Re: Rolling Stock for Banavie Road

[JimG]

I've moved up Martyn - I'm now a full stop counter

And I think you're right about the 'O's

Martyn, Richard,

After I had adjusted the "N"s and changed the commas to full stops, I noticed my squarish "O"s and I had already started to modify them before I had to go out in the early evening. So changes are already underway. I think I must have used the styling of the "D"s and "R"s to generate the tops and bottoms of the "O"s.

Interestingly, in searching around on the Internet, I found that Hornby-Dublo apparently supplied a set of Real Life decals for Lindsay Crookston wagons, but I haven't found an image of them so far.

I might also thumb through the Peter Matthew's Private Owner wagon series in my pile of 1960s MRNs to see if anything turns up there.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

Here's the latest update, taking on board the recent comments. I've also taken the squarish look of the "C"s down a bit, although not quite to the semi-circular ends of the "O"s. I've also reduced the size of the address line and slightly thickened the lettering.



Lindsay Crookston did not have up to 78,000+ wagons. We believe their four RCH side door wagons were numbered 78 - 81 so I've done enough numerals to cover this and I've just shown them all.

I think I'll let things mature for a bit and see if I have any other thoughts in a day or two. I might also print some tests on plain paper and see what they look like on the wagon sides. I've still got to decide the shade of grey to use on the wagon sides - maybe even Halford's primer. Then I can try adjusting the grey background on the decals to match.

Jim.

 

[Wagonman]

And now a go at the complete sides with the number and the address - such as it is.

View attachment 38298

I think the numbers are about the right size but I think I have to reduce the "Glasgow" lettering to about 66 - 75% of what it is now. It looks as though it should be about half the height of the company name from the photograph. I designed the "Glasgow" lettering in isolation based on planking lines, and only really saw it with the company name when making up a composite to post here. The photograph also gives the impression that the first "G" in "GLASGOW" is a slightly larger capital than the rest of the word - which I've tried to do.

Jim.

Sorry to be a nag, but "Glasgow" is in completely the wrong font – particularly noticeable in the 'G's! The signwriter used a Grot face whereas you've used Futura or something similar. Does Corel Draw have a font such as Trebuchet or even Geneva which might be nearer (I can't see the HMRS original clearly enough).

I would still go for a comma in the first line. A full stop would make no sense.

I'l see your twopenn'orth, and raise you tuppence!


Richard K (to avoid confusion)

 

[Wagonman]

Just found this on t'internet!



57 Queensborough Gardens, Hyndland

1909-12 Jackson, Robt. A. (of Lindsay, Crookston & Co., coal merchants & shippers, 163 Hope St.)

 

[JimG]

Richard,

Sorry to be a nag, but "Glasgow" is in completely the wrong font – particularly noticeable in the 'G's! The songwriter used a Grot face whereas you've used Futura or something similar. Does Corel Draw have a font such as Trebuchet or even Geneva which might be nearer (I can't see the HMRS original clearly enough).

I think you may have been looking at the picture of my efforts on the previous page. The picture at the top of this page shows my efforts to get a bit closer to the "GLASGOW" font. I am a bit restricted in what I can see since the HMRS copyright notice obscures most of the "GLASGOW" word and I've based my interpretation on the "O" and "W" which is just visible. I'm going to send off for the two Lindsay Crookston pictures from the HMRS archive in the hope that these will be of better quality than their small sized version on the web site. Then I might get confirmation of the details, but I'll have to wait for the six weeks delivery interval.

I would still go for a comma in the first line. A full stop would make no sense.

Hopefully the photographs will show the painter's punctuation.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

I got my pictures from the HMRS today - and it is a comma.



This is from the original picture of the one shown on the HMRS website, on which I based my lettering.



...and this is another picture of a different wagon, but also showing a comma.

The first picture is of the traditional Scottish cupboard door wagon, but the second picture is of a 1907 RCH design wagon which is what the SSMRS plastic kit represents. So I have to change my lettering a bit. In the first wagon, the lettering filled the top two planks, but on the second RCH wagon, the lettering is taller and spreads over the top three planks. This means that the longitudinal spacing is different - the cupboard door wagon has "CROOKS" in the middle with "TON & Co" at the end whereas the drop door RCH version has "CROOK" in the middle with "STON&Co" at the end. With CorelDraw, the job should not be too bad since I can squeeze and stretch groups of letters to suit quite easily.

Jim.

