Steam Loco Spoked Wheel Making

[peteski]

Or would you etch? 

They do look great and I could never do that!

+1 on both counts.

[mmagliaro]

Heh... thanks, guys.

No, I do not think I will ever do this again.   
I could cannibalize nice drivers out of an engine, or even a whole chassis, and adapt it to be
an 0-6-0. 

The main point here was to push myself to try to make
an "entirely" scratchbuilt engine.  Making these wheels is not only a huge amount of work,
but it opens the door to all sorts of difficulties I have not even completely solved yet.

Will they tear apart under load?  Will I really be able to attach them to axles true and square?
Should I nickel plate them?   If I don't and I just blacken them, will they last on the rails,
being made out of brass?

Who knows?   I wanted to see if I could do this.  So far, I still don't know.

Seeing as it is a switcher, I probably do not have to worry about wheel wear.  If I were going to run it
around a loop in a store window for hours and hours every day, I might worry about that.
But not for something like this.

[peteski]

Will they tear apart under load?  Will I really be able to attach them to axles true and square?
Should I nickel plate them?   If I don't and I just blacken them, will they last on the rails,
being made out of brass?

That should not be a problem.  Most model locomotive wheels are made from plated brass.  After heavy usage the thin plating wears off and the thread takes on the gold color of brass.  But the exposed brass doesn't seem to wear out any faster than whatever the plating material was.  However the bare-brass tread seems to get dirty quicker (and needs to be cleaned more often) than when the wheels still have the plating on them.

[mmagliaro]

That should not be a problem.  Most model locomotive wheels are made from plated brass.  After heavy usage the thin plating wears off and the thread takes on the gold color of brass.  But the exposed brass doesn't seem to wear out any faster than whatever the plating material was.  However the bare-brass tread seems to get dirty quicker (and needs to be cleaned more often) than when the wheels still have the plating on them.

I think it's more the oxidation than the dirt.
Bare brass oxidizes faster than nickel, and it is not as conductive as the oxidation on the nickel.
This is the main thing I'm thinking about that makes me consider plating them.
I know about the Caswell and other home electroplating kits... some, like the Micromark one (and some Caswell
kits) use a wand, where you clip a ground lead to the work and then brush the wand over and over the surface.
I think I could do that: spin the wheel on an axle and just hold the wand against the tread.  That ought to lay
down a very uniform layer of plated metal.
It only has to be about .001" thick - not enough to cause trouble even if it's not perfectly uniform.

[peteski]

I think it's more the oxidation than the dirt.
Bare brass oxidizes faster than nickel, and it is not as conductive as the oxidation on the nickel.
This is the main thing I'm thinking about that makes me consider plating them.
...
It only has to be about .001" thick - not enough to cause trouble even if it's not perfectly uniform.

Yes, brass does seem to oxidize faster than nickel-silver (which is just another type of a brass alloy), it seems that there is more than oxidation.  The brass surface seems to be rougher than the surface of plated treads.  The "gunk" seems to accumulate easier on that rougher surface.  This is strictly a naked-eye observation. I have not compared brass and plated treads under electron microscope. 

You are joking about the plating being 0.001" thick, right?  I suspect that the plating thickness typical for those electroplating kits is more in the 0.0001" range (or thinner). Unless you leave the item to be plated in the solution for hours.

I don't think that even the factory plated wheels are plated to 0.001" thickness.

[Doug G.]

I'm not sure brass oxidizes any faster than nickel-silver but the brass oxide is not conductive at all while the nickel silver oxide is semi-conductive. That's why nickel-silver is less touchy as to that characteristic with track and wheels.

Doug

[Doug G.]

The quality and composition of the brass is a factor too. Lone Star must have used really good brass on the Treble-O-Lectric locos because mine can sit for a long time and remain shiny and conductive.

Doug

(AOL's lousy browser can't find websites or pages within a website so I had to add this as a separate post.)

[mmagliaro]

You are joking about the plating being 0.001" thick, right?  I suspect that the plating thickness typical for those electroplating kits is more in the 0.0001" range (or thinner). Unless you leave the item to be plated in the solution for hours.

I don't think that even the factory plated wheels are plated to 0.001" thickness.

I spoke to the folks at Caswell, and they said that if I leave it in the solution for 1 hour, it will plate to a .001"
thickness.    If I do it by spinning it and holding a saturated wand on it, I may just spin it until it "looks good."
Something tells me that if I don't plate the treads (and the flanges of course), I will regret it.

[peteski]

I spoke to the folks at Caswell, and they said that if I leave it in the solution for 1 hour, it will plate to a .001"
thickness.    If I do it by spinning it and holding a saturated wand on it, I may just spin it until it "looks good."
Something tells me that if I don't plate the treads (and the flanges of course), I will regret it.

Sounds like a plan. But if you do this only until it looks good (not for an hour) then the plating will probably be in the 0.0001" range (or even thinner), rather then 0.001". 

But then again I don't know how thick is the plating on factory-made model train wheels.  It could be 0.0001".

[mmagliaro]

I'd say it has to be more than just .0001"    One ten-thousandth of an inch sounds to me like
it would wear off far too fast.   

I just spent some time messing around with another "squeaky" Kato S2 4-8-4, polishing the treads with 800 and then
1200 grit sandpaper.  I was surely taking off some of the plating, and I didn't get down to bare brass.
 I've seen some brass locos
where the plating was shoddy and it is flaking off (I just repaired a brass Berkshire that had that
problem.   The plating is certainly thicker than .0001".   You can feel the ridges with your fingernail  when you
pick at it on the wheel.

I actually would be surprised if the plating were not at least .001" thick.
One thousandth really isn't much.

If I use the wand method, I'll just do it for 10 minutes, measure before/after with calipers, and repeat
 until I get enough of an increase in diameter to make me happy.  Remember, I'm nothing if not tenacious and patient when it comes to these things.