7mm Mickoo's Commercial Workbench

[James Spooner]

Elsewhere on this forum, earlier this week, Jim Smith-Wright in 4mm scale has just made up a test build of a J17 to be sold by Brassmasters. From the photos the whole tender body and the loco’s boiler and fittings are all 3D printed. There doesn’t seem to have been any sniffiness about that, apart from the occasional comment on some slight imperfections in the boiler.

Nigel

 

[AJC]

Elsewhere on this forum, earlier this week, Jim Smith-Wright in 4mm scale has just made up a test build of a J17 to be sold by Brassmasters. From the photos the whole tender body and the loco’s boiler and fittings are all 3D printed. There doesn’t seem to have been any sniffiness about that, apart from the occasional comment on some slight imperfections in the boiler.

Nigel

Well no, and for two reasons: Brassmasters have supplied resin boilers for 30 odd years now. If you were going to have misgivings, you’ve either given up on them or moved on (one way or another). The second is that the quality is very obvious, and the stepping visible was exceptionally slight. Were I in the market for a J17, and while stranger things have happened it’s pretty improbable, I’d wait for this over the alternatives.

Perhaps material snobbery is more prevalent in 0? Actually I doubt that, but spending the kind of money that involves may sharpen opinions and tongues. Silly really, in my view.

Adam

 

[mickoo]

Elsewhere on this forum, earlier this week, Jim Smith-Wright in 4mm scale has just made up a test build of a J17 to be sold by Brassmasters. From the photos the whole tender body and the loco’s boiler and fittings are all 3D printed. There doesn’t seem to have been any sniffiness about that, apart from the occasional comment on some slight imperfections in the boiler.

Nigel

With the greatest of respect, come and sit next to me at the next show is all I'll say.

Fed up defending it, fed up explaining that not all 3D is layered and, fed up justifying how to run a business.

Most people on this forum are open minded and engaging, but WT is a very small porthole in a very big liner in an even bigger ocean.

 

[mickoo]

Well no, and for two reasons: Brassmasters have supplied resin boilers for 30 odd years now. If you were going to have misgivings, you’ve either given up on them or moved on (one way or another). The second is that the quality is very obvious, and the stepping visible was exceptionally slight. Were I in the market for a J17, and while stranger things have happened it’s pretty improbable, I’d wait for this over the alternatives.

Perhaps material snobbery is more prevalent in 0? Actually I doubt that, but spending the kind of money that involves may sharpen opinions and tongues. Silly really, in my view.

Adam

Interesting comment on scale, in HO it's much more accepted, I model US HO and of all the social media pages I follow, I've never seen a whiff of criticism or questioning, in fact they're loving it, embracing it and driving it forward.

Yet O gauge, jeez you'd think it were the ending of the world. As has been written before, it's also age demographic and O gauge has more of the age group that dissents to change or the new.....sad to say.

 

[AJC]

Interesting comment on scale, in HO it's much more accepted, I model US HO and of all the social media pages I follow, I've never seen a whiff of criticism or questioning, in fact they're loving it, embracing it and driving it forward.

Yet O gauge, jeez you'd think it were the ending of the world. As has been written before, it's also age demographic and O gauge has more of the age group that dissents to change or the new.....sad to say.

One of the places such people might have moved onto is, indeed, 0 scale: there’s still truth to the Senior [citizen] Scale. There’s well known examples of such curmudgeon-ness, actively opposing the use of new materials in the smaller scales too. It’s pretty tedious.

There’s good and bad in any medium, design and execution is the thing, isn’t it? The progress in 3D printing is amazing, and that’s great, as your work demonstrates. Everything is a choice, isn’t it?

Adam

 

[mickoo]

Everything is a choice, isn’t it?

Adam

Well you would think so, but like the persistent door knockers wailing repent...they just won't go away .

Worse yet, the more bored you look the more engaged they become , whilst behind the queue of interested and engaging people grows longer and ever more frustrated.