PS Meant to say that the HMRS pictures came in three weeks, rather than the six weeks they state on their order form, so it was an unexpected surprise. I had geared up to get them early in the New Year, what with the usual Christmas upheaval.

 

[Dikitriki]

Excellent result. At least you (and I) know for sure

 

[JimG]

Here's a blast from the past. Six or seven years ago, I was building the Banavie Road layout and had started making stock for it, featured in this thread. Well, there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. My brother came to stay for a weekend and Banavie Road had to go up in the loft to clear the spare bedroom for him. After heaving it up there on my own, I realised that this was not going to be an easy task, especially when the baseboards had more on them than just track. I then took over the Parts Department of the S Scale Society and I needed room to store all the bits and pieces and the spare bedroom was the only place. Then there was no room to set up the layout. So the layout has languished in the loft for several years and I've actually started to scrap and recover the track from it. I've got some ideas about another layout but I want a long think about it so that it might stand half a chance of getting up and running.

The work on the rolling stock stopped principally due to the lack of suitable Caledonian fittings - buffer stocks, springs and axleboxes being the main problem. There was nothing available in S scale. Many years ago I had got some 4mm scale wagon fittings from the Caledonian Railway Association and they were slightly overscale and would just have about done, but when I investigated getting some more, I found that they were no longer available.

But now I've got a 3D printer and I've recently printed the required Caledonian bits and pieces, so the block has disappeared.

So I dug around in the workshop and unearthed six wagon underframes fitted with "W" irons which I had built back then. I also found all the bearing supports made up with bearings fitted, and all the wheels on axles with the pin-point axle ends turned down to parallel journals. So I got to work.



The underside of one of the underframes showing the heavy brass solebars and buffer beams with a nickel silver sheet floor




Setting up the axle with the bearing holders, and the spring wire is in the "W" irons



The axle in place in the bearing slots with the bearing holders ready to be positioned. I had just about remembered how I expected them to be fitted. The bearing holder is rotated on the axle until the projection locates the spring wire and gets behind it. The holder continues to rotate until it locates and drops between the guides on the "W" iron and the spring locates on the lug on the bearing holder and provides a downard force on the bearing. The spring also holds the bearing holder in its guides. First time, it worked beautifully. Second time it didn't and there was a fair bit of fiddling to get the spring in the right place. But as I worked my way through the six underframes I got better at it. If the spring doesn't locate properly it's not too difficult to fiddle it into place with fine nosed tweezers.



One of the underframes with wheels and springs fittted, and right way up. The underframe is still a bit light and I will fit bits of lead sheet in the bases of the "W" iron assemblies to add a bit more ballast - as noted further back up the original thread. This will get the bearings into the mid-point of their travel



...and a quick try out with one of the CNC'd van bodies which the underframes were built for. Another hold up with the vans was sourcing the very heavy and distinctive door hinges but the 3D printer will deal with that.



The six completed underframes awaiting their buffer stocks, springs and axleboxes. I'd better start on a brake van to go behind them.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

I had made five van bodies and there were six wagon underframes. It just so happened the the spare underframe would fit a Caledonian Diagram 5 brake van, so it was back to carving out the bits from styrene on the CNC mill. And I had to try and remember all the pitfalls learned six or so years ago.

But I got there and here are the bits :-



...the sides, ends, floor and inner cabin sides. The inner sides are in two parts with the inner frames - middle left - with slots to hold 0.5mm glazing material. The four holes are to make applying solvent to the whole area easy. The outer frames - top left -are 16thou thick and have the window details machined as well as all the planking engraved.



The interior planking on the verandahs has also been engraved - here seen on the inside of the sides. I swithered about doing this since it meant setting up for double sided machining in register and I had to delve back into the memory banks to remember what I had done years ago.



The body parts have been assembled and they went together quite well and I only have to do a slight adjustment on the height of the inner cabin sides - they could sit down another 0.5mm.



...and the body on its underframe.

The next work to do are the two lookouts and I'm going to have to fiddle around to get the glazing in them since the lookout windows are quite large and noticeable. I'm aiming to use the same two part sandwich I used in the inner sides to provide slots for the glazing material and the material will be inserted from the inside of the van through slots in the sides.

