A snapshot in time. A glimpse of the Plettenberger Kleinbahn in 1/22.5 scale.

[Lawton Maner]

Bill:

I am a satisfied customer with no ties to Rio Grande Jewelry and find them a great toy store for metal working. 

Sit down with a beverage of your choice and a bib to keep your shirt dry and window shop their site.  I believe you will be able to fill your entire Christmas and birthday wish list.

[Hydrostat]

Volker:

The sanitarium is where your significant other sends you after you finish the project.  Nice men in white coats will see to it that you will not get to excited during your stay.

I prefer to start with hard silver solder and work my way down because working in 1:48 scale projects is easier if I break them into sub-assemblies and I despise cleaning excess solder from things prior to painting.

I use the 0.9 mm cup drill most often as it represents a 1.5" rivet head which was common on most of the equipment built by the East Broad Top RR.

Some times, if I am doing just a dozen or so rivets, I use a pin vise to round them.   

Follow the link to the bits:https://www.riogrande.com/product/dentsply-maillefer-cup-burs/342368gp

Lawton,
the rivet rods are the hard kind of brass. Brazing would soften them and according to the amount of rivets I preferred to keep them as they were. The tool's cuts work very well with the hard material. Another reason for soldering is the lower energy/temperature needed. No need to fix things to prevend warping when getting soft by heating.

Volker, thanks for the information on the twin cut tools.  My burrs are as you call them rasping ones. I will have t find a set to add to my tools.

Bill

Bill,
those are the twin cut burrs: https://www.bijoutil.ch/en/watchmaker/tools-machines/burs/3613/bur-concave-cupcut-1.60-mm

Cheers,
Volker

[Lawton Maner]

Volker:

I have to remember you are working much larger then I am and with flat stock.  I've made a couple of car frames and use a micro torch which heats the spot, usually around 1/2 cm square or smaller, very fast.  I'll have to adopt new techniques if I take on a bridge.  Having worked with silver in the past, I am almost anal when it comes to solder usage.  Probably nothing but Carr's solders on flat stock.

Bill:

Thanks for the note.  More people need to know about Rio Grande.

WLM3

[Hydrostat]

I have to remember you are working much larger then I am and with flat stock.  I've made a couple of car frames and use a micro torch which heats the spot, usually around 1/2 cm square or smaller, very fast.  I'll have to adopt new techniques if I take on a bridge.  Having worked with silver in the past, I am almost anal when it comes to solder usage.  Probably nothing but Carr's solders on flat stock.

For sure those oxygen/acetylene micro torches are the best one can have, but for that piece of scrap metal a flambé torch had to be sufficient .

I started soldering both the preassembled parts in a piece of aluminum angle section. At one end of the bridge are no rivets in the longitudinal angle section's top side. So I was able to place that area flat to the aluminum without pushing rivets out during soldering.








This didn't work for the inner parts: I fixed those areas in the vise and soldered each segment bit by bit. Aluminum tubing helps to clamp within the gaps between the already rounded rivets and at at the same time reduces heat flux to the vise, but: After a few steps of soldering I noticed the aluminum tubing getting flattened and so changed to spring steel rods, which don't accept solder either. There's been no single rod popping or sliding out during the soldering process.





Next step was rounding all the rivets at the vertical surfaces, producing some chippings.








Mounting the opposite longitudinal parts followed the same principle, now using spring steel rods for rivet protection at the opposite side, too. Soldering now had to be done with all the rivets already rounded.





Together with the lower longitudinal part dogs were soldered to the 0.8 mm gaps I mentioned in the last post. Soldering needs to be done from both sides to have control of the amount of solder needed to shape the angle section's inner radius. The process wasn't finished, when I took the following picture. It still shows a gap at the very front of the longitudinal angle section.





Cheers,
Volker

[Lawton Maner]

Volker:

Do you know if your tool vendor ships to the US?

[Hydrostat]

I'll ask tomorrow.

[5thwheel]

At a risk of going too far off topic-  I and Rio Grande go way back in time. The closest thing they have to a twin cutter is their C-4 burr.

