#021 04 Tybee Pier - Flat Top

Let's check on the patient tonight and see how she's doing...

 We remove the Popsicle Rick Handy Cheap Weights and she is flat as a pancake!  Perfect!  The patient will live!

It will sit up straight again.  But before we do any more work on her, let's leave her for 24 hours and check to see if the warping doesn't come back.  Sometimes it does.

#020 04 Tybee Pier - Damage Control

Yeah!  We're finally back working on the Dixie Donut!  Tonight dispare and repair!

The question is: rebuild or repair?  This is for an AP award, so it must be good.  Most of the structure looks ok so maybe we can just straighten it up.  Its worth an evening's work to see.

 We'll need some toothpicks and glue.  I keep a supply of ketchup cups and a big bottle of round toothpicks in the supply drawer to my immediate right.

 Upon further investigation, we find that the top of the pier is racked slightly, meaning that it twists from right to left and is warped.  Not good.

 I carefully removed all of the loose or almost loose boards and pilings.

 The pier won't sit level on the table.  We'll have to unwarp it.   Mr. Sulu, unwarp factor 5.

 I'm going to use my handy dandy weights that were given to me by the legendary Popsicle Rick as a birthday present.  I can't tell you how often I use these things!  There tin cans with Sakrete in them.  Heavy and very cheap.

 I'll also need the alcohol sprayer.  You can't use water because the glue is water based.  This penetrates the wood better.

 I soak the pier in alcohol and get it really wet.  This way the model gets flexible.

Then we'll take the weights and press the model down to flatten it out.  I hope this works!  If not, there will be a pier building party next weekend!

Back to Work on the Pier

If you follow along with my Model Railroader's Notebook Blog you'll know that I just unpacked the Pier.  It has some damage and needs repair.  We'll be working on it in the next few days.  Welcome back, Dixie Donut!

#018 04 Tybee Pier - The Nuts & Bolts of Nuts & Bolts

Here, live in the Dixie Central Blog, two modeling geniuses explain the fine art of NBW castings...which I've got to mount hundreds of very soon.

From the legendary Jack Burgess, MMR

Regarding nut, bolt & washer castings

Plastic ones are much better than metal for most applications (metal castings are much more expensive and more difficult to bond in place.) I generally use Grandt Line N-B-W casting since they have such a large selection of sizes and washer types. (Note that wood trestles generally use

those with large washers.) However, Grandt's dies are getting worn out for some sizes and the resulting parts are sometimes mismatched. Some of the smallest HO N-B-W castings should work for N scale size a 1" nut in HO would represent a 2" nut in N scale.

Some of my tips for using them on wood trestles:

Stain the wood and assemble all of the bents first and then drill the holes.

It is much faster to use a drill press to drill the holes...while I have a precision drill press, Micro-Mark and Dremel ones should work since you are drilling into wood.

Drill all of the way through the wood; you need to represent the bolt head and washer on one side and the nut and washer on the other.

Of course, paint the castings while still on the sprue. The prototype bolts and hardware I've seen start out a dark brown/black and eventually start picking up rust. Air brush a couple packages of castings a brown/black color and then go back and add a very light dusting of rust to some of the sprues.

Measure the sprue shaft diameter and use a drill one size larger. This will

make it easier to insert the casting into the hole.

Cut the sprue on the casting so that the sprue is just short of 1/2 the thickness of the wood you are inserting them into. You can cut all of the castings off of the sprue at the same time if you are careful and don't let them shatter. This makes the work go much faster.

Put a spot of regular white glue on a scrap of paper/wood/styrene, pick up a casting with tweezers by the shaft, dap the end of the casting into the white glue, and insert the shaft in the hole. Once started, push the casting the rest of the way into the hole with the side of the tweezers. The white glue doesn't actually stick to the styrene but fills the hole enough so that the casting won't come out accidentally.

Repeat...repeat....repeat....etc.

One the modelers in my club scratched a 30 inch long trestle on a 33" dia curve Double track. He claimed the only pieces of wood all the same length were the ties. 1500 pieces or so. He told me later that putting the NBW's in it weakened the structure. All redwood.

If the timber sizes were prototype and he wasn't drilling oversize holes, there shouldn't have been any weakening of the structure...the prototype timbers had holes drilled in them! Assuming he was using prototypically-sized timbers, I suspect that the problem was actually the choice of wood since redwood is not a strong wood but really a softwood. The prototype (in the West) tended to use Douglas Fir which, although not classified as a hardwood, is a very strong wood, good for house building, freight cars, etc.

