So I got my long awaited 89’ flat car finally from Oley Valley. It’s a combination of a resin, 3d printed and sheet metal parts to build a 89’ Bethlehem Steel Company car.
Overall it’s a decent kit from a father and son start up shop that the Dad is trying to keep going after the son’s death a couple years ago.
The 3d prints are overall are decent but the resin casting needs a lot of work and looks like the mold needs replacement.
I’ll keep a build log here and see how the kit goes.
Yeah;
I would like to see where it is going.
You mentioned resin, do you know what kind of resin was used in it?
Bruce G
I’m not sure what casting resin was used.
It’s got a combination of FDM and resin printed parts in other places.
Note to self,
Round up Hollywood for the long trip across the river to Steelton. With all this interest in Bethlehem Steel lately between spaghetti trains and the 89’ flats I think I will drive and you take pictures so YOU can post them up.
If we get jacked up then all I have to say is I was the driver and you were the spy taking the pics.
Bring your digital camera not the 35mm one. I’ll be packing just in case.
In a conversation I had with TJ back in 2021, he said it was Task 4 Urethane resin from Smooth-On
That’s the problem with a lot of mom-and-pop operations that do casting, and its not just in trains. It’s all over the spaceship building hobby. Someone will make a master, make one mold, and cast until the quality suffers and people complain or stop buying. Then they go and try to find the master and realize they sold that too.
My order was numbered 25, so seeing the degrading of the mold by 25 castings (or more bad ones trying to get good results) seems about time for replacement.
The little lip on the centersill that has the undercut is the worse and has lots of bubbles from a ripped mold. I can deal with air bubbles but the resin bubbles are annoying to sand especially when you can’t get a needle file into that area.
I’m honestly debating how much I want to sand off and then glue styrene strips back on. Or just scratch build the entire resin casting from styrene.
Yea, molds used for resin casting are good for between 20 and 30 pulls, so #25 would be right on the “Yep, needs replacing” line.
I’m in email contact with Dave about some issues and hopefully I can help him improve a few things and make this kit better. And it sounds like they are working on another project so hopefully lessons learned from this one can help on that as well.
A customer that doesn’t just rip them apart on websites and media is the kind of person that people will listen to. Maybe he didn’t know that the quality of the mold had degraded or was past its prime. If he took over from his son he may be learning all this as he goes , so good on you for helping him , not just complaining. I look forward to your build of this.
Pete,
I want to be helpful! I honestly don’t know how many kits they have actually sent out vs cars they built.
This is a small hobby and I want to support them as much as possible but with limits.
Yeah any kits like that , especially when someone takes over after a death , you have to at least try to help them.
Still waiting to hear back from Dave about my concerns. But in the meantime I sanded off the entire centersill flange and replaced it with .080 x .080 strip.
Once that was done, I sanded smooth the top of the casting to get a flat cast to “tape” to the steel under deck.
I also filled any voids with CA and baking soda.
Once that was done I added a .080 x .080 strip back to centersill flange.
Somehow I managed to lose one of the parts. It’s the end plate but it probably won’t matter anyway as I was planning on bashing this part anyway.
The kit represents a F89F car which has a standard 4" of drawbar slack or no cushion. The TTDX cars that I’m modeling are F89FH which has a cushioned drawbar which has a about 7" of slack.
So I noticed only want to extend the coupler out a few more inches but also use the method I made for my cabooses to have a semi functional moving drawbar. Note it’s not nearly as cool as Burl’s all metal design for his boxcar kits.
And the 2nd reason is more a practical reason. The kit comes with “G” Kadee coupler and I use the #1 mounted at the G height…
Slow progress on this car as I’m diving into proto photos and videos of details while redesigning the end plate. The plan is to use a straight shank coupler so I can get the slack action and the ‘fun’ crossed knuckles these cars get when you uncouple on a slight curve.
Videos such as this have been helpful in looking at details on the underframe, and end beam.
Thanks to @manimal I got my hands on some scale drawings that are super helpful. I also got more drawings from Oley. Between the two sets i think I’m set on what I need to finish the redesign of the end plate and start working out the underframe details.
This is a 2 steps backwards type of project at the moment.
Once I mate the resin underframe to the steel I think it will go fast. But I feel as if mate it up too soon, I won’t be able to access locations for drilling holes etc.
Finally doing something productive. I have some old resin castings of brake parts that I’m practicing my #76 drilling on.
First lesson was color contrast. Second was use the hand drill vs the drill press.
Lots of light and used some 2x cheater glasses.
So drill, ye tarriers, drill
And drill, ye tarriers, drill
Oh it’s work all day for the sugar in your tay [i.e. tea]
Down beyond the railway
So drill, ye tarriers, drill.