Thanks, Bill

[Ray Dunakin]

Wow, very interesting stuff! Thanks for the step-by-step, it's greatly appreciated.

[Hydrostat]

Do you know if your tool vendor ships to the US?

Lawton,
I don't buy my stock at the swiss vendor I linked to, but asked my German vendor: Yes, they do. They told me they have a lot of expats in the States as customers. Unfortunately their website and catalogue isn't available in English, but they speak english. Take a look at page 28 of the PDF, second item: https://www.gebr-ott-gmbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/gebr-ott-katalog112017-verl.pdf.
Just write an email with complete address and contact to info@gebr-ott-gmbh.de.

But there's a vendor of that exactly 'Busch' brand in the US, too: https://www.gesswein.com/p-10695-busch-burs-clean-cut-cup-fig-411ccc.aspx

At a risk of going too far off topic-  I and Rio Grande go way back in time. The closest thing they have to a twin cutter is their C-4 burr.
Thanks, Bill

Bill,
when I bought the burs I asked which ones they'd suggest. They have the C-4 ones in stock, too. But they told me, that the twin cuts are bought most frequent by the jewellers and so on and that they seem to work best.

Wow, very interesting stuff! Thanks for the step-by-step, it's greatly appreciated.

Ray,
you're welcome.

[Lawton Maner]

The level of international cooperation on this site is amazing.  Sadly the rest of the world doesn't work this well.

[Design-HSB]

The level of international cooperation on this site is amazing.  Sadly the rest of the world doesn't work this well.

That's all because we're guests of Russ here and we don't have politicians who think they represent us.

[finescalerr]

... And if those of us on this forum ran the world, instead of the pigs who always seem to end up in control, it would be a vastly better place to live. At least we still have this tiny corner where we can share our models and techniques. -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

Thanks for the link to buy the burrs! I just ordered a set.

[Hydrostat]

Connecting frame and shears was a task - by the way: I'd be happy to be corrected concerning those terms, if there's something wrong. I tried to do those parts with the resistance soldering unit, but there's a huge heat flow which lets the the unit go to the limits of it's capacity and so changed to the flambé torch again. The neighbouring solder joints had to be cooled with wet paper towels wrapped around them.








At both ends additional 0.5 mm nickle silver rivet plates had to be soldered into some rather difficultly accessable sections. The RSU worked for that.





I was happy when frame and shears were connected without damage or alteration to the prepared parts, but now it would manifest if the parts were exactly enough to add the prepared connecting angle sections and cross beams. The dogs mentioned before had no bore holes, because the rivet heads would not be accessable with the bur (I learned a new word  ) later on. The connecting angle sections had to be equipped with 'rivets' before installing them. The single one would protrude through the prepared hole in the connecting plates and the pair being sanded down to back surface to touch the dogs.





This was where some inaccuracy occured: the dogs weren't exactly rectangular, which made it difficult to place the angle sections' rivets to the prepared holes and to keep them positioned for soldering. Some brass and final aluminum pieces clamped them in place. Again the RSU worked for that and when solder got to flow, everything plopped into right position.





Last step was adding the cross beams. For them I used prerounded rods, protruding a rivet heighth on the not accesaable side. Last step was to cut and round those rods on the bridge's underneath. This is when I broke the bur.





Next week an acquaintance from Buntbahn is going to have a look at the bridge to check if he may sand blast it at his company. Difficulty will be to remove excess solder at some rivets, but keeping the solder fillet alongside the longitudinal angle sections.

Unfortunately there are no color pics of the bridge at all and I have to puzzle over its color. In Germany usually you have a darker grey tone of micaecious iron oxide, a brighter grey or reseda green. Who knows.

The level of international cooperation on this site is amazing.  Sadly the rest of the world doesn't work this well.

Imagine a world where no one even needs to determine that.

Cheers,
Volker

[Lawton Maner]

I love how this forum will obsess over how to shape a fake rivet for days or the correct pattern of rust on the finished piece because it allows us to escape from the BS that the rest o the world festers over.