Rushby's Resins Deutz - part 5 finished.

The last few jobs have now been done to this one, and I can finally call it finished.

I've painted the edges of the frames and the buffer/coupler blocks dirty black, to tone the red down, as well as the spring and axlebox detail.

Body and footplate are epoxied together, and the motorised chassis is just held in place with friction.

I like the green, at first I thought that it might be a little too garish but coupled with the red frames it gives the loco a 'feldbahn' look. Testors Dullcoat tones the finish down and blends everything together.

The spectacle plates have also received a coat of black, and I've glazed them with thin acrylic sheet carefully filed to fit, that large front window would have looked quite empty otherwise. Glazing is one of those jobs that I need to be in a certain mood to do as it can be frustrating but the results are worth the effort.

The Narrow Planet etched nickel silver grill was chemically blackened then airbrushed with Tamiya Nato Black, to give a fine finish without obscuring the detail. I have however left the air filter and exhaust in bare but blackened metal.

I'm quite pleased with this loco, its not prototypical but it has character. When I started it I wanted a project that was involved enough to interest me but not too complex to take ages to finish, and this loco fitted the bill nicely.

Paul.

Rushby's Resins Deutz - part 4 basic paintwork done.

For this project I decided that it was time to get the airbrush out rather than rely on rattlecans as I did on my battery electric. Whilst the airbrush is a faff to clean, and unless the weathers agreeable needs to be used somewhere indoors with my portable spray booth, its still the best way to get a smooth finish, even in my hands.

I wanted a typical 'feldbahn' paint scheme, and settled on red frames and a green body.

Spraying the frames red proved troublesome. At fist I tried red oxide car primer, with Ford Sunburst Red from a rattlecan as the top coat. This proved less than satisfactory, the red being too runny and too dark due to the red oxide primer. So, I experimented with an old loco body kept for such purposes, first spraying it with white primer then the Ford red. I still wasn't happy so I decided on another approach. This is when I dug out my trusty Badger 150. The frames were stripped of paint using isopropyl alcohol and cotton buds, surprisingly effective, and given a squirt of white auto primer. When this was dry I applied the topcoat, and for that I used Tamiya Flat Red, sprayed in the dining room using my spray booth on the table. I've always found that Tamiya's paint is better applied with an airbrush, it never seems to flow as well just using a brush by hand.

I also used Tamiya for the footplate top. I'm never able to get a decent finish with a brush on large flat areas using black paint, of any brand, so I masked off the sides and bufferbeams and airbrushed the footplate top with NATO Black, which is a nice subtle grey-ish black.

For the body and fuel tank I used Games Workshop's Warboss Green, thinned with de-ionised water and sprayed outside on a nice sunny morning. I've always got on well with GWs paints, either by brush or airbrush, I find them to be good quality paints, and they have amusing names! The cab interior is Revel Stone Grey, brush painted.

Here it is sitting on its Kato chassis, with the interior in place;

All airbrushing done at 20psi. Tamiya paint thinned with Tamiya thinners.

The red frames are a bit overpowering, even with the footplate top sprayed black, so the next step will be to paint the axleboxes and buffer blocks in black, and possibly the footplate and bufferbeam edges as well.

Paul.

Rushby's Resins Deutz - part 3 interior detailing

I wanted to add some basic interior detail, the cab sides are open and having nothing in there would look a bit odd. So, after studying images on the NGRM-online forum I knocked up a rude gearbox cover, which sits over and hides the top of the Kato chassis. To this is fitted a drivers seat, two control levers (forward/reverse and gear selection), and a brake lever. The Kato has had its securing clips cut away on the rearmost end, which allowed me to make the cover a few millimetres narrower.

Offcuts of plasticard were used for the cover;

The seat is also plasticard, made using a holepunch, with a stand from scrap etch. The brake lever is also filed from scrap, a few minutes work resulted in something which isn't too detailed but should look the part in the dark confines of the cab. The two levers are simply .6mm brass wire with the ends dipped into Vallejo Plastic Putty filler. This is an acrylic filler, containing marble dust, which dries white and can be gently filed and sculpted once set hard, which helped me shape the knobs.

A couple of coats of acrylic auto primer (Hycote) was all that was needed paint wise apart from a coat of Citadel 'Rhinox Hide' for the seat (to represent dark wood), the brass levers being blackened with Birchwood Casey Brass Black, leaving the white filler knobs as they are.

On the footplate;

Some of the joints are a bit rough and ready, but it will be in hidden away in shadow;

Its perhaps not strictly correct, but then this loco is a freelance version of a Deutz and I just wanted something in the cab that looked about right and functional.

