Experimental 006 wheelsets

For many a year I've pondered building a layout (or at least a test track) in 006, that is 4mm scale 6mm gauge which would represent 18" gauge. I've made a set of roller gauges and a wheelset in the past, but both were based around using N gauge standards with 3mm taken out of the gauge, and using a check rail clearance of 1mm. My recent thoughts have centred around modified 2mm Finescale (2FS) standards, which uses a check rail clearance of .5mm.

A while ago I bought a 'finescale N' wheel profile tool, from Carbide Solutions, a German company who traded on eBay but seem to have disappeared recently. The tool has a flange depth of .5mm and flange width of .35mm, which is close to 2FS standards (.51mm and .30 respectively). So, I've used it to turn up some wheels;

There's two sets of wagon wheels here, one of which is on axles, and the 4 wheels with the profiled faces are destined for a spare Saltford Models Peckett that's lying around.
Here's the 2 completed sets along with a pair of standard 009 wheelsets;

Axles are 15mm long, so that the wheelsets can be dropped into a RTR Peek-Oh van that I have lying around, simply so that I have a rolling 006 chassis with little effort;

The floor of the Peco van needs trimming slightly to clear the wheels.
And another photo, this time comparing them to Busch HOf wheels (6.5mm gauge);

But, there are potential problems. The flanges on my wheels being wider than 2FS standards throws up one. They actually measure about .40mm wide, so the back to back has been adjusted to suit, at around 4.95mm as opposed to 5.09mm. Whether this will cause probems with pointwork remains to be seen, and until I either build a point or borrow one (I'm not the only person with this idea, there are several others looking at working in 6mm gauge and using 2FS standards) I'll not know for sure. But, if necessary I could skim the back of the wheels to reduce the flange width. The other problem is that I have yet to build a working point (apart from one 9mm gauge test piece) and that I need to machine up some more gauges.

A quick note on the wheels. Wagon wheels are 6.2mm dia., and are made to be a direct replacement for 009 wheelsets. All wheels are 1.5mm wide (to allow for potential wonky tracklaying!) rather then the correct 1.3mm. The insulated wheels were made following this method, but using 24 hour Araldite as the insulation. Inner dia. of the tyres is 4.9mm, outer diameter of the boss 4.2mm, giving a gap of .35mm. More care needed as some of the wheels are loose on the axles due to them being reamed out 1.5mm, a drop of cyano helps but I need to invest in a slightly smaller chucking reamer so that I can get a light interference fit.

And finally, why don't I just use the Busch system? To answer that I shall just be lazy and repeat that old chestnut - if you need to ask you'll never understand! Which sums up so much of what I do...

Paul.