Wolseley's Shelf Queen Competition Entry

Discussion in '2020 Shelf Queen Competition' started by Wolseley, Jul 14, 2020.

  1. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    One of the more obvious candidates for my entry was this one, a Caley Coaches etched brass kit of a Caledonian Railway 4 wheeled brake van. I have never built an etched brass kit before (my kit-building to date mostly being white-metal kits) so this will be a leap into the unknown for me:

    Well, I have now done a bit more work on it, and I am definitely out of my comfort zone with this one. Cutting out and bending the parts to shape is straightforward enough, but I'm afraid that the level of soldering skills required is slightly higher than those which I currently possess. Doubtless I will learn as I go along. Appearance-wise, what I have done so far leaves a bit to be desired. The completed model will no doubt show my lack of experience with this type of kit but then, a coat of paint can hide a multitude of sins.

    I also found that the 25W soldering iron I was using when wiring my layout was not quite up to the job of soldering together a brass kit, so I got myself a 60W one.

    The kit provides for compensated suspension but, as I will be fitting Dublo style couplings (otherwise I will not be able to run it with the rest of my stock) I will be building it with a rigid chassis. The reason for this is that the coupling has to go in the same place as the compensation unit. I don't see that I need to have a compensated chassis anyway, as I am not using finescale wheels.

    It doesn't look like I've done a lot so far, but it feels like it......

    BV1.jpg
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2020
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  2. jakesdad13

    jakesdad13 Staff Member Moderator

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    You may be better off with a 40 watt iron Wolseley, it should have more than enough power for what you need. I use my 40 watt on my O gauge kits with power to spare.

    Pete.
     
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  3. Toto

    Toto I'm best ignored Staff Member Founder Administrator

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    go for it Sir .... looks like a good candidate.

    good luck

    :thumbs:
     
  4. paul_l

    paul_l Staff Member Administrator

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    With soldering brass, it's the size of the tip that also helps, a 4mm dia and above allows enough heat to transfer to the brass and make the joint before the brass wicks enough heat away to chill the bit.
    My 80W has a 10mm chisel bit, which gets used for big lumps castings etc. My normal iron is a 60W with a 4mm bit, but the 4mm part is only 10mm the rest of the bit is 6mm dia so has heat reserves.

    Nice project

    Paul
     
  5. York Paul

    York Paul Staff Member Moderator

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    Great show Wolseley and I think you are very brave chucking yourself in at the deep end and out of your comfort zone. Top marks Sir:tophat::thumbup:

    If its any help I use a 40 Watt Weller with an MT10 chisel tip for all my kit work... I did have a 75 Watt Weller to rip down seams in one pass but that iron generated that much heat it ran the risk of re heating previously fixed work so I passed it on to a friend who wanted to make a Viking helmet out of brass to wear when he goes on his weirdo steam punk trips to Whitby riding his low rider trike.:avatar:


    If I'm sweating lost wax castings into position I use a Proxxon micro flame as the heat is instant and you can push the heat flame around so an even temperature is secured for larger castings.
     
  6. Rob Pulham

    Rob Pulham Happily making models Staff Member Administrator Feature Contributor

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    Well done Wolseley for having a go at an etched kit. I note that you mention that you are familiar with soldering whitemetal kits. If you can do those brass kits should hold no fears. The beauty of brass kits is that with a soldering iron you cannot melt them.

    On the subject of soldering irons, you will have read already that there are lots of differing opinions all of which work for their respective owners. Like many when I started on brass kits in 4mm I had a low wattage 25 watt iron and although I managed to learn and become more confident, I struggled and this was chiefly because there was enough heat and recovery wattage in the 25 watt iron.