Paul.

Rushby's Resins Deutz - part 2 getting ready for paint

This has been laid aside for a while, but its high time that I finished it off, which means doing my least favourite job, painting.

I tend to use aerosol primer, usually Hycote acrylic from the local motor factors. It sprays well, dries quickly and is a lot less work than setting up my airbrush. Primer coats are important, not only as a base for the top finish coat but also for showing up imperfections in the finish. So, after the first light coat I could see the areas that need attention, and being resin there were a few tiny holes and blemishes that needed filling, with Squadron Green Putty, then smoothing off with a curved scalpel blade and rubbing sticks. The worst affected area was the footplate top, but that is mentioned in the instructions anyway. There were very few tiny holes, so not much work has been needed.

The main body is in red oxide, and the frames grey at the moment;

My intended colour scheme will be 'bufferbeam' red frames and a darker red body, with the springs picked out in black. So the frames will be receiving a coat of red oxide next.

Note that there's a big hole in the front of the bonnet, I've cut part of the radiator grill panel away as I have a replacement etch to fit;

This is a Narrow Planet item, they made a small number of etched radiator grills for this kit and luckily I managed to get hold of the last one. This will be fitted after painting, and I shall probably just chemically blacken it.

I've also added some lead weight, in the form of aquarium plant weight, to the inside of the bonnet and around the inside of the frames;

Body frames and chassis together weigh a whopping 48 grams.

One thing that I will be changing is the wheels. I turned up a new set of larger (7mm) diameter wheels, but I shall revert back to the original Kato ones. With the new wheels fitted the coupling height is too high, and as the wheels are more noticable under the frames it helps to show up that the Kato wheelbase is different to the axlebox positions on the resin frames, as the axleboxes on the frames are set closer together which suits the loco better.

The next job will be adding another layer of primer, checking the finish yet again, ready to apply the top coat.

Paul.

Rushby's Resins Deutz - part 1

I like Neil Rushby's range of resin loco kits, they have character, are nice and simple, and are perfect for those times when I want something quick and easy to build (not that I ever build anything quickly!). Now is one of those times.

Neil's kits use easily available RTR chassis, in this case the Kayo 11-104. This means that compromises need to be made, in this case stretching the loco to suit the chassis, but any loco that sits on a ready to run chassis will have compromises of one sort or another.

Here's the kit as it came, before cleaning up;

Instructions can be found here.

Here's the cut down Kato;

I've fitted 7mm dia. wheels, made as described here, but as an experiment I used a NEM 310 Z gauge profile tool as the N gauge tool that I used last time is quite coarse. Another change that I made is that I pressed out and re-used the stub axles from the old wheels rather than turned up new ones.

All of the parts cleaned up quite nicely, and needed minimal filler. The only minor problem was a bend in the footplate, easily cured by dipping it into boiling water and leaving it to cool down on a flat surface under a weight.

Body and footplate;

I'm keeping them as two separate units for ease of painting, with the cab and bonnet glued together.

And together sitting on the power unit;

The other side;

I've turned up a new fuel tank from brass, just because. The exhaust and air filter are also my turnings, a few years ago I made the casting patterns for the exhaust and 'filter for the SRB Deutz etched kit. I made two of each and sent the best ones off, keeping the others for myself, and until now they've sat in a bag. Coupler blocks are rather fine Narrow Planet prints, and were designed by James Hilton to complement the SRB kit. I've glued them onto a .030" styrene backing (so that coupling loops don't hit the bufferbeam when propelling) and will add a pin in the top for coupling after painting. As an aside, the SRB kit came about after Stuart (Mr SRB) bought one of these resin kits and wanted a better chassis, which he designed as an etch. Which in turn led to a complete etched kit.

Primer next, but that will have to wait until the weather dries out.

Paul.

Turning new wheels for a Kato 11-104.

The Kato 11-104, along with the similar 11-103, is a popular chassis among the OO9 fraternity being a cheap reliable motor bogie. Many kits have been designed for it, and a fair few others adapted to sit on it, usually steam locos with the mechanism hidden by side skirts (ho hum). I have one fitted to my Rushby's Resins battery loco, but I feel that its let down by the small wheels. So I decided to turn my own.