The roof is also under consideration and I'm thinking about making it in the same way as I did for the four wheel coaches, using several layers of 10thou Plastikard stuck together with Mekpak and shaped in a former. The roofs I made in this way for the coaches nearly seven years ago are still in shape and show no signs of warping.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

One thing I had to do was sort out fitting 3D printed parts to the wagon underframes - like buffer stocks and axleboxes and springs. I've done a fair bit of printing of parts over the last year or so but I haven't actually fitted anything to a model.

So I thought I would start with the Caledonian buffer stocks and that started a fairly frustrating week or two. The problem was that I wanted to fit sprung steel buffers to the stocks and that would require drilling to accommodate the steel parts. Technically you can 3D print the bores, but in the sizes I was going to use - 1.2mm and 0.5mm diameters - stray resin tends to block the bores, or reduce the diameters. So I opted to drill out the bores to the required sizes and use the lathe. I did attempt to do the drilling by hand but the accuracy was way off.

I opted to use the spigot on the back of the buffer stock to grip in a collet chuck and then I hit another problem. When printing parts, the undersides, or non-detailed sides, are normally supported from the printing plate, and I started printing the stocks with the spigots on the underside. But the resultand prints gave quite uneven results with the spigots due to roughness caused by supports and excess resin caught between them. When I tried to chuck the stocks in the collet chuck, the results were definitely not square and concentric. The only way I could try and clean the spigots up was by hand with a knife or a file and that didn't work out too well.

So I opted to print the buffer stocks with the spigots to the top to get away from the problem, but that then brought in another problem and that was how to support the stock with the supports on the detailed side. Supports can leave marking when they are removed and there then starts a balancing act of using as few supports as possible in the least critical places to avoid marking, but to provide enough supports so that the parts aren't pulled off them during the printing process. So it becomes empirical, with about two hours per print, and another half hour per print if lots of bits have dropped off into the resin and the resin bath has to be drained, filtered and cleaned. This is the waste bucket by my bench with the grey bits being the discarded prints...



...there's even more in the bin beside the printer.

But at last I got some decent prints and started to drill them out for the buffers.



I made the three small tools above to go in the Jacobs chuck in the lathe tailstock. They were all made to the same diameter so that changing in the chuck was quite quick. The one on the left has a small spigot on the end which fits in the hole printied in the buffer stock and is used to line the buffer stock up when clamping in the chuck. The middle tool holds a 1.2mm drill which is clearance for the buffer spindle and the brass collar limits the depth of cut. The end tool holds a 0.5mm drill to dill the hole through the spigot for the reduced end of the buffer's spindle. (I would love to find a rotating multi too holder for the Cowells tailstock, but I haven't found one yet. )



Here, the buffer stock is being presented to the chuck on the tool with the small spigot and the chuck is tightened gently. I found the three jaw easier to use than the collet chuck.



Here the 1.2mm drill is being presented to the buffer stock to drill a clearance hole, 4.5mm deep when the coller hits the end of the buffer stock.



Next, the 0.5mm drill is used to drill right through the buffer stock and its spigot. This operation needs a bit of care with a lot of withdrawal to clear the flutes.



Here are the component parts with the drilled out stock and the S Scale Society steel 12" buffer. The springs are from Wizard Models - as used on their 4mm scale sprung buffers. I've lost two already and I've hardly started.



...and the assembly temporarily fitted in the underframe.

Thinking ahead, I shall probably mount the machined buffer stocks in the headstocks and fit the buffers and springs after the underframe has been painted. The Caledonian painted its buffer stocks the same colour as the wagon body and underframe, so it might make sense to make up the body and underframe with buffer stocks, then paint the lot, then fit the buffers.

Springs and axleboxes next.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

Well it wasn't springs and axleboxes next. I got on the wrong end of a rare adverse reaction to a shingles vaccination and I've hardly been fit for anything for the past couple of weeks. But I could just about operate a computer keyboard so I did a bit of work on the wagons. I had thought I had built the brass underframes using brass bar from Eileens but I couldn't work out how I had done it. So there followed a lot of digging around in the files in the computer and up popped a file which showed that I had milled them from 2mm brass sheet. So I opted to re-draw the file to cover three more types of wagon - the Caledonian D24 open, the D46 mineral and the 10T van.

I had a small piece of 2mm brass sheet so I opted to start cutting some parts for a D46 underframe to see how it turned out.



Here's a 2mm cutter cutting the rebates on the insides of the solebars



Now it's the turn of the 1mm cutter which carries out the majority of the cutting. At this point it has cut the top rebates on the solebars and bufferbeams and the joint slots and the buffer stock holes in the bufferbeams at the top. It has just started doing the longitudinal cuts on the solebars.



