For those of you with some experience in modular layouts and leveling them, has anyone tried EMT (thin wall) for legs, and enclosing a nut in the end of it so a bolt could be used for leveling the layout? A Tee nut might also work but right now I’m looking for successful experience in this endeavor before starting from scratch.
Bill Gebhardt
Some of our club members did it this way.
http://shmrrc.org/Free-Mo/Plastic_pipe_module_legs/index.html
Unless you have a young un to get down on the floor, put your leveling device up under the modules where the legs attach.
Easiest way is to carry some carpenter shims in your kit and just push it under the short leg with your toe.
Bill, what are you up to?(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)
John Bouck said:
Unless you have a young un to get down on the floor, put your leveling device up under the modules where the legs attach.
Easiest way is to carry some carpenter shims in your kit and just push it under the short leg with your toe.
Old age and experience will overcome youth and skill any day of the week. I agree with JB, the easiest way is shims.
I also run Z scale modules, and levelling is critical.
We use feet that have a flexible foot, with a hex nut to make adjusting easy.
Then we put a flare nut wrench on the hex nut, and it stays there and you can spin it easily and tweak it with your foot.
The trick with the flare nut wrench is that it will stay on the nut/leg by itself.
Greg
What Greg shows works well, but at $16 for 4 it can get costly. Another why is a 3/8 or 7/16 carriage bolt. The flare wrench is also called a brake line wrench. And I have used all of these with good results.
cheers richard
Yep, cost was secondary to convenience… what can I say.
Greg
Some of the clubs use eye bolts as feet. They just put a small steel rod through the eye, and they can adjust them up or down as needed. Less expensive then real feet, and they seam to work well.
In spite of the fact that it may seem fairly stiff (1" and larger) unless you have some cross bracing EMT is going to make for some wobbly legs. Having bent and hung a lot of EMT you would be surprised how much you can flex it.
Gary, yes. But when you clamp a dozen modules together, things do become much more ridged.