First job was to measure the stock wheels and make a simple back-of-an-envelope sketch;

The wheels are solid metal with stub axles which fit into insulating muffs with the drive gear moulded on.
I started by making the stub axles from 1mm silver steel. These have pin points on the outer end, and there was much experimenting done before I found a method that gave me results that I was happy with. I ended up using a sharp 'V' tool in my compound slide (set to 30 degrees) and turning away from the chuck (i.e. moving the tool to the right). The machine was set at 4000rpm and only light cuts taken. I also found it best to cut the material a couple of millimetres overlength, turn the pin points, then face to length rather than my usual method of losing a long bar in the chuck spindle and keep drawing it out and cutting the part from the bar as I progressed. This was to stop the bar whipping around inside the headstock spindle and getting bent.
Here's a poor shot of the set-up;

There's only 2mm of material sticking out of the collet.
I made 6 stub axles, so that I could select the best 4 to use.

The wheels themselves were turned from brass. Nickel silver would probably be better but I have brass in stock, and its easier to turn. As I wanted 3 hole discs I started by facing the ends of 2 lengths of 10mm rod, then drilling 3 equally spaced .9mm holes in the ends at a 4mm(ish) PCD (pitch circle diameter) on my SL, set up as a drill press with the bar held in a dividing head.

Then the bar was transferred to the U3. First I turned down the end to 8.7mm dia. by 4mm long;

Then I used a 1.5mm grooving tool to cut a relief groove 2.5mm from the end, to 6.6mm dia.;

Next the profile tool came into play. This cuts a NEM 310 profile, with a flange depth of .8mm. So as I wanted a wheel that was 6.9mm diameter I plunged the tool in until the flange diameter was 8.5mm (.8 x 2 = 1.6mm. So a 6.9mm dia wheel would have a flange that measured 8.5mm.). I touched the tool on the end of the workpiece and moved it along 3.5mm, which put the flange in roughly at the right place at the end of the bar (although I still had to skim the end of the bar to remove a witness mark);

The wheel could then be drilled for the axle, I used a .8mm drill followed by a .9mm. This is so that I could finish to size with a 5 sided broach. I did originally try a .95mm drill when practicing but it cut slightly oversize. Rather than using a Jacobs chuck I held the drills in my collet chuck, which I find to be much more accurate when using small drills.
Once drilled the wheel could be parted off, slightly overlength. I remounted the wheels in a stepped chuck (from Fohrmann) and faced them to length. I wanted a groove in the face of the wheels, so used a tool that I originally ground when turning a Swedish spark arrestor chimney to cut a shallow groove. Again the wheels were held in the stepped chuck;

Here's a shot of the wheels and stepped chuck, the upper pair have been grooved;

To get this far I've had to use 5 different turning tools;

From left to right; turning and facing, grooving, wheel profile, parting off, face grooving. Its when doing jobs like this that you find a quick change toolpost invaluable. Spindle speeds used were 1500rpm for drilling turning and facing and 150rpm for grooving, profiling and parting off.
Here's a closer look at the wheel profile tool along with the holder that I milled for it;

Once I had carefully broached out the axle holes so that the stub axles are a light press fit I pressed the stub axles in place using the lathe. To ensure that the axles only went in as far as neccessary I turned a spacer to act as a stop, this sat behind the wheel as the stub axle was pressed into place from the inner face.
Here's a photo comparing the original Kato wheels to my new brass turnings;

The spacer can be seen at the bottom of the photo.
And here's a spare Kato chassis with one set of my wheels and one set of Kato wheels fitted;

The 3 holes and the groove can hardly be seen. I blackened the wheels with two applications of Birchwood Casey Brass Black then left them overnight. In the morning they were thoroughly cleaned with lighter fluid and cotton buds and re-fitted to the gear muffs;

And finally the wheels fitted into the loco;

Was it worth it? Well, yes. Despite the new wheels having a chunkier look the difference is hardly noticable to be honest unless it was pointed out but that wasn't really the point. I have successfully turned my own wheels (although one wheel has a slight wobble, probably due to a wonky pin-point on the stub axle) which opens the way for all sorts of possibilities and means that I don't have to rely on commercial products (as long as I don't mind using plain discs and am not bothered by spokes).

And finally, my apologies for the less than perfect photos, I find lathes and shiny brass to be a pig to photograph. Don't forget that you can click on any pic. for a larger image.

Paul.

Update April '19. Instead of turning new stub axles its far easier to press the ones out of the stock wheels and re-use them. Quite why I didn't do that in the first place...

Rushby's Resins Battery Electric - part 2.

I decided that I wasn't happy with the paint finish, so I rubbed the model down and applied another coat of primer (Hycote white auto acrylic). This crazed, so I ended up doing more rubbing down before re-spraying with Humbrol  A6069 gloss yellow. The finish still isn't great, but I'll just have to live with it. I did consider chemically stripping the bodyshell but an internet search suggested that paint stripper, even Modelstrip, can soften resin.

