Yesterday I tackled a P2K Mather stock car kit that I had assembled last summer up to the point of grab irons and roof install. Well, the teeny, thin plastic drop down grab irons were a challenge for me to install! I got it done eventually, reaming the holes for the 36 grabs and gluing them in with CA. A few are installed crooked and I broke or lost to the carpet all the spares, so I just squeaked by on the supply side. I certainly like the car and happily (or unhappily) discovered I have 2 more plus a box car in the queue.
So I’m interested in options when I get around to building the others (eventually). I could probably do better the next time with the thin plastic supplied grabs basis experience. I probably need to drill the holes rather than ream them.
I did a search online and see options include forming my own from wire but I won’t go that far given the dropdown complication. I used my calipers and think these are around 22" outside dimension, so roughly 21" dropdown grabs. On MB Klein site I see (edited) wire Cal Scale 17" dropdown grabs and 24" Tichy dropdowns. Since the car has dimples for the grabs and the commercial wire types don’t line up, I’m thinking my best options might be (1) use the supplied (frustrating) thin plastic ones or (2) use thin wire to form simple (non-dropdown) metal grabs or (3) find some commercial metal grabs of 21" size or (4) squeeze the Cal Scale 24" to fit.
I’ll be grateful for any suggestions.
P.S. - I really (still) like freight car kits of simpler to moderate difficulty.
I use wire ones for my cars. Sometimes I buy them, and sometimes I make them myself. Making them yourself can be much cheaper if you buy a spool of wire from McMaster or somewhere else. They really are quite simple to make once you get the hang of it. Wire ones are very durable, and I find are easier to install.
If you use wire ones, you can put a strip of styrene between the two holes. This will space the grabs properly from the car side. You can pull the strip out after the grabs have been glued.
As far as drilling holes, use drill bits. One thing you can do is drill one side a little larger than the other. This allows you some tolerance in lining up with the holes.
Bending your own grabs is real easy once you figure it out.
But.
Not for the drop ones. At least, as far as I’ve seen. I’ve got a couple of ideas how to pull it off, but I haven’t done any real work on it.
I do think that no one in the world is going to get on your case if yours don’t drop down. I think it’s far more important to have tightly bent and repeating grabs installed perfectly. Wire grabs, that is. The drop part is total frosting, to me.
I use Tichy #3015 16" wire drop grab irons in these cars. The drop grabs are a little forgiving about hole spacing, they just bend a little on the vertical dimension.
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I drill the holes with a #78 drill bit and glue them in place with LocTite liquid super glue.
Thanks, all. I’ll order some of the Tichy #3105 that Kevin says work, 18" actually.
On another note, the long door grabs are similar super skinny plastic. Since fewer and simpler, I would not mind forming those. What wire size (ala Cal Scale 0.012"?) should I acquire, from whom?
The worthless plastic door grabs in the kit are about 0.020" in diameter. I used Detail Associates #3505 0.015" stainless steel wire to make replacements. I used K&S #1596 0.020" brass wire to replace the door guides.
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I only built two of the kits, but as usual, I kept a good notebook!
I suspect the designers of this kit made an unwarranted assumption. While there may have been exceptions, Mather generally did not use drop grabs.
The Mather Company that built these cars did things as inexpensively as possible, avoiding anyhing that required any complicated manufacturing processes. This meant Mather cars were easy to repair, which made them attractive to many railroads. I took extensive measumements of some Mather boxcars at North Freedon, WI several years ago and made drawings. Chuck Youngkurth (I think) also did drawings of a similar Mather boxcar at Campo, CA. My drawings, probably supplemented by Chuck’s, were used in the design of the last Mather boxcar kits produced by Sunshine. While it is possible that Mather varied their practice over the years somewhat, it is generally acknowledged that they used the same general practices on all their cars, whether they were boxcars, stock cars, or reefers.
The measured, preserved prototype cars illustrate that vertical ladder stiles were attached to the car, to which horizontal rungs were added. Rungs were formed from steel rod approximately 1" diameter, or maybe a little bigger. In the manufacturing process, the rungs were cut to length, the ends were flattened, a hole was drilled in the flattened ends, and they were riveted to the stiles. No extra bends were made in the rungs.
I think I would put NBW castings into the mounting holes, and drill two holes for a new formed wire rung just inside them. This might be as much work as using the kit parts, but the resulting ladder rungs would be much more sturdy.
