Anyone out there have a good technique for repairing a bent roof corner on a die-cast locomotive? I have a 736 Berkshire shell in great shape except for one corner of the cab roof! I guess something must have fallen on it and gouged the top and bent it down. Can this metal be heated and hammered back to it’s original line? I can fill the gouge and paint the shell, but I don’t know anything about this metalurgy and if it can be bent back into shape without breaking off! Any suggestions?
Zinc is pretty brittle at room temperature. It is supposed to get malleable at higher temperatures. You might check out the Wikipedia article on it.
Thanks for the suggestion, will check it out!
Check the melting point, I belive somewhere in the 785F degree range. Some people have had good luck cutting out a piece of hard wood in the arc of the (un-bent) cab…might be tough if you only have a bent one!! Anyway use the piece of hard wood under the cab corner to reshape it.
I agree though, at room temp you probably won’t have moch luck in straightening it out unless it is a very shallow bend and you are super careful and super lucky.
Good luck
Thanks Ogauge! I was able to use a small torch to heat the area thoroughly and hammer the bend out. It’s not perfect but it will do for me. Now I just need to touch up the details on the top of the roof and paint. Thanks to all the guys who responded.
Good info. Guys at my local train shop advised me to leave well enough alone because of the danger of snapping the piece off, though I don’t think they were thinking that some undaunted soul (you) would actually do it right and heat the sucker up. This topic has been discussed on the Forum since I joined last November, including one member whose corner snapped off and was reattached with JB Weld (within the last month).
I’ll bet many others amongst us are staring at a bent cab corner and now may take a stab at the heating method. While we may know the correct temp to heat the cab, how do you measure it? Or is it a trial by fire exercise?
My bent cab story involves a 2046 leaving the layout when I was a wee one and encountering a concrete floor about 3 feet below. The cab is still bent, though the paint is touched up; and I need to secure a boiler front, preferably original versus aftermarket, because the same incident took out one of the jewelled lamp posts too.
Good stuff. Thank you Bob, Dennis, and bornmay.
Jack
It is said to be malleable between 100 and 210 degrees celsius (212 to 410 fahrenheit) and brittle both below and above that temperature range. I have never tried to bend it; but I imagine that a good strategy is to heat it until it just bends–no more.
Thanks Bob for the warning! Brittle if the temp is either too hot or not hot enough. That’s interesting. Jack.