Design and execution are factors, as are levels of expectation.

 

[dibateg]

Its tosh isn't it, not everything has to bashed out of metal to make a model. Whatever route you take, 3D printing is exploiting the technology available to us. My JLTRT 4F had one of those tender fronts, and jolly good it was too. ( Oh there it is on my avatar! ) It saved a lot of time, but still enabled me to create a 4F with the level of detail I require. Surely then these people should be making their own wheels and motors!

Keep up the good work Mick, I only wish I had your design skills!

Tony

 

[James Spooner]

With the greatest of respect, come and sit next to me at the next show is all I'll say.

Fed up defending it, fed up explaining that not all 3D is layered and, fed up justifying how to run a business.

Most people on this forum are open minded and engaging, but WT is a very small porthole in a very big liner in an even bigger ocean.

Yes, I do get that and see similar behaviour from people in other walks of life so understand where you are coming from. My wife is from Yorkshire and one of their sayings is ‘there's nowt so queer as folk’ and I guess this is one manifestation of that. Many years ago I remember Cyril Freezer opining in the Railway Modeller, when people were criticising the use of filler, that as far as he was concerned, a modeller could carve a whole loco out of filler, because once it was painted no one would know what it was made from. I have a lot of sympathy with that view.

Nigel

 

[mickoo]

Saturday was the show, we all spent the entire day there, spending far too much money on far too many things but thats why you go to the show.

But by Sunday of course, we are now broke, so we need something else to do, someone said lets go to Dolton Junction !

Dolton is a great place to watch trains, it's incredibly busy, but it's in the worst part of town, there is no way I would go there on my own and start getting loads of camera gear out, I would no doubt be the next murder victim in Chicago. So going there with 2 relatively young body guards, sounds like a good idea to me, I might not get another chance, and to put his into perspective, if you do a search for a starbucks there is nothing in a 4 mile radius, the nearest one is over a 10 minute drive away!

I spent most of the time filming, it was all action from the moment we arrived, there were 2 trains in the distance to the east, a huge CSX manifest and what turned out to be the Chicago Fort Wayne and Eastern daily train. The CSX manifest took over 45 minutes to pass through blocking the crossing for all that time, we saw at least 2 people climb over the cars and walk across !

There is even a bottle train on the video, (the liquid steel cars that weigh in at about 300 tons each) it was freezing cold but we didn;t notice any heat as they went past.

We did eventually go to Starbucks, that's how I know how far away they are, when we came back I took photos, here are a few of them







View attachment 211891

A hopper wagon with a CP logo we hadn't seen before

View attachment 211892

A new autorack that is wider at the ends and narrower in the middle

View attachment 211893


A battered old hopper

View attachment 211894

These were all part of the CSX manifest that must have been 2 miles long.

View attachment 211895


A BNSF stack train probably heading for north Baltimore in Ohio, just passed Deshler

View attachment 211896

Wrong thread mate

 

[adrian]

Wrong thread mate

moved!

 

[mickoo]

Well it wasn't finished yesterday, nor even today; the joys of a kit with no instructions (apparently there never were any for the tender, happy to be corrected), missing parts and junk castings but, it is a lot closer.

The missing parts are annoying, an educated guess is that they are on the removed etched sheets when the plastic replacements were added, rather than redraw or add supplementary etches, the bits were just left/lost on the removed sheet.

They're not many and not hard to scratch build replacements, but it all adds time to the build. Thankfully the plastic interior saves a lot of time, so the two balance each other out, it's still a five day build where as it should have been three.

For the sake of clarity, red oxide are my replacement 3D parts, brake shoes will be fitted later.

 

[mickoo]

Finished one of the Bulleid backheads, the spec was polished pipework and some fittings, have to say, it takes a lot longer than my usual paint it all black and cut back with thinners

Modern cameras are brilliant, they show all the dust and niggles the eye can't even see but I do need to go around and touch up the little paint nicks here and there and give it a good dusting.

