fighting procrastination fifteen minutes at a time

Author: 15minutemodeller (Page 7 of 10)

BBBd3

Ok so out of the clamps and put on the trestles and one more step towards a layout well first layout of my own really. The structure needs more strength along the length but with the top on and some cross braces I hope that this will suffice. Top should be purchased tomorrow and time willing I should be able to plane flat the top surface of the frame ready for attaching the top sometime next week. Time moves slowly at the moment in modelling terms, but won’t be long before I can start laying track.

I also need to get some adjustable feet for the trestles as I know the floor in this house is not very level. Just another job to add to the list. But for the time being I am having a mini self pat on the back as have reached further than any previous activities of my own as I have achieved a certain amount of success in club modelling. Just itching to getting to the point where I can start warming up the soldering iron 🙂

Basic frame on trestles

Basic frame on trestles

Base camp 2

assembled base

Base glued and clamped up

This afternoon I have managed to get the rails for the base glued and clamped up and 90% of the joints are square and level and with only a bit of bend in the rails at one end that I can live with the next task is too add the extension. Once this has been done I can then look at attaching the top. This will need a bit of jigsawing to match the base but should be no biggy. Then I will be ready for the first step in laying track.

Hopefully my order from fasttracks will have arrived by then and I can start thinking about laying the #10 curved switches at each end. I would really like some 9mm roller gauges but as I don’t have access to a lathe I am going to use the 3 point ones ordered and attempt to make some out of brass strips to allow for check rail spacing and the likes. Oh for a lathe! and a milling machine. But just can’t justify it at the moment to knock up some track gauges. However in the future and getting round to flogging a load of stuff on eBay might be able to come up with something.

Anyway that’s a bit of a way off yet 🙂 and have to make sure the top is nice and flat first. Progress is slow at the moment still as things stand in the way but hoping to have the woodwork completed next week once I have gone and got the wood for the top.

In the meantime I am collecting reference material with the aid of google maps etc to build the picture of what I want to achieve on the layout. I plan to do some mockups of the structures etc to see how things fit together before I go ahead and start the buildings and related ‘stuff’ Then it will be onto wiring. Anyhoo…..

Blender tutorial – Railway related

Things are going on in the background although baseboard building in proving slower than I had wanted. However in other news I came across a railway related Blender tutorial and although it is for an earlier version it is still very helpful in getting started and for those interested there is also a thread over at here that is from a complete novice starting out in 3D model building and Blender. I note the the original tutorial is for building Trainz stock but the principles are the same. Now if I do 15 minutes a day on Blender…..

N+1

Slow progress indeed but progress it is. I now have all of the pieces that I need well almost as I now am going go for a belt and braces method. To add one more cross brace and then some horizontal braces to stop torsional warpage 🙂 but I have enough to glue up the frame ready for the top to be attached. Again I pondered what would be suitable and in discussion with my fellow conspirator and decided on using as planned 6mm Plywood. With the above board cross brace will also add some strength. Giving the light weight nature of this board warping I feel is always going to be an issue. However I think that it will be strong enough to handle the rather volatile climate it will live in. So to actual modelling, I hope I can get the basic frame together in the next couple of days and then I have to get the top so a trip to a DIY shed is required. But as Rome wasn’t built in a day neither is my baseboard 🙂

2014-10-06_17.26.14

Measure twice cut once

If only I had headed those words and not gone to B&Q without my backofanenvelope calculations which left me with ply cut short. However after a bit of head scratching and ponder and some tea drinking I realise that I could add on a section at the end. Due to the lightweightedness of the baseboard it shouldn’t be too much of a problem and with extra bracing for attaching to the main board everything should be rock solid!

However in the measuring fiasco it means that I will need to get some more ply for the top and so a trip out to the timber merchants on Monday for another sheet of 8×4 6mm ply. This does mean I have quite a lot left over! Do not be distracted, do not be distracted… repeat.

IMG_2308

Activity!

Having manage to get myself to a DIY shed and find what I needed after a couple of abortive attempts I have finally got some modelling underway again! First I built the trestles to hold the board and these were simple cheap 3×1 and actually not to bad in quality than the usual knot ridden, twisted and warped stuff I have normally found at these places. Then next up was the cutting the blocks for the spacers. This was a doodle with my chop saw and I just set up a jig and shot through about 20 of them in less than a minute. Following on with ply cutting on my table saw. I have to say that it is a great disappointment and most of it can be thrown away and when I get time I am going to rebuild it. However after some trial and error I managed to get the required lengths. I only have enough clamps to do one side at a time so progress is slow at the moment but hope to have all sections completed by the weekend. Then I will be able to lay the road bed and start layout to track plan. More to come..

