Wood box cars Scratch building and trick shots

[postalkarl]

Hey Bob:

Beautiful job so far. Looking forward to see them finished.

Karl

[bparrish]

Let's go off on another side trip here.

It's about making up grab irons.  For these six cars I will need something north of 100 grabs. 


I'm going to show you how to make  them up so that they are consistently the same.  I will make up one with brass wire and then go to a batch that I got from Tichy.  They are the best deal.  I cannot buy the wire for what they are selling them for.


The wire is .014" brass and the ones from Tichy are phosphorus bronze.  Either way they come out the same and take paint the same.  When  you make a bend, (break) don't hammer it too much as it makes the metal very brittle at the sharpest point of the bend.
Below is a shot of the Tichy grabs.  One is how they come with a single bend and the other shows additional steps to make them apply to the car very consistently.  Note that the single bend from the factory is not at 90 degrees so this will need to be set up in a vise and fixed.

Tichy produces a no bend iron also but by the time we are done here you will be able to work with either.




Knocking it down to 90 degrees.


Then the grab will need to be re-clamped for the next step.

This shows the wire being set located in the vise to .046" (which scales out to about 3 1/2")  This will then be how high the wire will appear on the side of the car where it would be bolted to the sheathing.



This is another way to do the same thing.



More later 

[bparrish]

Now to make the break.

The grab has previously located in the vise... Place a steel ruler under the grab wire and start folding up toward you.  The wire will lay down and the previous break will not change.



Finishing location of the ruler for the break.



I then tap lightly on the ruler to set the second break down.  This also flattens the wire a bit to look more like the forged prototypes.  Pretty hard to see here.





More in a while

[bparrish]

So how do you start out to make a grab iron if you don't have some pre made ones ? ? ?

EASY ! ! !

First you have to find a pliers that will assist you.    Try and find a pliers that has ONLY straight across grippies (Yep, I just made that a word).  This is an ancient Sears (Japan) needle nose pliers.



Then with a scale ruler choose the grippie that gives you the scale width that you want.  In that I am making more than 100 of these I'll make a mark in the pliers that will allow me to easily set the width each time.



Then I pinch the wire and fold it with my fingers.  I don't tap this one square as most prototypes were forged and this was later bent into the iron.  Also it makes the finished grab weak and brittle at this point and will be difficult to insert without breaking.




This scales out at about 18 inches.

[bparrish]

So now you have the outer part of the grab done.   How to make the first break?

Shown earlier.

I used here a steel ruler that gives me 3 1/2 scale inches.




I do tap this one down to get a sharp angle here.  Again the prototype were forged flat here and drilled for bolting to the car.



This then is ready to be spaced up and made ready for the second break.   Read earlier for those steps.  This area is only about getting started from bare straight wire.  Earlier showed starting with a factory Tichy grab.



Let me know how this works for you.

see yaBob

[bparrish]

Back after a short time away from the bench...
Last we talked about bending wire for grab irons.  But let's consider this.... I'm making up six box cars and that comes out to about 120 grabs.  With that goes 120 holes.  Yikes ! ! !

I went a long time where I made up one wood kit at a time and kept telling myself that I needed a jig for lining up the drill holes, "but it is just this one car, maybe later".  After about ten years of telling myself that I actually did make up a jig........ shown below.   I set out the spacing for 18 scale inches for the width of the grabs and 15 scale inches between the grabs.  I also designed it to lay in a corner so that I could do the end grabs and come out at the same locations and spacing.



You can see the  scribed lines I made to lay it out.  It was all done flat and later bent 90 degrees.  I drilled holes in it also while flat.  I use Tichy wires now which are about .008" smaller that what I was using at the time I made the jig so things move around a bit. Also the drill wants to run into the scribe lines.  Those few can be shoved around with a small screwdriver to end up with straight vertical lines.






It will take some tweaking but they will come out level and even before the paint goes on.

[PRR Modeler]

Very ingenious.

[Oldguy]

Wow.  Nice work. 

[postalkarl]

Hey B:

They look just great so far. Can't wait to see more photos.

Karl

[bparrish]

Lets talk some more about bending and fitting wire.

Things start to get complicated when you need to make more than one of something.  Wire grabs tend to "grow" when bending around a pliers.  If you place the edge of a pliers where you want the grab to fit it will come out longer (wider) than you planed.   


Depending on the material and hardness of the wire you are using it will "throw" beyond the edge of the pliers.  This must be considered when bending.  There is a way to minimize this.  That is to work from the center of the wire object being created.  To say this a bit differently, the pliers must be on the area that is not yet bent; the pliers points at where you came from.

So let's get started.   Cut a piece of wire longer than you are going to need for the first one.  If  you are making more than one you can get a better idea of how much each wire is going to need and you can be more economical about the subsequent cuts



These are going to be the roof grabs at the tops of the various ladders and access to the brake wheel.

Here then is the first bend, about in the middle of the wire.





Now for the second bend.  This will demonstrate what the paragraph above was talking about.  Put the pliers on the part that has not been bent yet.  That is...... work away from the center.  This photo shows working away from the first.  Place the wire on a ruler and put the pliers up against the end of the ruler.  Can't miss ! ! !



Then go to the other side and make the bend there.  In this case we have a three scale foot arm of the wire and this one will be two scale feet.



Here is a completed grab iron.    For this batch build I will need twelve of them.





Here is one installed on the roof of a car.



More later on the corner support.

[bparrish]

Now to do the corner support.  This little detail will go unnoticed by most observers but a good evaluator will hawk this out in a minute.  This the sort of stuff that will get a model to earn a merit award.

Drill a hole on the inside of the grab iron.Go in at least a quarter inch.




Push a piece of brass wire into the hole but not quite to the bottom.  Then cut it off flush to the top of the existing grab iron.   Then push wire in a bit so that it is under the corner of the iron.  Take a small pliers and bend the wire out so that it is under the corner of the grab.

Then put some liquid solder flux on both parts and tack solder it.   The flux will make it flash so fast that the wire will not burn the wood roof structure.  Do not depend on the rosin core of the solder to do this as it requires so much more heat.  In most cases the fine wire solder will flow at around 200 degrees.




Another angle.  These finish off really easily but it is a really cool feature.

[ReadingBob]

Very cool.   

[PRR Modeler]

Excellent modeling and how to.

[ACL1504]

Bob,

Great stuff and lots of "How To" tricks.

Tom

[Jerry]

Beautiful work Bob!!


Jerry