Note that not all bridges used bolts and nuts for every joint. Many bridges, especially driven pile bridges, used spikes (not railroad spikes but extremely large-diameter "nails") rather than bolts and nuts for attaching the sway bracing. So, the lack of N-B-W castings should not automatically result in lost points for the Prototype score. However, you those cases, you should represent the head of the spikes. The problem is that, except for very large wood trestles, there isn't a lot of places to gain points for Detail. But there are also other details that can typically be added. For

example, most bridges use multiple stringers in pairs and those stringers should have an air gap between them. These stringers would therefore be bolted together with special large washers between the stringers to provide that air gap. The washers I have from YV bridges are in an "hourglass" shape and are 4" in diameter on the ends, 1.5" in diameter in the middle, and 4" "thick". Larger trestles also need fire protection items such as drums of sand to extinguish fires. If running coal, the tops of the bents might need to be protected from dropped cinders with tin sheets.

Jack Burgess, MMR

AP Chairman, Pacific Coast Region

And from Martin Pequod…

Pretty much the same way that I apply nbw's although a few variations and additonal tips.

When you're cutting the "bolt" free from the sprue, cut at an angle to put a bevel on the

tip -- makes them a little easier to insert into the hole.

Tichy makes a decent selction of nbw's and rivets, in a rust-brown which looks pretty decent in many uses with just some stain on them. Been buying them as much as Grandt line now for that very reason.

I prefer ACC over white glue for just about all materials; having some nbw's magically some back out at the most inconvenient time can be truly irritating.

Plastic vs. metal; plastic is far cheaper, but sometimes the brass parts are better particualrly if soldering things together, and sometimes I've used brass ones for their strength.

Small variable speed drill press is a tool worth investing in and beats a day with a pin vise for this and lots of other chores.

Martin

#017 04 Tybee Pier - Momma Don't Take My Kodachrome Away

My daughter will never know what that song is about... shame.

I printed out a bunch of photos of piers today and put them in a binder.  This binder will go to the shop with me as I start adding the details.  This will include mussels, seawater darkening, salt rings, moss and other nifty details.

The internet is so valuable for photos.  I find that if I print them out and put them in a book, it is easy for me to refer to them.  This also comes in handy for validating my model to the NMRA judges.

It won't be long before the pier is done and I'll write it up for the NMRA contest and have the NCIOG guys pre-judge it for me.  Then I'll make corrections and take it to Alabama...baby willing.

#016 04 Tybee Pier - Need a Lift?

 

I left the office a bit early today since I have to work on Sunday and I stopped by the old train store.  Everyone else was out buying milk and bread for the ice storm of the century.  Yeah, right.  Today I purchased some Kadee 33" steel wheelsets for some cars I want to work on.

I also bought a pile of used Railroad Model Craftsmen and a Wayne Wesolowski book to read the week after next when I'm laid up recovering from a vasectomy.  What fun.  I told my wife not to take it out of my train budget but to charge it against medical.  Smart me!

Repair time!  Time to fix the section that my daughter knocked down so that I can start laying track tomorrow.

First I mark where the foam isn't so that I don't put glue where it is not needed.  The handy kerosene heater in the back knocks the chill off pretty well when the ice starts to fall.

I double check the surface for smoothness and then add a bead of glue around the web.

The guilty party is glued to the chair and not allowed to move while the repairs are done.  I'm out of duct tape or we'd be using that around the always-running motor mouth.  Why, why, why, why, why, daddy!

There!  Glued and stable.  Ok, maybe not so stable.

This area was lifting up, so I clamped her down.

I re-glued all of the uprights and will screw them in tomorrow when the glue dries.

My wife takes pictures while I repair the broken foam section that was knocked out from the fall.  Daughter got loose and I panic.

I don't see her so I figure she went upstairs.  I carefully glue the broken piece back in place.

Now let's test fit the pier into its home.  Nice fit and it really looks good.

Not bad for an old fat guy!

We'll let the section dry and start on another project.  I want to put this hoist assembly on the dock.  Let's study the parts and see if it can be used.  The piece was set on the pier and it fits nicely.

The base is really nice.  I don't know what kit this came from but it is perfect for hauling cotton.

