How To Tip:

Occasionally when you find you need to bend, or straighten a piece of plastic, make a shallow steel pan about 1-1/2" deep by however large you need to dip the piece into. Fill the pan with table salt. Put on a hot plate and bring the temperature up to about 185/200 degrees. Use cotton gloves, salt transfers heat readily and can burn your fingers. Dip the plastic just under the surface, leave it a second or so, withdraw it and bend to the shape you need and hold until it cools or dip in cold water. The ear pieces of eye glasses are shaped this way. Go to a eye glasses store and watch them, it is good instruction, and you can ask questions. Take a sample of styrene, and ABS or something you want to experiment with. Salt wont melt until very high degrees, so too hot will melt solder. More on that on another post.

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ole'Watash, Steam Hog

 

Sometimes you need something cheap and dirty to pull, or rotate a trap door, switch, turnout, light dimmer, remote crane, etc. Airplanes use steel cables. We can use fishing cord, and it comes in all sizes. It is difficult to tie a knot in nylon and some other cords, so: Use an eyelet type crimp-terminal as shown. Crimp it just tight enough to keep the cord from slipping through. Too tight and you will cut the cord. I am useing this on the service hatches on my roundhouse.


NOTE: YEYLETTS are special eyeletts!!


[This message has been edited by watash (edited 11 November 2000).]

 

Well, if no one is going to add their "How To", I'll add another one.

When you have a large piece of brass, like a boiler, you need to solder a small part onto, use the sand box. Imbed the boiler almost all the way, oriented so the tiny part, say a bell hanger, is on top. Clean and tin the bell hanger and location where it is to mount on the boiler. Use surgical forcepts to hold the bell hanger in location, apply solder flux rosen,and heat up the salt box. Watch the temperature. The rosen paste will melt when the temperature is just at the melt of the solder. You will see the solder capillary in under the hanger, and turn off the heat. Let cool and remove. This is a form of production sweat soldering. In production, every part to be soldered to the boiler would be jiged in place, pre-tinned and all would be done at one time. After cooling, the flux is washed off, and the finished boiler is brass plated, which hides the solder. There are no globs of excess solder as would be when useing an iron. Some jewelery and Harley Davidson Motorcycle frames are assembled this way. Now you know.

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Watash

 

That's true Alan, if you use heat sinks to protect other small parts. Heat migrates rapidly in brass, so other parts need to be protected from moving out of place, or falling off. The re-placing of a broken off piece is done your way. Mine was for production of several assemblies all rather close together. Not everyone is a torch artist today. Since craftsmanship has been replaced by DFA, the sweat soldering practice has developed into a large business in many fields.

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Watash

 

Good idea Alan, it can really get into the nooks and crannies better than rags.

Have you ever wished you could "Kick" a car and watch it roll a long way along a siding?

You can. This has been tried by installing a motor in the car. It has been done with a flywheel in the car.

The best I have seen, was a take-off we used from a rotary press at one of our arsenals. Live fuses were fed into this assembly press for the scatter bombs along a track with tiny compressed air jets angled toward the press. As a fuse was pushed over the jet it was lifted into the air where it was held down by rails along its sides and was carried to the press by the air stream.

We drilled the 1/16 dia holes through between the HO rails at a 40 degree angle every 4 inches. A cleat was glued under these holes that had a 1/8 wide by 1/4 deep groove cut its length, (5 feet). we used a needle valve to regulate the flow volumn and a ball valve to operate it. The "engineer" would push the car (s) no more than 5 or 6 miles an hour toward the siding turnout. Unknown to the observers, the "breaknan" would wait til the engine was over the first hole, then he would open the ball valve and the engineer would stop the engine. The cars would roll, and roll, and roll, just like the real thing! Even if they ran into a set of cars down the siding, the bump was no more than in real life. It made a great shot in a movie! Adjust the air so the car just keeps rolling without gaining any speed. The "brakenan" can stop the car by closing the ball valve, or he can shove a string of cars a ways.

