I finally used the Cricut for the reason I bought it - to make stuff for the Triple O. Kid-zilla had picked a name some time ago, but a one-two punch of COVID 2.0 and professional obligations put the project on hold.
We let the Cricut do its thing, then he used and X-Acto knife to carefully remove the letters.
I hated to use his project as my guinea pig, but, boy was this easy! I am sure there is a point where the letters are too small for a good cut, but I think that in most cases, this little machine ought to do quite well.
Kid-zilla got to show this off today. I recent transplant and allegedly “retired” garden railroader stopped by to “talk story.” He plans to set up something small for his grandkids. I saw his scrap books. I have a feeling “small” may be relative…
This project is not quite finished. I still want to make a boom rest to hold it in place for travel. Today showed that the boom will swing just enough to cause problems. Kid-zillla also wants a hold-down for the hook. He also noted that the crane should have a coal hopper / counterweight:
Which one of you people taught him how to do actual research on the internet? Now we will have to craft this coal hopper as well! I am thinking a foam core with styrene siding. We’ll see!
The crane is fun “as is,” but it seems the project is not quite done. That’s fine!
Pete, I plan to tackle that with Christmas Thomas, our rehabilitated battery powered LGB m2075 (Rehab of the Missile Sponges Part the Second - Christmas Thomas). You might recall my false water tank sides failed. I intent to re-attack with brass, using brass strips as hangers that would simulate reinforcing strips. After that, I have to reletter the old boy.
I forgot to mention that two weeks ago Kid-zilla and I attacked the issue of how to hold the boom in place while Crane-zilla moved about the Triple O. After some discussions and mock-ups, we decided to use a large staple as a “hold fast” for the hook and a stack of old “railroad ties” as a boom rest. We had a acquired a second hand chopper saw thing, and lo! A straight cut! Three of them, in fact! This bodes well for the crane tender…
Anyway, I let Kid-zilla bang up the boom rest with a wire brush on the Dremel…
Kid-zilla decided that, in fact, the crane needed a counterweight and a tender, so I re-opened this project. At first, we tried to cut a counterweight to the shape of the one in the picture of the actual LGB car. We found that with both hot knives broken and no wires for the jig, that shape was a bit irregular after melting away with the freeform cutter.
The plan was to cover this core with styrene and use the angled styrene as a frame. This piece of foam went back into the scrap bag for another project.
Kid-zilla spent some time converting small, irregular shapes into smaller, more irregular shapes with the cutter as I rummaged about for something with right angles. The 1:24 gang and I found the latter…
Kid-zilla approved, so this will, in time become the core of the counterweight.
I took this lucky find as a sign I should proceed with something wooden. I had set aside the least bad timbers from the start of this project to serve as the base for “something.”
In our parts pile, we have what looks to be three sides of a probable LIONEL gondola (seen just forward of the tank car, above). Kid-zilla noted that prototype work trains had similar cars, and he had selected this component for Crane-zilla’s tender. With donated wheel sets and my spare LGB trucks on hand, I figured I would build the tender employing the tips and lessons from the crane itself. As these will run as a unit, my goal will be to make them look as similar in terms of appearance as I can to give the impression this was all built to a deliberate plan!
To begin with, the 1:24 gang and I used that second-hand chopper in an attempt to address the issue of square cuts.
After Tonka-man came to, I glued and clamped one corner and let it stand overnight so I could proceed with something square. This morning, the 1:24 gang and I clamped the whole thing together…
First attempt! Yay, us! Score one in the “skills acquisition category!” I reinforced everything with a couple of brads from my pin nailer and let the project lie for the night
Kid-zilla and I will use the finishing sander to complete shaping the frame. In addition to leveling everything, we will need to narrow it a smidge to let the gondola walls fit better. Those walls have extensions that presumably slid into pockets on the original model. Our plan is to mount the walls, then cut / bash / press something over those extensions to simulate the pockets. We’ll see what works when we get to that point.
Regarding the saw thing, it was a guided acquisition. I would never have known to look for something like it, largely because I was unaware of the existence of such a thing. As for whether it is the operator or saw, I would still put my money on the operator as the root issue! Part of all of this is to learn what tool is good for what job. Saber Saw, it would seem, is NOT the tool for 12" long strip!
The project progressed catch as can while negotiating an overtime rich environment at work. Largely, this was a week of sanding, puttying, and sanding. This weekend, Kid-zilla joined me for the push to get the frame done(-ish).
…further hiding evidence of Saber Saw’s early - if fleeting - victory over me.
I went to the pile of irregular wood strips ripped from what was once a proud pine plank to salvage material for bolsters. Feeling confident, I did not mark my cuts or compare the marks across the soon-to-be bolsters. The results, as you might imagine, speak for themselves.
Though these pins will be hidden under the deck, I chose to grind them off for safety’s sake. I like to use the Dremel, anyway, as I have actually demonstrated some competence with it.
A quick test run showed that we will have to use the Dremel (Yay!) to shape the bolsters a bit more to allow the wheels to clear. Too bad I already used Pin Nailer…Those brads should do wonders on the Dremel’s grinding dood-dad…Hopefully, we’ll be able to tend to that between bouts of overtime this week and the overtime will cover the new Dremel griding doo-dads.
