richard carr
Western Thunderer
I was chatting to Scale 7 JB the other evening about split axles and he reminder-ed me about Steph's version 3 of split axles.
Here's the link to Steph's page if you want the full details
Split axle pick-up in 0-gauge, Page 3
In short though, to split the axle you start by drilling right through the axle with a 2 mm drill bit. It doesn't need to be centred or anything so a hand drill would be fine, but as I have a lathe I used it. In fact ont he lathe you actually want to use a slightly larger drill bit I used a 2.2mm one. Then cross drill some 1mm holes through the axle. Then you put a piece of 2mm grp rod into the axle with lots of dev con expoxy glue. This is why I needed a bigger drill bit as 2mm rod does not fit in a 2mm drilled on a lathe, it would fine using a hand held drill as you are bound to get a bigger hole than 2mm.
This is what you end up with.
I made a batch of 6 split axles, 3 for me, 2 for JB and 1 spare, the top 3 have been drilled through and drilled across and had the grp rod inserted. The bottom 3 have then been split in the lathe using a 0.5mm grooving tool. They still need to be cleaned up. I baked the axles in the oven at 70 degrees for half an hour. The Dev Con was fully hardened when they came out of the oven.
I have to say that these were much easier to make than I had expected, it took less than 2 hours in total to make 6, including cleaning up the glue which is probably half the time. The glue bit is the only annoying thing as it does tend to get pretty messy. I will certainly be doing some more in the future.
I decided to do this as I have a JLTRT class 26 that I bought on E Bay about a year ago. Its a lovely model but of course it was finescale not S7 so while converting it I though I might as well bin the plunger pickups as they aren't going to work and fit split axles. The chassis is already split so all you need to do is add the axles.
Here's the power bogie, fortunately it came apart quite easily, I decided to cut off the rear brake connectors otherwise you cannot get the bogie sides off at all, otherwise it came apart nicely.
Here's the body minus bogies, who ever painted it did a really nice job.
And here it is back on its bogies all converted with added sound and about 3lbs of lead to give it some traction.
There is one more thing to do though, the multiple working connector that rubber tube is about a scale 3 inches thick when in reality its less than an inch. So those have been binned the multiple working bits removed and drilled to take 0.7mm copper wire.
Here's the link to Steph's page if you want the full details
Split axle pick-up in 0-gauge, Page 3
In short though, to split the axle you start by drilling right through the axle with a 2 mm drill bit. It doesn't need to be centred or anything so a hand drill would be fine, but as I have a lathe I used it. In fact ont he lathe you actually want to use a slightly larger drill bit I used a 2.2mm one. Then cross drill some 1mm holes through the axle. Then you put a piece of 2mm grp rod into the axle with lots of dev con expoxy glue. This is why I needed a bigger drill bit as 2mm rod does not fit in a 2mm drilled on a lathe, it would fine using a hand held drill as you are bound to get a bigger hole than 2mm.
This is what you end up with.
I made a batch of 6 split axles, 3 for me, 2 for JB and 1 spare, the top 3 have been drilled through and drilled across and had the grp rod inserted. The bottom 3 have then been split in the lathe using a 0.5mm grooving tool. They still need to be cleaned up. I baked the axles in the oven at 70 degrees for half an hour. The Dev Con was fully hardened when they came out of the oven.
I have to say that these were much easier to make than I had expected, it took less than 2 hours in total to make 6, including cleaning up the glue which is probably half the time. The glue bit is the only annoying thing as it does tend to get pretty messy. I will certainly be doing some more in the future.
I decided to do this as I have a JLTRT class 26 that I bought on E Bay about a year ago. Its a lovely model but of course it was finescale not S7 so while converting it I though I might as well bin the plunger pickups as they aren't going to work and fit split axles. The chassis is already split so all you need to do is add the axles.
Here's the power bogie, fortunately it came apart quite easily, I decided to cut off the rear brake connectors otherwise you cannot get the bogie sides off at all, otherwise it came apart nicely.
Here's the body minus bogies, who ever painted it did a really nice job.
And here it is back on its bogies all converted with added sound and about 3lbs of lead to give it some traction.
There is one more thing to do though, the multiple working connector that rubber tube is about a scale 3 inches thick when in reality its less than an inch. So those have been binned the multiple working bits removed and drilled to take 0.7mm copper wire.
.... what a waste!!
