I get my lead from old water pipe joints!
Devon as far as the uprights/bunks/ big “U” … I thought they might spread apart with use and age…
Sean McGillicuddy said:
I get my lead from old water pipe joints!
Devon as far as the uprights/bunks/ big “U” … I thought they might spread apart with use and age…
Thats exactly what the lead wool is for. It is used for packing cast Iron water pipe joints to seal them.
Maybe, it will be something to watch and consider. It would be easy to retrofit the mold to accept a wire or even some small screen mesh. Certainly wouldn’t hurt anything, It can only help. Maybe, in my typical fashion I will overthink and over engineer this and add that feature from the get go. I will pour one and see how flexy it is.
Devon Sinsley said:
Sean McGillicuddy said:
I get my lead from old water pipe joints!
Devon as far as the uprights/bunks/ big “U” … I thought they might spread apart with use and age…
Thats exactly what the lead wool is for. It is used for packing cast Iron water pipe joints to seal them.
Maybe, it will be something to watch and consider. It would be easy to retrofit the mold to accept a wire or even some small screen mesh. Certainly wouldn’t hurt anything, It can only help. Maybe, in my typical fashion I will overthink and over engineer this and add that feature from the get go. I will pour one and see how flexy it is.
I just thought about this after reading this’ Would it help from snapping off when you hit it or drop something on it?
If you drop it on the bunks or hit it hard enough it will not be good. I mean it is not an integral part of the car, it is applied so if you drop in on the bunk it will break off. I am going to have angle “iron” brackets helping to hold it on like the prototype. But you do raise a good question about their attachment to the car and making that a solid connection. But you just gave me an idea about this. If, after they are made, I drill a hole in the middle bottom of it and epoxy in a threaded insert then I can drill through the center channel and actually screw them on. That is easy and would make their attachment rock solid.
That doesn’t do anything for snapping off a riser if I drop it on the bunk. But resin isn’t that fragile. Its a pretty tough plastic and these bunks are 1/4" thick at its thinnest and a half inch thick at its thickest. Plus there is the curved section joining the horizontal and vertical members. But a wire or mesh would help with flexing and breaking if that is an issue.
This will be something to mess around with and improve.
Sean McGillicuddy said:
I get my lead from old water pipe joints!
Devon as far as the uprights/bunks/ big “U” … I thought they might spread apart with use and age…
If they didn’t spread too far, it would just make them look prototypical.
David Maynard said:
Sean McGillicuddy said:
I get my lead from old water pipe joints!
Devon as far as the uprights/bunks/ big “U” … I thought they might spread apart with use and age…
If they didn’t spread too far, it would just make them look prototypical.
That’s it in a nut shell really. I have worked with resin cast car bodies in the model car world and they are pretty dang tough. I don’t think a few logs will spread them or break them off. And if they do event he prototype had an answer for it that I could employ.
They have braces welded between the two. So there are options. I figured I would make a few like this anyways because it is prototypical.
You can get stick on weights from auto parts stores that work good.
So even though I said I wasn’t going to I decided to pour one of these in pewter. I previously cast one in resin but my resin must be no good because the last few times I have used it it foams and results in a brittle porous useless part. Need to get new resin. I was curious as to what it would weigh in metal and a friend want to see them. The resin one I cast is .3 oz but since it porous its not a fair weight. The Pewter one is 6oz, so four of them suckers will be a pound and a half. It looks great but would be way to heavy to mention around $20 bucks a set.
Here is the master and the Pewter one. It does develop a slight under pour, did it twice got the same result. But it could easily be bondoed. I will use angle iron (styrene) braces on brace them. I also think I will be tapping them and screwing them in from underneath to hold them. All in all I think it is a great looking bunk. I think I captured the prototype.
As I am sitting here thinking on the other cars I could easily omit the other lead weight and go with just the bunks and metal wheels that would be a 2# plus car. but the way I have it now the weight is lower which would be better.
Even without using the bunks for weight purposes it is satisfying to know the casting works.
Hmm, which location of bunks would be the ones most likely to get roughed up as car is handled between uses?
Middle? Ends?
Use a couple pewter in those locations and resin in the other locations?
Well I got one done in Alumalite resin. This is the stuff I had been considering buying and have a friend that uses it for fishing lures. It is very robust and it would take a serious knock to break it. I haven’t weighed it but it doesn’t weigh much. I think it is decided. I will call it good with the weight I have and use resin bunks.
It would appear that a plan has come together. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)