[This message has been edited by watash (edited 16 November 2000).]

 

Here is a tip from my dad, 1937/8:

Illustration follows:

Also useful for other items, see?


Watash



[This message has been edited by watash (edited 02 December 2000).]

 

These were the some I sent in a week or so ago. Decided you were buisy, so I started at about 2:30 this pm to see if as I asked you in my last email, could these come from my website. No. They had to come from Jan's, and they also had to be saved as: going out on the internet, not into a file folder where we would attach them to an email. Whew! What a job. Just now saw your post. I did not go beyond mine, so didn't know you were there, I could have asked several questions, but it is late now, so I expect you are gone again. Corey helped me understand how to reduce the photos to less K.
CHARLIE YOU SHOULD DELETE THIS NOW TO SAVE SPACE, I WOULD IF I COULD. THANKS. GUESS YOU HAVEN'T GOTTEN MY LAST SEVERAL EMAILS. GOT THE PILLOW OK GOOD SHAPE. NOT OPENED TIL XMAS. THANKS. NOT SURE IF YOU ARE STILL AT support@trainboard.com ??? How do I find out my subscriber number? I see some guys say "subscriber #45" etc. What am I, Orchin #1?

I just now got the December TB News, so now I find all my literary efforts have been going to file 13! I knew I was an orphan
child. My mom was an orphan, my dad was an urchin, so I guess that makes me an Orchin!
Its all your fault Charlie Brown!!!
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Watash



[This message has been edited by watash (edited 02 December 2000).]

 

Thanks Charlie, don't confuse me I'm simple minded remember? Ha. I do hope you got the three emails telling you that the pillow is to have a Burgundy back side, or my back side may have teeth marks! Ha. It sure smells good, I don;t think she'll mind when she opens it up Xmas! Wr wont send too many photos, because that would slow down the TrainBoard too much. Thanks. watash, don't forget to delete these posts to save space, they should have been done email anyway, but I knew you hated my expostulatory tergiversations !! Ha. I'll never forget that term if I live to be 175 eons old!
I haven't heard anymore from him, so guess he is groused out on someone else now, hopefully on another site in lower Slobovia!

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Watash

 

You still can not receive my e-mails Charlie, so I'll ask you here. Please delete the above posts that are not TIPs. They only take up space and bytes that nolonger serve any purpose. I will post some more tips when you do.

Am I the only one willing to post tips to the other guys? Surely someone else has something the rest of us doesn't think about, has forgotten, or hasn't learned yet. I'm certainly not and authority on this, but I like to share what I have found out or heard does work. Come on goys, give. Stop having fun and teach, brag, or tell jokes or Charlie might throw a rock at you.

 

Yeah, but Watash you're the Bees-Knees on cool stuff. Like I said a couple months ago,I'm always amazed at the knowledge and creativity in here. Wobbly-On , Bobby.

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Keep it coming Watash. We all learn from information posted and its great to get a chuckle or two from your great sense of humour. We all need some of that these days so as I said, keep it coming

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Robin member #35


Maberly and Tayside

 

Looks like you've got 'em dazzled there Watash.
Pretty soon if you're not careful, I'll start looking for 'How to' tips in that 12 inch to the foot scale.
Oh Wow!

 

Well, OK. Just as soon as we get Charlie to clean up our mess above.

Have you guys ever heard of how they make a chinph on one of those new Twankertwoncur's?

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Watash #982

 

Charlie, The 10:00 news tonight ( channel 5 NBC) said those of us using free internet service will have to seek an alternative, because ( .com) has announced they are shutting down the .com aaccess. He said that includes Belo who owns the station! Wont that affect a number of us here on the Board?
Jan and I pay a fee for flash.net so are OK I think.

Charlie, I'm trying hard to follow the rules and clean up after myself when I make a BooBoo and take up a lot of space. Its embarrassing for me to be so dumb, so please don't tell anyone, or print this in the news paper, and what ever you do, don't announce my wetting my pants over the air! Sob Sob

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Watash #982