Large Scale Central

Trestle Design & Construction on the V&T

Well at least you didn’t use radiused stringers :wink: :smiley:

The extra bent (as in bending) stringers are in, and everything seems sturdy. It pulled up from the jig fine, and I was able to flip it without a problem.

Final bit for the deck are some topside stringers, so that’s ready to go. The plywood bits are to space the new parts away from the stringers below a consistent distance.

All I want is video “WITH AUDIO” of it being carried out to the layout!

i never would try to estimate, why Cliff did it, but…

to keep the rails straight/level on a wooden bridge/trestle “they” (the 1:1 engineers) came up with the idea, to stagger the longitudinal beams. (to evade, that a single bent could sink in more, than its neighbours)
so some lines of beams lay on bent one to three, three to five etc. while others lay on two to four, four to six, etc. (more than two bents long beams are hard to find)
on a curved trestle that came out as being zig-zagged against each other.

well, as in 1:1 they seldom build R1 curved trestles, it looks not as obvious, as in our scale.

ps: Cliff,
if you want a purrfect trestle, you might want to investigate, how they made the upright beams/posts on trestles, higher than one treetrunk-length…
(i did, but decided it would be too much work for something, that none of my visitors would ever notice) ((and as always, i was wrong. a carpenter noticed the too long posts))

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Makes perfect sense, thanks for explaining that Korm.

What protectant are you going to use for this project?

Is the protectant for taking it outside and placing it on the layout or for sealing the wood for 50yrs after he is dead?

he won’t be dead in 50 years. - he’s got still too many projects to realise…

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Probably the same as the straight ones: water-based deck stain, then a couple coats of motor oil dilated 3:1 with denatured alcohol for improved penetration.

Been doing tiny bits here and there during the week, and topside work is done.


Next up I think is setting up for assembly with the bents.

[edit]

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I am very much enjoying this thread, Cliff. Looking forward to the final product!

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Thanks John! Yeah, me too… 3.5 years in the making, haha! Should drag it out to a nice round 4 years though… :grin:

But naah I need to free up the table and move on! I started the day with adjusting the heights of the foam jig, since half the bents changed in elevation some. This is basically the reverse of the jig I used to set the pier heights.

Today was the first time I’ve used the foam cutter my wife gave me a couple years back for Christmas. With a quick setting up of guides, wow that thing worked beautifully!

I tied the bents to the deck, and after sanding two bents some, all was fine for elevation.

Then came positioning of each bent with the deck, and drilling / screwing the latter down to the former.

I’ve started on final plumb checks and temp screwing of the bents to the jig, and will pick that up in the morning.

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Hey Cliff, is the trestle project going on in the ShedOps location or have you made a land grab for the craft room?

Took much of the day to stain the deck. I used the good ol’ plop n’ wipe method to get the stain in the vicinity, but in the end it took lotsa little brushwork.

I started on the bents, but realized I’d forgotten to add the supports for the two wide spans. So I dealt with those first.

A bunch more staining ahead, and then final assembly. I’m counting on the TBIII working with the stained members; seems to have done so ok with the prior straight trestles. I’ll oil everything after all that.

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Cliff, this would make a great how-to Wiki entry on bridge building.

When I went to protect the bents on mine , I dipped them in a tub with the mixture

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I have to do some staining to a (much much smaller) bridge today. I am not looking forward to getting into all the corners and nooks. I can only imagine how long this took you just to stain the deck, Cliff!

Thanks for reminding me of that Sean, I’m going to try that with the stain. Basically dunk, brush down, and drip dry, and I guess wipe as needed.

Thanks for the vote of confidence Bill!

Remind me after I try to fit the thing on the layout, haha!

I went for it, and got a few done. It cut the time in half, so that’s great! I

Since my stain is thick, it needed a lot of work to brush down, wipe, and do cleanup brushwork with a small brush to get in the corners. But a lot faster than the 1st attempt yesterday. It was basically a paint removal process, vs brushing it all on, which was very time consuming.

Found the perfect tub, too, it was from Ken Brunt.

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