The body is still loose, hence the gap in the rear drag beam.

 

[oldravendale]

That's a thing of beauty, Mick. Mr Bulleid would be proud!

Brian

 

[Dave Holt]

Wouldn't have stayed like that for long in service, but the customer is always right, I suppose.
Here's a well cared for preserved re-build (photo courtesy of P&O Loco Society/P Mason).

Dave.

 

[mickoo]

It makes no odds to me, their train set, their rules and 'Sir Toppam Hat' can have whatever he pleases At the end of the day, so long as the customer is happy and walks away smiling, then I'm pleased to have been of service.

I have found that reality has a very small piece to play with 'toy' trains, it's highly subjective, emotional and personal. Personally I prefer them slightly weathered to bring out the details, I really do not like the current fad of weathering them to death; they do nothing for me and leave me stone cold bored, but I do respect those who like that sort of thing.

Someone one accused me recently of trying to change history by not putting graffiti on my HO US stock, I wasn't living in reality; "precisely" I said, the real world sucks, why on earth would I want to model that in my hobby

You are right of course, it wouldn't stay like that for long, but the criteria here (as it is for all of the clients models I've done) is for an engine fit for a exhibition like the World Trade Fair or Festival of Britain.

Conversely, the current one I'm doing (Spitfire) will be care worn and generally grubby in the early 60's, so from one end of the scale to almost the other.

Nice picture BTW, I don't think there's such a thing as 'standard' Light Pacfic backhead, they all seem to vary in one aspect or another.

 

[Dave Holt]

Perhaps I should have said the photo is a Merchant Navy (35006).
Dave.

 

[oldravendale]

Perhaps I should have said the photo is a Merchant Navy (35006).
Dave.

Well, you sort of did... (photo courtesy of P&O Loco Society/P Mason).

 

[mickoo]

I did a weathered one back in 2019.

And, I've just noticed I've left a couple of handles off some valves so will tend to those shortly

 

[Dave Holt]

You look to have got the colours absolutely spot on and, to my eyes, much more realistic.
Dave.

 

[mickoo]

Getting on with the casing on the current Bulleid....



.....it was soon time to tackle the dreaded cab, not the easiest of components to form up, having done four before and a couple of trials; the kit is handy as it gives you three cabs to choose from so each kit gives you two test runs first.

I decided it was time to bite the bullet and draw up a forming dolly, whilst it won't form the exact radii you need, it will let you beat and dress the harder curves into shape with a solid base beneath.

The basic parts, the round grip pegs are on two faces so you have a choice on how to grip in the vice, the round holes in the sacrificial face are two fold, save resin and stop the part being a big cup in the printer and distorting. The peg in the middle of the holes is printed separately and has a flange on the rear and is glued in afterward.



There's a square peg in the roof to fit through the ventilator and a corresponding securing plate to go over the top.





The shallow curves were formed in rolling bars and the sharper cant rail one around a suitable steel rod. The inside face of the etch has bend relieving lines and they nearly always leave the outer face with flats (lands).



I use a lollipop stick and knead the brass over the dolly to smooth them out as much as possible, either with the botton grip peg or front grip peg, which ever is easiest for the orientation needed.





One of the other issues when forming the cant rail bend is that the top of the side windows will bow out a little in the middle, with the dolly it's simple to force back into place and not worry about over doing it and stressing the skin somewhere else.

Once you've beaten it as smooth as you can then you can smooth it off with needle files, sand paper and eventually buffing balls to get a nice smooth cant rail curve.



The next step is the small sections that form the base for the V fronted screens, I did consider making that part of the dolly, I may well do on the next one; but for now they're not overly difficult to form. They're fiddly but not as hard as the cant rail one which needs to be uniform and square or else it'll show a mile off.

After that it's time to press the rivets and add the front and rear faces.