NKP SD9 Detailing Project

[SAH]

Steve
Whereabouts are you?

And if you ever are traveling to B'more, you know who to call, right?

Atlanta.  We're moving about 1/2 mile from where we currently live.  Not exactly what I thought was going to happen, but that's a whole different story.  B'more is not in my normal circulation route, but you never know.  And if I do make it to town, you're on.

Steve

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Cool.

[ednadolski]

Hi Steve,  Very nice looking work so far!  It's always a little unnerving when you first start clipping off those plastic factory handrails, eh?   

I don't fold over the tabs on the GMM stanchions.  I just use the slightly longer ones and lay the PB wire in position atop that, then solder into place. It seems to come out strong enough, and folding seems harder for me to make them all come out uniformly.

For solder I use the PBL paste-type solder which I thin down with the blue liquid SuperSafe flux.  That allows me to put on just a tiny dab of solder with the tip of a toothpick.  I can get it exactly where I want, with little or no excess, and I don't need a third hand like I would with wire solder .  Once everything is soldered, I carefully clip off the excess stanchion lengths with a Xuron flush-cut cutters and clean all the joints gently with a wet Q-tip or a bit of wet paper towel held in a tweezers.  BTW for soldering I use a Weller soldering station with variable temp. and fine/pointy tip.  Prior to soldering I lay tiny paper towel strips at the base of each stanchion and soak each one with a drop of water from a pipette.  This acts as a heat sink & prevents damaging the plastic, as those little stanchions heat up pretty quick -- almost instantly.

I like your idea of taping on the quad-ruled paper for alignment.  The side doors usually can also be used for visual vertical alignment, but the other nice thing about the paper is that it also gives the model some protection from the soldering process -- the thinned paste solder can spatter a bit when you hit it with the hot iron.

Here is a link to one of my most recent loco projects, this has a few additional notes:

http://therailwire.net/smf/index.php/topic,11602.0.html

Keep up the great work!  I'm looking forward to seeing your finished model!

Ed

PS: Excellent job the way you are documenting your progress!

[SAH]

Hi Steve,  Very nice looking work so far!  It's always a little unnerving when you first start clipping off those plastic factory handrails, eh?   

Hi Ed,

I've been hacking away at rtr models for years so no it's not all that unnerving.  The end result must justify the effort however.

It was your NS unit post on one of the yahoo groups that led me to the Railwire.  VERY nice work.  My first handrail job was done before the GMM stanchions existed so yeah, I've done some soldering, but with stone age tools.  You have a nice set-up to get the job done right.  For the one loco I do every ten years  I'm not sure I can justify that leap yet.  The modification I plan to make to the bending jig should do the trick.  Not sure when I'm going to get back to the project though.  WAY too much stuff going on right now.

Got any other projects to post?

Steve

[ednadolski]

Hi Steve, yep, I hear you about time.... I started a new job about 4 mos. ago and I have had basically no time for modeling.  I do have another project or two in the works, but completion timeframes are just SWAGs.   I'm still trying to find time to learn some decent weathering techniques, it's all ad hoc for me lately....  :-[

Ed

[SAH]

At long last I've restarted the SD9 project.  I played with a bunch of different ways of making the ladders on the end of the hoods free standing.  Here's one solution but probably not the best one.  Ideally the brackets that hold the ladder stile to the hood would be part of the ladder etching.  The way JnJ did it for the B&O wagon top caboose (as shown in the most recent N scale mag) would be the way to go.  I just CA'd the parts in place.  The pieces of paper are drilling and cutting templates done with the computer.



I separated the hood from the frame to do the heavy cut, fill and drill work on the hood.  I think I'm going to try to paint the frame and hood as one piece.  The driver for this decision is a desire to do something different with the handrail connection at the cab side.  Usually the handrails are bent and inserted into a hole in the cab.  I'd like to model the fastener holding the handrail to the cab.  Still some thinking to do on this point.

Steve

[SAH]

Only drilling holes into the cab for the sun shade and wind deflectors/mirrors remain before reassembling the shell to the frame to continue handrail construction.  Oh yeah, and fabricating the spark arrestors.  I hope I didn't make application of the nose stripes more difficult by applying the head light housings now.  We'll see.  The ladder is NOT glued to the hood yet.  After the decals.



I've run hot and cold on replacing the cooling tube with a free standing detail part.  I've tried a number of ways to fabricate an assembly but it's pretty tough.  The answer is a photo etched brass piece but I don't have those tools and can't justify buying them for a one time job.  If I create the artwork would anybody out there be interested in making a one off etching?



Steve

[railbuilderdave]

Looking real good.  I hope I can have the patience to do work like that when I do more intricate detailing.

[SAH]

Thanks.  It has gotten harder as I get older and my eyes change (read: bi-focals), but there are ways to compensate.  If possible I still like to try to push the envelope some every now and then.  Sometimes I'm successful and others, well, not so good.  I have a plan to make another run at the cooling tubes.  We'll see.

Steve