    I moved from there to a 40 watt solder station which was adequate but for some reason the elements kept failing and after replacing 3 in about 7 months I decided to see what the pro builders were using for soldering. The result of my enquiries was that almost universally these builders were using ERSA 80 soldering stations (the 80 standing for 80 watts). This is where it gets interesting (or it does to me). If you are using an 80 watt iron then it needs to be controllable (you have read about York Paul disposing of a 75 watt iron because it got too hot). I have had an Ersa 80 for getting on for 10 years and although it will go up to 450 degrees I rarely have it so hot. For all my work with 145 solder I have it set at 340 degrees. Like Paul_L, I too have a 4mm chisel tip which is the one that came with it and I have never needed to change it. Apart from the last year while moving it has seen use most days previously.

    At this point (if you haven't fallen asleep:p)you might be forgiven for thinking that if I use it at 340 degrees all the time why do I need an 80 watt iron and the answer is to do with recovery time. The secret to good soldering is cleanliness and adequate heat for the job. If you will pardon the expression, when you get solder that looks like bird droppings. It is invariably because the iron isn't powerful enough to keep delivering the heat consistently during the soldering. It's hot enough to melt the solder from the reel but the minute that you touch it to the metal that's being soldered together then the metal draws away the heat and the solder just sticks in blobs. The more powerful iron while not necessarily getting any hotter, has the wattage to maintain the heat to keep the solder molten and heat the surrounding metal to allow it to be joined.

    If you find that the solder, although molten just tends to reform in puddles rather than smoothing along the joint then this is because your metal isn't clean enough. If this occurs then the simplest way is to let it cool and clean it with some abrasive. You might occasionally get away with applying a bit more flux but in my experience it just means more to clean up when that too fails to allow the solder to flow.

    My apologies for the thread highjack Wolseley. Sorry to contradict Pete, but I am sure that your 60 watt iron will be fine. If it isn't temperature controlled then I would suggest that you invest in a cheap dimmer switch for lights that will allow you some degree of control over the heat output.
     
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  7. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately I haven't done anything much on this one lately, but I will try to do a bit over the next few days. It's not that I've given up, it's just that I've slowed down a bit - for one thing, the railway room is in the coldest part of the house, and it is the middle of winter here......
     
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  8. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Well, after posting that last comment, I thought I had better do something, so I spent some time working on the chassis, with the result that it now rolls quite freely along, more so than a lot of my other models (but then we're talking old technology when it comes to them. It should have spoked wheels, but it's fitted with disc wheels at the moment, because that's all I had in my spares box for 14mm wheels. As I mentioned earlier, I soldered the W-irons in place rather than doing a compensated chassis, as parts of the compensation unit go where I'll be putting the couplings and, while I'm not too concerned about whether it is compensated or not, I do want it to have couplings......

    Anyway, here's where I'm up to, although I would like to think that, if I tackle another etched brass kit, I'll make a neater job of the soldering second time around.

    BV 2.jpg
     
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  9. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Having spent almost a week in Canberra, I haven't got around to doing much more than straightening out a few bits and adding the buffer shanks, but I should have some more work done later this week.

    Mind you, it's actually not as bad as it looks in that photo......
     
  10. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Too many other things on the go (not all unrelated to modelling - one of the "other things" is the scenic treatment of the layout) plus a further trip to Canberra have got in the way of the project, but the chassis is now up and running.

    In case you're wondering why we were back in Canberra so soon, it was for our granddaughter's baptism on 13th September. We made a short holiday out of the trip and were there for four days. Anyway, back to the brake van.......

    It's been cleaned up for painting and couplings fitted (a set of old-style Peco Simplex couplings from my spares box). As I mentioned earlier, I had to abandon the idea of a compensated chassis as I had to leave room to fit Hornby Dublo type couplings. This also meant that I had to solder some brass offcuts to cover the cut-outs around the compensation bits on the chassis, so that the coupler assembly had something to hold on to. Then I drilled three holes at each end, pushed the coupler tabs through the holes, then bent the tabs over. After this was done, I fitted the buffers. As for the paint, I tried using a red that I had, but it was not the right shade so off it came (or at least most of it did) and I got my hands on some paint that will hopefully give me the right colour. Apparently a 1:1 mix of Humbrol 73 matt wine and 100 matt red brown will give you something close to Caledonian red oxide.