Before I get too far I take out the handy notebook and a handful of Sharpee pens and quickly sketch the derrick and its three cables.  One rotates the boom.  The other raises and lowers the boom and the third raises and lowers the hook.  There are tie downs to anchor the top to keep it stable (guylines).  Always make notes when you disassemble things, and don't forget to photograph it as well.

Meanwhile the Popsicle Bandit practices making models beside me.  She is taking after some of the guys in the NCI group that she adores.  She has glue everywhere (Bob), Popsicle sticks glued to the table (Rick) and keeps spilling stuff on the floor (Ken).  At least it is not tie stain.

After careful consideration I've decided that the metal hoist operator shack has got to be replaced with a wooden one.  It is just too modern and already assembled, so I'll throw it in the salvage parts box and scratchbuild one.  I'm in need of a pile of Grandt Line windows and doors, so I'll add that to my shopping list for the show coming up.

The more I play with this the less I like it.  It is VERY tall and a bit unruly.  My guess is that every time I move the layout I'll be unscrambling cables.  I'll set it aside and pray about it for a while.  Maybe I'll not use it.

#015 04 Tybee Pier - This is Taking Forever

Man, this pier is taking up huge amounts of time.  I've got speed it up.  Tonight we start making shortcuts.  A friend of mine Richard visited today and since he is a very good model builder I figured I'd get some negative comments, but he didn't let me have it, so it must not be too bad.

 First we need to do some chores...

I got some more Aged Driftwood, so I put it away.

Last night at the auction I both this older baggage car for $5.  Thought I might modify it for something on the Dixie.  Its in HO.

This L&N single sheathed car is very nice.  I'm a sucker for L&N. $6 is not bad.

Actually I don't understand why more people don't attend the auction.  The deals are steals.

A Monon gondola.  Another favorite railroad of mine, and for $5 it is worth it.

I also bought a huge pack of wheels and coupler parts for $5.  There isn't a drawer for these, so I'll make one. In the grab bag of parts was a full set of ribbed back wheels from NWSL.  Nice!

Using the labeler I labeled the drawers.  The toy is my daughters and is in for repair.

My camer lens is dirty so I better clean it before I start.

First chore tonight is to work on the piling that is too far apart.  I'll just reinforce it.  This will give it something to break up the long symmetrical wall.

There.  The addition of some more pilings made it look better and it appears to be reinforced.

Next we'll keep working down the wall where we left off.

When Richard was over he did notice that I build things in sub assemblies.  Actually I didn't think that this was so special as I've always done it.  But he pointed out that many people don't do this normally.  So, if you don't build things in sub assemblies here is why I do it that way.

Mainly it is easier to build things in small pieces.  This model is over three feet long and barely fits on most modeler's workbenches.  Normally I keep a one foot rule.  The subassembly must fit in a one foot square area.  This makes it easy to handle and to turn around.  Secondly I do it because if Imake a mistake, I just start over on the sub assembly and don't have to rebuild the whole model.

This goes very quickly now that I've got the rythym down.  Repetitive tasks develop a rythym and its bad to stop when you have tempo.

Here are the pier walls and piers.  Looking good!

Richard and I talked about nut-bolt-washer (nbw) castings on the pier.  Yes, they do have them.  No, I'm not going to put over 500 nbw castings on this model.  It's not for a championship contest, it is for a layout.  A good friend and legendary modeler Allen McClelland has a philosphy of "good enough" modeling.  It is where you do just enough to make it acceptable.  Now, if this was to be an NMRA contest project, I would and can add all those nbw's.  But for this model I just need to hint that they are there.

The shocker!  I'm going to paint them on.

First of all, I'm only going to paint the nbw's that would show to the viewer.  The others will be ignored.  We'll do this with rust colored paint and a toothpick.

There are lots of colors to use but I'm going to try RUST and OXIDE RED.

Using a scrap piece of stained wood I try a drop of each.  The RUST looks the best, so we'll go with that.

The paint is old and has separated.  No problem!  We'll just put the bottle on the mixer.  This handy lab mixer uses a controllable rotating magnet to stir the bottle. 

I place a small steel screw in the bottle and stir the tough pigment in the bottle with a toothpick.  Once the screw moves freely I put it on the lab mixer and crank up the magnet.

A few minutes later the paint is thorughly mixed and I didn't have to shake it.  This device is priceless.  It also is a controllable hot plate and good for many things in the shop.

Here I have painted on the nbw's.  They look great from a distance.  Let's see how many judges really notice!

Have a great evening!