Ok I just got a jordan spreader yesterday. I have been working on a rs-3 that I chopped off the short hood. I thought it would make a good jordan spreader. So now that I have a jordan spreader I would like to cast some of its parts to finish the rs-3 project. My question is I have seen how to do windows and dorrs and such that you only see one side or the poored side(barrels, boxes ect.) is not seen. Is it possible to cast the compound piece like a plow so I get a minimum of non actual part detail. Am I confusing anyone yet because I am on the verge of being really confused.
yeah. I model will be modeling a freelanced shortline? I thought It might be something the guys in the shop might build if things were slow and there was a need for snow removal equipement and there was a wrecked or outlived engine sitting around. Is this a dumb idea? Should I just build the jordan and be done with it?
If you want one of them, make it out of plastic parts. If you want 20 of them make a mold and cast them out of resin.
To cast something large like that will cost $30-60 for the RTV rubber to make the mold, about $20 in misc supplies, a thin complex shape will probably need to be cast under pressure so you will need a pressure chamber ($50-200) and an air compressor ($100-250). The resin will cost you about $25-40 depending on the type and postage.
Since you will have a learning curve with casting, you can figure you’ll probably have at least 1 bad mold and several bad parts. To get a cast resin spreader blade in HO, you will have to drop about $80-$500.
I cast my own cars in HO. I have made castings for the equivalent of a couple dozen cars. Adding in the costs for the various tools, etc., the money spent on molds and improved molds, the money spent on resin (including a bad batch of resin from Smooth-On I had to toss), I figure the cars are averaging about $20-$25 a peice. Fortunately I was able to sell some extra castings so that brought the price down to about $10-$15 a car, which is reasonable.
Casting your own cars is a lot of fun, I have plans to work on at least 4 new car types over the next year or so, and plan to use at least 30-50 total of those 4 car types on my layout. So for me casting is worth the up front costs.
I can envison a quasi-RS3 vrs. jordan, for a one time shot I would fabracate the plow face as I did using plastic tubing sliced in half to accomplish those complex compound curves, butted edge-to-edge with flat sheet to make the shape, finish with an overlay of rivet embossed Styrene, thin enough to confrom to the entire plow, .0010 would do , you should see my version of a Russell plow, my excuse is my shop forces converted same as a result of accident damage, needing more a general purpose machine, crews installed a half blade on the front and wing modifications for ballast spreading and ditch digging.
I assume you intend to remove and replace the short hood? Bear in mind you trying to keep this plausable, use whatever means are necessary to suggest the plow was crafted to the existing frame and carbody. Just my[2c]
The CNW had at least one Russel type snow plough based on a dead RS3. I think that it included side wings. That would make it fairly similar to a Jordan spreader as far as the air cylinders to push out the wings would go. So something like a Jordan wouldn’t be completely impossible on an RS3 base.
I think that I would tend to keep the short hood and cab and build the spreader parts on a checker plate deck behind that. The question is whether to make the spreader parts from scratch, try to duplicate them by moulding or cannibalise them from the Walthers kit. I would go for the last and recycle the Walthers spreader frame into some different interesting thing… like a boom car…
Everyone has been great. Sorry it took so damn long to reply but I have been getting a very annoying ERROR OOOOPS page from the server. I have an rs-3 that the short hood runnin boards and steps were broken so I chopped off the short hood to the cab. Rebuilt the rear of the cab and it right now has an athern hustler plow on it and a plastic frame with dummy trucks. I saw this and thought it would be cool to add the wings and turn it into a spreader. Does anyone have the pics of the converted prototype.