For a contest car, it would be worth the effort. For a car to be run day-to-day on the layout, I’m not so sure. Plain grabs without the rivet mounting would probably look just fine under normal viewing conditions.
I strongly recommend using Tichy .0125" or .015" phosphor bronze wire for the grabs. It is easy to bend but it holds its shape well and will not be bothered by handling the car even a bit roughly, although I don’t recommend rough handling of course.
As far as making your own drop grabs, it can be done quite easily with a couple of home made styrene jigs. The first jig is simply a small piece of .040" or .060" styrene sheet with a #78 hole drilled in it the proper distance from one edge to match the inside width of the grab iron, in your case 17 scale inches. If you have a set of dividers just measure the spacing between the holes and transfer that to the styrene sheet. Use this to make the basic ‘u’ shaped grabs buy sticking a wire through the hole, bending it over towards the edge of the styrene and then bending the second leg around the side of the styrene at 90 degrees. You have to hold the wire tight to the jig. You can get sharper bends by using a flat screwdriver blade to force the wire close to the jig for both bends. Use a pair of smooth jawed needlenose pliers to adjust the bends as necessary.
To do the drop irons, you need three pieces of styrene, two of them the same thickness as the height of the drop in the grab, and the third to act as a base. I used .040". Glue the first two pieces of sytrene to the base parallel to each other so that they are just far enough apart to let the wire slip into the groove. Then take the ‘u’ shaped grab that you made with the first jig and slip the bottom of the ‘u’ into the slot. Make sure it is seated properly in the gap and then bend the legs over using a screwdriver blade to get sharp bends. This will only bend the grab legs about 45 degrees. Use the needlenose pliers to finish the bends.
I think it is worth teaching yourself how to make your own grab irons and railings. It will increase you ability to detail rolling stock, something which I enjoy.
I did a fleet of cabooses last year using Athearn BB el cheapos as a starting point. First thing I did was carve off all the moulded on grabs. I formed all of the grab irons myself because I couldn’t find pre-made grabs to fit. I did purchase a package of the curved grabs that go on the sides of the cabooses but they didn’t line up with the NBW castings from the original moulded on grabs which I was trying to preserve. I couldn’t find matching end railings that I liked. The only ones that sort of matched were white metal castings and I figured it would take me just as long to make my own railings as it would to clean up the castings properly. The only pre-made grabs that would have worked were the ‘L’ shaped ones for the cupola roof, but I had (wrongly) used .020" wire for the other grabs so the thinner roof grabs would have looked wrong, at least IMHO. I couldn’t find the assortment of grabs for the end walls of the cabeese. There are six on each end. Bottom line is that I made all of the grabs and had fun doing it (yes, it got a little tedious at times but when that happened I just took a break). Once you learn how to make your own jigs, you can match any grab style easily.
Here are a couple of the caboose shots:
These pale in comparison to doctorwayne’s work but it was still fun. Next time I will use .015" phosphor bronze instead of .020".
Don’t sell yourself short, Dave. I think that your caboose looks great, and you have the satisfaction of having done those improvements yourself, making each one unique. I doubt very much that I’d even attempt one of your critter builds, as each is impressive in its own right.
Thanks Wayne. However, I simply don’t have the dexterity that you have when it comes to fine details. You have the ability to get everything lined up straight and your details are always so accurate. The proof is in your own photographs. My photos expose the flaws. Your photos show that there aren’t any!
Thanks, but there are some easy “cheats” for people like me (and others) whose work doesn’t always look all that great when first done.
I recently built/re-built a number of freight cars, both kits and low-cost r-t-r (Tyco, f’rinstance), and the grabirons on those didn’t come out so well initially, as seen HERE (If you’re not interesting in most of the freight car photos there, simply scroll down the page about half-way to the example.) Immediately following that is an easy method to correct what I suspect is a very common problem for many folks who replace cast-on grabirons with wire ones.
I am very accurate when laying out the position of holes required for the wire grabs, as I use dividers set to the proper spacing, both for the grab width and the vertical spacing. Unfortunately, I am very seldom able to drill a hole perpendicular to the surface in which it’s located…in fact, I’m pretty sure that I could drill a non-perpendicular hole using a drill press set up by a professional machinist. [:P]
For those of you with a similar problem, the link offers some chance at redemption.