    Here is a not very flattering photograph showing the progress so far:

    P1010820.jpg
     
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  11. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    After I started soldering the body together, I realised that I had forgotten to emboss the rivets on the sides and ends. I decided against taking it apart just to do the rivets - after all, I am running mostly stock produced 60 or more years ago and, Hornby Dublo SD6 aside (the plastic "super-detailed" stock produced in the last few years of Dublo's existence) a lot of it doesn't have rivet detail anyway. I will make a point (no pun intended) of embossing rivets on the ironwork though.

    P1010825.jpg
     
  12. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Work proceeds:

    P1010826.jpg

    I think I might glue a few of the smaller bits rather than soldering everything, just in case I accidentally take it all back to its component parts.....
     
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  13. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    When I sat the body on the chassis, I found that it sat about 1 or 2mm too low and obscured a bit of the underframe detail, so I am adding a couple of thin strips of styrene under the body ends to raise it up a bit. I am not suggesting that this is a shortcoming of the kit, as it is much more likely to have been a shortcoming of my job of constructing the chassis - I think I may not have bent the buffer beams up as well as I should have. Faults it may have, but I must say that I'm very pleased with how free running the chassis is.
     
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  14. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    The body is now fixed to the chassis, the insides of the verandas have been painted, and I have made a start on affixing the strapping and beading. I thought I would blacken the brass before it reached the painting stage, but I forgot that etched brass kits generally have some sort of protective coating on them, so I only succeeded in blackening the areas that had been etched.....

    P1010827.jpg

    (the distortion of the end of the van is caused by the camera lens and the angle of view - it actually is pretty well square)
     
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  15. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    It's beginning to look more like a brake van now:

    P1010828.jpg
     
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  16. Toto

    Toto I'm best ignored Staff Member Founder Administrator

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    I like the way those verandas drop in. Looking good.

    Toto
     
  17. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    It's quite a clever arrangement that gives both internal detail and the illusion of thickness to the sides and ends. They fitted in very neatly, although I did have to file a small amount of brass away to get sufficient clearance in a couple of spots - once again probably due to shortcomings in my construction rather than anything to do with the kit.

    Jim

    Screen Shot 2020-09-25 at 11.26.45 am.png
     
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  18. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I decided against adding the lamp irons, as they are rather vulnerable and I think it would only be a matter of time before they break off and, in any case, given that most of my rolling stock is around 60 or 70 years old, it's a bit more detail than I need. Likewise, the brake gear will be limited to a few brake shoes rather than the elaborate construction provided for in the kit. I was aiming for the sort of detail you would see in a good model in the 1970s, and I think I have achieved that. The roof will go on after I'm satisfied with the paintwork on the sides and ends. I also still have to add handrails, but I intend to fit them after all the other work is finished.

    I have begun painting the model, although I just discovered that I don't have any vermillion paint for the ends. I'll have to get some tomorrow or, failing that, on Monday.

    P1010829.jpg

    Jim
     
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  19. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Now that it has got this far, and I was looking at it, I noticed that I have made a mistake that I can't disguise. I have put the strapping on the side upside down - it should be in the shape of a V. As the ironwork on these vans was picked out in black, I had to fix it and, to this end, I have removed the strapping and removed all the paint between the door on the van body. Once I have cleaned all the paint from the strapping, I will reattach it and repaint the central portion of the van. I don't know how I missed it before now, as I have a drawing of the van in front of me.....

    Jim
     
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  20. York Paul

    York Paul Staff Member Moderator

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    Never mind Wolseley these things happen and at least you are able to recover the error unlike me with my Britannia build where I fitted the fusible plug insets on the wrong side of the firebox wrap... a huge mistake because these parts should have been soldered from the inner face so they show depth from the cleating and not inserted flush from the front as I did. I blame economically worded build instructions and working late at night as I used to do a couple years ago.:avatar::thumbup:
     

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