Once the paint had hardened I applied the wasp stripes, made easy by using gloss paint for the topcoat. These are simply Fox transfers, pack F4303. Whilst one end went without fuss on the other end the transfer broke into three pieces. With care each piece was butted up against its neighbour, aided by a soft brush and a modicum of patience, leaving only the slightest trace of any mishap. A brushload of Carrs Transfix (at least 20 years old!) helps settle things, and a squirt of Testors Dullcoat seals the deal. I did need to do a little touching up with a drop of Revel black paint. Hopefully the striped ends draw the eye away from the cab fronts, which is where the surface finish is at its worst.

I was in two minds whether to paint the window surrounds or not, especially as I'm hardly the tidiest of painters. In the end I decided that picking them out with a touch of Tamiya Nato Black (to represent rubber seals) would add interest. Glazing is cut from the usual 1mm clear sheet, I'm not sure what material it is but its the stuff sold alongside plasticard. Cutting and fitting flush glazing is quite irritating, but the results are worth the effort. A drop of Johnson's Klear run around the edges with a fine brush fixes the panes in place. I have a full bottle of Klear bought when it was mooted as the next best thing since sliced bread, fixing glazing is the only job I use it for. Perhaps I should put it on Ebay...

A black plasticard shelf sits inside the cab, which can be seen in the doorway. Under this is glued additional lead bringing the loco's weight up to 31 grams. In the photo below the shelf is in place but I hadn't yet added the weights;

And with the lead in place;

To hide the motor bogie and that shelf I've made cab doors. I wanted them to look like a local modification made from wooden planks, so I've used .040" plasticard with the planks scribed with an scrawker and grain added using a razor saw blade. Handles are .33mm brass wire suitably blackened. Originally I wanted bare wood, then decided that they might look better painted yellow. So two pairs of doors have been knocked up which can be swapped around until I make my mind up (they're a light push fit). The bare wood pair were primed with my usual Hycote grey acrylic auto paint, then I drybrushed them with first Revel Aqua Color (sic) 378 Dark Grey, followed by Humbrol 5029 Dark Matt Earth and then Revel 75 Stone Grey. A coat of Testors Dullcoat helps blend them in.

At the moment I'm unsure which I like the best so the loco has a yellow door on one side and a bare wood door on the other. I suspect that it'll stay that way for a while...
Weathering can wait.

Paul.

Rushby's Resins Battery Electric - part 1.

A nice simple kit for the summer.
Some may have noticed that there's been little activity on this blog for a couple of months. The summer tends to be the busiest period of the year where I work so I've been doing rather a lot of overtime. Now this is good for the bank balance but leaves me little time for modelling (or much else) and if I do get some spare time I'm either working on the house or I'm too tired to concentrate. I haven't lost my motivation however, which is where this particular build comes in. I wanted something simple on my workbench, requiring few tools, yet something that would still be interesting.

This kit, designed and cast by Neil Rushby as part of his 'Rushby's Resins' range, should fit the description. Its inspired by (but is not a slavish copy of) this battery electric loco used on a dam maintenance line in the Italian Alps, but modified to fit on a Kato 11-104 chassis. There are only three parts, a one-piece body and a pair of buffer/couplers, all cast in resin. So its a nice looking loco, it sits on a chassis that I've never used before (although its commonly used in OO9 circles), and its also the first resin kit to grace my bench. Here's the kit, along with the Kato 104;

Its nice to see that the kit is packaged in a box which will hold the finished loco.

Here's the body in primer (Hycote white acrylic), along with the cut down Kato;

Instuctions for this kit, which for once I followed pretty much to the letter, are online here. I did use files rather than emery boards though, simply because I feel that its easier to achieve a crisp edge with a file. A little filling was necessary (especialy where I slipped with the needle cutting out the windows...) in a couple of places, nothing serious though. At this stage I prepared the window glazing (cut from .040 sheet) and glued lead strip under the bonnet ends.

Top coat is Humbrol Gloss Yellow 69 from an aerosol. Ordinarily I'd use an airbrush, but mine is currently buried in the loft (along with most of my books and a fair amount of other stuff), and anyway using a rattlecan felt like a nice quick option. This is the first time that I've used an aerosol for the top coat, and in places the paint is a tad too thick where I've had to rub down and re-spray, a result of my inability to paint anything with any degree of success;

As can be seen the Kato has been stripped down and the visible parts sprayed body colour, to help blend body and chassis together as suggested in the instructions. I've also blackened the shiny shiny wheels with Birchwood Casey 'Super Blue'.

A little more work is required to finish it off, unless I decide to strip the paint off the body and re-spray it.

Paul.