Keep Banging the Drum

A few weeks ago I posted a picture of an oil drum with hand pump that I had built following an example Ian Holmes had made for Gn15. I can now report that it is completed and painted/weathered.

It is sat on another recent "quick" project, a scenic wagon built on a wobbly Black Dog chassis withdrawn from active service and reunited with a basswood floor I made some time ago. New couplers are Black Dog castings I picked up at Narrow Gauge North yesterday (see sometimes I can work quickly!).

I have made a little progress with the Exmoor this week. All of the work now is that little more involved but the reward is that the detail starts to build up. Earlier this week I added beading along the edge of the cab footplate from 10x10 thou styrene strip, tops to the tanks from 10 thou sheet and a smokebox door from 20 thou styrene cut with a circle cutter.

Today I have added a few more details, including the sandpot in front of one of the tanks and mechanical lubricator in front of the other. These are constructed from various styrene sections and strips, although the sandpot lid is an Airfix mineral wagon buffer head! Both of these parts will have to remain removable until after painting so have wire re-enforcement built in to aid location and strength. Moving to the boiler I have added bands of 5 thou styrene to the barrel and hinge and strap detail to the smokebox door. It is starting to look a little more locomotive like!

Colin

Simple Things

Ever get to that point where the big new idea you have started to work on isn't working, and you just know that you have to stop, there and then, and down tools? No? I suspect not, most of us just push on to make it "right"... But that doesn't always work, it often goes wrong and it is a skill to learn when to stop.

I had a moment like that this afternoon with what could be a landmark project. So I stopped. Shuffling some odds and ends around the workbench my eyes rested on an oil drum that dated back to my very early 7mm scale efforts. By no means a detailed item, it annoyed me a little as it had no detail on the end, you would not get any liquid in or out! I then remembered a project my friend Ian Homes used to feature on his website to build a hand pump for an oil drum, his was for use alongside Gn15, but it could work in any smaller scale.

My version uses a length of florist's wire approx 1mm diameter, 0.5mm diameter brass wire, "layout" electrical wire, and the buffer from a Dapol Drewery shunter kit. Two in fact... One buffer was drilled through between the two round protrusions on the shank and then cut down, being drilled 0.5mm for the handle. The other buffer had the two protrusions drilled out, and then carefully sliced off as rings, which were used on the drum end to add the required detail. The florists wire was bent to shape and had the electrical wire added to the end as the hose. The hand-pump was slipped over the other end of the wire and super-glued in place, and then glued into an appropriate hole in the end of the drum.

All in all a very quick project that overcame the feeling that the previous job was going wrong. I'll get back to that another day...

Colin