...and the finished cut. The parts are held in place by tabs at their ends which I cut finally with a piercing saw.

In this first cut, the 1mm cutter took over one hour fifty minutes to do its work and I opted to try and reduce this by re-jigging how the parts were cut.



...and the result after two trials with adjustments when I got the cutting time for the 1mm cutter down to one hour and thirty minutes. The fourth one at the top was done since there was enough room left and I was set up. You can't have enough mineral wagons on a Caledonian layout. On the second from the bottom, I forgot to put the tabs in the 1mm cutting paths. Luckily the double sided tape holding the sheet had enough sticky area left to keep things in place. I only found this out when vacuuming the swarf off the plate and the vacuum cleaner lifted one of the buffer beams - not up the nozzle. but throwing it into my waste bucket under the mill. Thank goodness it landed on a piece of paper on the top and I happened to notice it after pulling the vacuum cleaner to bits trying to find it.

The long time of the 1mm cutter use is caused by the relatively slow spindle speed of my mill - 7000rpm. This means that I have to reduce the speed of cut to 10mm/minute with 0.1mm depth of cut to avoid breakage. If I had a spindle which could run at 20,000 - 30,000 rpm I could up the spped of cut to 400 - 500mm/min.



Here are the four sets released from the sheet and tidied up. The floors on the right are from 12 thou nickel silver sheet and are cut using a square and an Olfa cutter .



The constituent parts laid out roughly in place. The floor sits on the rebates on the buffer beams and the middle of the solebars. I'll start soldering up tomorrow with a bit of luck. I've also got an order into PPD for another two dozen "W" iron etches and I'll get some more brass sjeet from Ian Cobb.

Jim.

 

[oldravendale]

I'm sorry to learn about your reaction. You've had a rough year, Jim. I'm keeping fingers crossed for your continuing improvement and to see more of your work.

Best from me.

Brian

 

[JimG]

I made up a small jig to hold the underframe parts while soldering them - using a scrap piece of MDF and a couple of bits of B&Q alloy strip.



Solder paste was put in the first joint and the first two parts were clamped in the jig, then the joint was hit with my Weller 100W iron - plenty of heat to get the joint made quickly with all the metal around.

Once the first corner joint was made square, it was a fairly quick job to work round the other three joints, using the jig as a guide.



The next job was to fit the floor in the underframe, sitting on the rebates on the sides and ends. I had cut the floors slightly oversize to I stroked the floor along an eight inch file to get it down to size.



I constructed the other three underframes and fitted the floors - here they are with the floors in place awaiting soldering. Note the one on the right which has popped up on its left edge which I didn't notice at the time.



...and all the floors soldered in. Not to the @Dikitriki invisible school of soldering standard, but I was looking for a good fillet for maximum strength. The messier job on the right was the result of having to reheat the floor with the 100W Weller to sit it down properly when I found I hadn't seated it properly after I first soldered it.



The next job was to fold up a set of my "W" irons. I always reinforce the corners of the fold-up using small sections of solder held in the corners using flux paste, then applying the iron to the outside of the corners. I then run a 0.3mm drill through the spring holes to clear out any solder which may have encroached.



The "W" irons were soldered into the underframe but with a new development from the previous ones from several years ago. Then I had to position them for wheelbase and centering by using a jig to get the wheelbase and using a rule to get them centred. At that time I had cut rebates at each end of the solebars to accept the "W" irons and the lengths were nominal - I think I had made the rebates over-long so that an underframe could accommodate several wheelbases. This time round I calculated the length of the rebates so that the "W" irons could be butted against the ends of the rebates and give the correct wheelbase - and a quick check with a rule showed that it had worked.

I've run out of "W" irons but I've got an order in with PPD and I should have another supply some time soon.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

I had hoped to proceed with more underframe construction for mineral wagons but I needed more "W" irons and PPD's lead time under COVID-19 restrictions is five to six weeks so I had to fill in time some how. I decided to go back to the six ton van bodies and look at the detailing of them. The Caledonian 6 ton vans had quite distinctive door hinges using castings rather than the more usual forged strap.



This extract from a GA of a similar type of van in Mike Williams' Caledonian wagon book show the hinges, and, helpfully, the dimensions.

The making of these hinges was one of the reasons for the holdup in the construction of the vans several years ago. But along came my 3D printer a couple of years ago and I thought I'd have a go at doing the hinge parts in resin.