IMG_2259

Building blocks and U-turns, kinda

10" Table Saw

My new 10″ JET Table Saw

Well in true me stylee nothing happens for ages and then three things at once! Things have been slow on the modelling front due to various life things getting in the way but I have managed to eek a bit of time here and there and although this isn’t an actual modelling post it is more a setting for the foundations. In the first pic you will see my newly set up table saw. This has been sitting around for oh I don’t know months, but finally got over the inertia to get it out of the box and set up in the workshop, only took about three days with potters out there with cups of tea, lots of looking and ‘thinking about’ followed by more cups of tea and then some action. Yesterday was the big grand starting up day and thankfully the morning was set sunny as the workshop doesn’t have a lot of light, well only natural light at the moment so rather reliant of some reflected sun to illuminate the table. Thought that this was important due to the nature of the beast and its ability to sever limbs and the like. I am not scare of these kinda things but it pays to be cautious and in this instance RTFM was observed completely. Finding a straight and levelish piece of timber was another thing. However I can happily report table saw started up perfectly and zinged along until the kill switch was hit rather gingerly. Next up was the ceremonial cutting, well before the 10 minute hunt for safety glasses and ear defenders, the later not found but a memory of leaving in allotment shed so mental note made to collect before 2014-08-26_13.47.56any more cutting is carried out. Having watched numerous vids on Youtube with people not using protective ‘stuff’ makes me think I would rather keep hold of all my digits, limbs and faculties.

All in all a successful and positive step forward in 15minutemodding towers, however I do have to pass on a bit of a mini rant. The quality of this so called quality hobbyist saw is in my view bordering on the crap spectrum. The whole thing has a cheap and nasty feel to it and after the original bits missing needing replacements I rather lost confidence in the whole thing which is why I guess it took so long to get to this point. The fence is nigh on bloody useless and also the mitre ‘thing’! I was about to do the following when a bit of sense prevailed. So I am now looking for ways to mod it. I like the vid as the bulk of what I see myself cutting is going to be ply and small dimensional lumber but I am hold fire before going down this route of replacing the top with ply, I will firstly look at a beefed up measuring channel and fence locking handle but I am going to try it out on some board first to see how far out of gauge it is. For a Swiss firm and a Trusted UK distributor I would have expected a little more oh well onwards..

Having posted else where my desire to do something constructive lead to a dresser top ops session. This initially started out as a test of some Kato track and then became a mini ops sesh. Amazing what you can do with four wagons and a loco. Having started out with all but my only DC loco leaving me to think all the others had failed in storage or transport I had the head slapping moment of realising that all the other locos are DCC and the KATO power unit for the GEX set in DC Duh!!!! anyway spent a couple of happy evenings switching wagons around on an imaginary town somewhere in deepest New England. This lead me on to further thoughts about my then current plan, but this and more in a further post as duties call!

One more thing… just a teaser for a bit of an epic adventure next week with my mate Mr D

Gingeryitius

Having for a very long time wanted a lathe, a number of factors over the years have construed to thwart me in this endeavour. The first being time and the latter being money. Now in a position where time is abundant but money is scarce I find myself going back to the idea of self build, or in modern par lance open sourcing.

A couple of years ago I came across mentions of the Gingery Lathe (GL) this then followed research and finding out that there was a set of books to go from nothing to a full workshop of machine tools. This sounded amazing and just what was needed. However at the time my work was all consuming and left little time for backyard casting antics let alone machining and making that level of mess in a second floor flat. So ideas of having my own lathe were put on the back burner until a time came when I would be able to make mess and have some space and time to do that.

Going back through my browser links the other day I came across the GL links which whetted my appetite again to have a go at backyard casting a machine tool making. With all my other Youtubing around table saws and the like I came across another amazing find and just what I was looking for!

Having no experience what’s so ever in metal work apart from the very limited sojourn at school I am also interested to learn these skills and some others to make for a fully rounded home shop bodger (my term) which will include a bit of welding too. This will hopefully start to pan out over the next year as I know these things take time and things have to be learnt. Even now I am looking for evening classes for home engineering and welding.

Rattle and roll

GC HST Northbound

HST Northbound home on Grand Central

Returning home from the smoke we travelled on Grand Central on one of the HST sets and although they no longer powered by the Valenta engine we still rocked along only stopping in York and Thirsk and reaching York in around 1:50mins from Kings Cross which unless your Jenson Button is nye on impossible and, its much more pleasant to travel by train, watch the landscape go by, have a cuppa tea and relax than either sit in traffic jams or getting caught in the speed cameras. But anyway this doesn’t have much to do with 15 minutes modelling a day.

However on my return a pack was waiting for me which I had forgotten about which was nice and has a good selection of pictures both old and contemporary. I still like to be able to peruse through my book collection and think in some ways I would like to have a look at the e-versions but there is something nice and tactile about paper.

However there is a bonus DVD to watch. I will have to find a quiet moment to watch this but being HD I am looking forward to being able to pause and take screenshots for future reference. I was pointed to this magazine from another forum where the special issue was dedicated to rhbmagndvdthe RhB I thought that it should not be missed. The pictures are all of really good quality and the black and whites are clear and crisp. So my bed time reading is sorted out.

And finally I am still waiting for the Table saw to be fixed so I can look at starting to cut the ply for the modules and hopefully that will be this week however I do have enough to be getting on with for the moment.

Up hill down dale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9wn_CSVUWM

Just a short post to show a rather ramshackle test proof of concept for the GEX set going round a 150mm curve radius helix. As this is only for the none scenic sections it will all be covered over, but access needs to be possible as there will be switches half way up for the middle level and due to the tightness of the curves derailments may occur. I set out to get 50mm of lift in the helix in one turn which is probably double the amount Kato allows for their lifted sections but there recommended clearance is 50mm so it was a good guess.

As you see the loco easily pulls the coaches up and I did a test with the full compliment and it didn’t struggle at all but as I am only going to be using 4 at most this is a satisfactory test.

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