I'm Impressed Jon, That does look superb!

Michael

Thanks, Michael.

Jon

 

[Brian McKenzie]

All were drilled using a Geoffrey Thomas pillar drill with a 0.8mm drill and I didn’t break one

Mind over matter to the fore here. I'd be scared of messing this task up at a late stage - after so much work.

How did you do the indexing, and was a centre drill used first?

(er, you might mean George Thomas pillar drill. George, and his designs were and remain, quite prominent in model engineering circles)

-Brian McK.

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Brian
In post 56, I may not have made it quite clear but the components were etched and the spacing for the rivets were half etched. When I started to punch the rivet shapes that’s when the problems began hence the use of real rivets.

Jon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Brian
Yes, you are quite right, it is George Thomas. I built his pillar so many years ago and when it was finished, I never used it. It sat in the shed going rusty until I delved into G3. I stripped it down and gave it a good clean and wiped a thin layer of oil over it. I then brought it indoors to my indoor workshop/display room where it has since sat and seems to be in constant use. I don’t know what I would have done without it, it’s invaluable.

Jon