...and here's the result after a fair bit of trial and error. I first tried printing directly onto the build plate of the printer to get a smooth back to the parts but handling the parts after printing proved quite difficult and I opted to support the parts on a raft to make the handling much easier. I tried various orientations and the 40 degree orientation shown above seemed to work out best. It leaves the back of the parts a bit rough due to the supports but I can smooth them off using a craft knife then rubbing them on an old, blunt fine file with my finger.



The first parts in place, and there's another story here. I had wondered about how I was going to stick the 3D resin parts to Plastikard. I tried several types of glue which didn't seem to work well. Richard (@Dikitriki) suggested using GS Hypo glue and I got some delivered a couple of days ago, tried it out yesterday, and it worked. But this morning I was making up another van body to replace one of the originals which had a constructional error which I hadn't noticed at the time. I was wielding brush and Mekpak as usual when I wondered if MEK would work with the resin. I had dismissed it early on and didn't even try it but I was reminded of the thousands of plastic chairs I have stuck to plywood with MEK and the back of the resin parts was comparatively rough like ply. So I tried, and it worked.



Getting more parts on. They are quite fragile so need a fair bit of care when getting them ready to glue. They are also quite ping-able so I'll print off a few more sets to satiate the carpet god.



The door hinges on one side all completed...



... and after a scoosh of red primer to make things a bit more photogenic.

You can also see why this body was rejected and became a test piece. A separate cutter was used to finish off the strapping on the doors and it was about half a thou too deep. You can just see the witness marks round the strapping. I subsequently found a CNC file which used one cutter to cut all the strapping so I must have hit the same problem years ago.

Jim.

 

[Jim pairman]

Jim
I am constantly impressed by your attention to detail.
I am not sure that, even in S scale, minor “errors” in your transfers would be readily discernible.
Jim P ( CRA)

 

[JimG]

Jim,

I don't have an excuse to not try and get things accurate. With advancing years, my hand and eye co-ordination is not quite what it had been so I've collected a CNC machine, a laser cutter and a 3D printer to improve matters, and done a bit of etching as well. And the use of these machines and processes starts with a CAD file which can be accurate to several decimal places. So it is probably easier to get a part correct than wing it. And the books supplied by the CRA provide sufficient detail to get it right.

Like the recent discussion on whether 3D printing was scratchbuilding, there are times when accumulating the knowledge to produce a part using the machines or etching sometimes takes a lot longer than if the part had been scratcbuilt from basic materials. I found that out recently when I re-started using the machines after my long, enforced break from modelling this year and found out the hard way that I had lost a few of the skills required.

Jim G (CRA)

 

[JimG]

Back to work on the wagons again now that I've got the CNC mill working again. Today's job was making up some plates to go behind the coupler on the wagon headstock.



I had intended to use an etch I had done a year or two ago for the S Scale Society but I seem to have kept the original run which were too thin. So it was an hour or so to draw up a file for the CNC mill and two dozen were knocked out on the mill from 0.022" nickel silver.



Here's the guinea pig wagon chassis with the pile of coupler plates de-tabbed and cleaned up on the right. The brackets on the left are for my home made Spratt & Winkle type couplers. I had just started making them on the CNC mill when its PC died a death back in December and I got them finished yesterday - the first job on the re-vitalised mill. One of the brackets has been soldered into the left end of the wagon underframe just behind the headstock and the S&W coupling will pivot on a screw fitted to the bracket.

I used the words "guinea pig" since this is the first time I've built a wagon chassis using relatively heavy section brass to get enough weight into it to get the springing working properly. For a start I'm finding my 45W soldering iron is not man enough to solder small items onto the brass section. I suspect that I am going to have to look at adhesives rather than solder to attach items. Also some of the items to be fitted are not metal - like the 3D printed buffer stocks. If I do have to solder anything, that might have to happen before the non-metal parts are fitted. So I suspect that this underframe will be messed around with to a greater rather than lesser extent.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

After a gap I got back to working on the wagon underframes again and primarily on making the home made S&W type (Spratt & Winkle) couplings.

From my previous experience of using the couplings way back in the 1980s, I had decided to make the installations single ended. With S&W hooks at both ends of vehicles there were occasions when they could become entangled when running over sharp curves or reverse curves.

I started with the bar for the couplings. This is a simple 10mm wide loop which is affixed to the underside of the solebar at one end and projects about 6.5mm from the solebar - the buffers project about 7.5mm. So that I got all the loops the same for all of the underframes, I mad a small tool to bend them.