Looking ahead, the wood screws, washers, cotter pins, and brass wire are on hand to mount the trucks and make the truss rods. I’ll have to raid Youngest Daughter’s Bead Bucket again for the turnbuckles. I am still wondering what to do to make the pockets for the gondola walls. Upholstery staples? Cable-mounting staples? Some sort of U-shaped thing I’ve never heard of but is ridiculously common in hardware stores if you know it exists?
I had thought of using strips of annealed aluminum bashed to shape, but I would expect a low life expectancy. The same would go for “proper” pockets from a commercial supplier. Forgoing pockets is an option, too, but I am not confident in a glue bond, nor am I confident in a friction hold. Both could lead to sheared stakes as the primary MOW engineer puts this model to work. Firmly mounted pockets would force a vertical removal of the gondola walls, if desired, while it is in service.
We were working another issue today, resuscitating an AristoCraft Train Engineer we got from @Rich_Niemeyer, so it was time to down tools and just run trains. Kid-zilla insisted on his MOW train.
He earned the right to see his work (Crane-zilla and the resurrected LIONEL stake-side flatbed) on the tracks. As it turned out, most of what we ran tonight as we ate and watched the sun set over the Ko’olaus was stuff we either built, rebuilt, or salvaged from parts. That was pretty neat.
Thanks to you both. I also perused a few hobby websites to see if there might be a hardware store equivalent of those track nails. If not, I think that this may be a case where ready-made solution is the right answer. I had been eyeballing Ozark for a while, so this is as good an excuse as any to try out some of their parts.
Progress came to a halt as I engaged in this thing called “work.” Uggghhhh…But “work” does pay the bills, so what are you going to do about it?
I am still awaiting the bits from Ozark (pockets, brake wheels and pawls, stirrup steps, etc.) for this project as well as the last item in the Tub-o-Trains, a battered LGB U.S.-patterned box car. I figured that I should drive the crane tender as far as I can so it is a matter of installing the parts and finishing the painting. 2022 is rolling to a close, and I still have that box car and that pump house on my 2022 “to-do” list, the Fur Girls added another building to the maintenance list, and I’ve an electronics project to tend to as well.
I spent several hours today carefully shaping the bolsters. A car that will not roll well fails to meet the stringent standards of 1:24-ish PLAYMOBIL scale and, more importantly, is no fun. The whole process was iterative, as I slowly shaped the bolsters, pinned the trucks to the bolsters, ran the car on the track, marked the binding points, and repeated ad nauseum. The root cause of the issue was the non-standard sizes and angles these strips inherited from my efforts to create them from an otherwise perfectly nice pine board. Fortunately, there are now fewer for me to salvage, asX Legio commandeered some of the other strips to repair a catapult and the Fur Girls chomped the daylight out of yet more.
After shaping the bolsters, I grabbed Kid-zilla to seal the wood…
Afterwards, I selected beads to serve as turnbuckles and cut some brass tubing to line the trucks’ pivot point. I hope to mount my queen posts, cut the brass wire for the truss rods, and maybe even install the latter tomorrow. We’ll see. Kid-zilla wants to see if we can make handrails to replace the plastic ones that have been lost to time, so that is on the agenda, too, in the coming week, and we still have to craft that counterweight.
Ozark shipped the bits! Maybe I need to get off my rear and buy that primer…
In actuality, I had Monday off, so the 1:24 gang and I took another crack at the crane tender.
The first order of business was to make new grabrails, as Kid-zilla insisted we do this. It is time I learned how to measure the stock grabrails, cut a bit of brass, and bend them to shape! A dab of CA glue got everything in place:
After waking up the dude sleeping it off on-shift, the 1:24 gang and I made the truss rods and turnbuckles the same way we did for the crane car, using a cylindrical bead as a core and covering it in heatshrink tubing. After drilling some tap holes, trimming down and installing some stainless steel cotter pins…
To be honest, I should have installed the rods FIRST, and it took some bending and twisting to install everything. You’ll also note the silver globs next to the queen posts / cotter pins. Guess who forgot you cannot (or at least I cannot) solder brass to stainless steel? Hooray for CA glue!
Somewhere in this process I managed to twist the “cap” onto my Dremel so tight, that no amount of work with 1:24 tools…
Then I found out that the contact cement I was using was making the styrene awfully soft! An attempt to make a frame using the “L” shaped styrene strip in the picture went horribly awry (lots of “L” shaped scrap styrene, now!). Hearkening back to the wise words on these pages that “modelling putty fixes many sins,” I coated the counterweight in the stuff (blowing open the putty’s tube in the process) and let it dry. I have been sanding it smooth(ish) over the course of the week. At some point, it will get black paint, then I’ll glue it to the crane. The mounting bolts are clearly out of sight in the crane’s operating cab!
Kid-zilla is pleased, and commented that “It is starting to look like a train car,” so all is well.
Now we will have to craft this coal hopper as well! I am thinking a foam core with styrene siding. We’ll see!