The tool is in two parts. The left hand part has the inner shape of the loop machined and the right hand part has the outer shape of the loop as a recess. A straight piece of 0.45mm brass wire the length of the width of the tool is placed accross the LH tool resting on the central loop shape and the RH piece of the tool is above the wire and moved down to bend the wire into a "U" shape.



Here the tool is part way down the move.



When the top part of the tool is at the bottom of its travel, the projecting parts are bent over. These will locate behind the solebar.



The hook after bending in the jig. Because the brass wire is quite hard, there's a bit of spring in it and all the corners require a small amount of "squaring up" after removal from the jig using small pliers.



To fit the loop, I made up another jig using a bit of spare venetian blind strip and a reversed clothes peg. The slightly untidy gluing is because I forgot that Gorilla glue expands when setting and it was rock solid before I noticed the excess.



The wider shot shows another clothes peg holding the underframe to the strip. Things can be wiggled around until the hook is in the correct position. I use solder paste and I just get away with using my 45W iron to solder the loop to the 5mm x 2mm brass solebar. For future loop soldering I think I will break out my 100W Weller - it's a bit big and slightly clumsy, but it should get the job done in a second.

Next, on to the hook.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

The next job was to arrange a pivot point for the Spratt & Winkle hook.



Here are the bits to be used to make the pivots. On the left are the brackets which were CNC machined using brass angle - the brackets still on the angle on the left before being cut into separate parts. On the right are pads from brass strip to raise the bracket to the best height. These were cut using an Olfa cutter - scoring deeply then bending/wiggling to get a nice straight break; much quicker than sawing.

The brackets are tapped to take a 6BA bolt as a fulcrum and the bearings for the fulcrum are top centre.



These bearings were cut in the lathe, using the parting tool in the rear toolpost as a stop to set the length before advancing the "V" shaped tool to do the cut. The steel wire fed from the tailstock into the brass tube keeps everything safely stored.



And here's the bracket soldered in place on the brass pad. Originally I had thought about putting the bracket immediately behind the headstock, as shown in an earlier picture of the underframe, but opted to move the pivot further inboard to reduce the angular movement of the hook.



Another job to be done was to make up loads of links for the three link couplings so I knocked up a small jig from a bit of brass and some 1mm diameter piano wire. A spacer was also made to keep the wires the correct distance apart as the links were being wound.



0.5mm soft brass wire was wound round the two wires to start forming the links with the spacer being kept close to the links to stop the wires deflecting together.



After I had wound a good few turns, I then took the jig out of the vice and started to cut the coil into separate links. At first I had thought about using a fine piercing saw blade to do the job but that didn't work too well and I then started using a fine pair of side cutters which did the job quite well.



The links were then persuaded into their true form using fine snipe nosed pliers. I was trying to get the brass links as close in form to the iron links I had purchased many years ago, and there's a comparison closest to camera. The iron link is 0.55mm diameter wire whereas my brass links are 0.5mm wire, so just a tad finer.


I also soldered the links using the reversed clothes peg as holder. A small dab of solder paste was applied to the gap and a fine point in my soldering iron was used to melt the solder.



I also had to source wagon hooks and I chose to use the SSMRS etched ones, which are folded into double thickness and soldered, then finished off with a fine needle file to take off the square edges on the hooks. I also had another reason for using these hooks. Dave Provan, my predecessor as Parts Officer for the SSMRS, had re-done his artwork for the hooks for me and I had submitted it to PPD. I got a message back from PPD saying that there were a lot of problems with the sheet so I got them to send me what had come out of the bath. The problem was that Dave has used very fine tabs, as you can just about see in the picture above, and some hooks had disappeared into the bath and a lot of others were hanging on by one tab. So I had to go through the sheet of sixty etches and rescue what I could and bag them in individual small poly bags. I think I rescued just over fifty, but I was left with a load of individual couplings - mainly the long shank ones - so these became Parts Officer's perks.

Jim.

 

[David Waite]

Hi Jim
As the old saying goes “Your never to late to learn“ that piece of wire in the tailstock to hold the off cuts is something I’ve never seen done before what a magic idea, working on industrial lathes from the 1970s my off cuts were easy to to find in the swarf or I used a screwdriver to catch them or whatever was to hand the modelling world has opened up my eyes to all sorts of clever ideas.
David.