Ok, now I have my newest MR sin of which I need expiation. I have discovered I cannot stand putting on those teeny grab irons. It’s madness. Grab iron madness I tell you! I have these Walthers cars that need them, are surely begging for them, yet after last night’s debacle, I refuse. I’m content to let them run around the track naked of their grab irons. Those teeny HO people will just have to learn how to make do without grabbing on to such handles. My eyes can no longer take it, my fingers are not as dexterous as they once, um, bothered to be, and I’ve lost patience. Well, at least for now. [;)]
Is it that I’m the only one who has forsaken these bits of plastic or metal? An outcast, heretical to the cause of greater realism? [B)] Well, reflecting last night I’ve come to terms with two blatant yet inexorable facts: I’ll never make the cover of Time magazine, and my layout will never be in the pages of Model Railroader. Nor is it likely, therefore, that I’ll ever hang out with Rod Stewart (alas…). And Lou Sassi will never be in my basement. Oh the heartbreak!
I guess I’ll warn children not to follow this wayward modeling path~!
I just built a Proto 2000 Mathers Stock Car. The grab irons? Well, I did them (and the brake lines), but never again. My eyes and hands just aren’t what they used to be. I am not even sure they were ever that good.
Never on the cover of Time? If you keep trying to put on grab irons and wig out, you COULD make the cover. Or maybe it will just be news at 11. [:)]
Now the grab irons on my Kato engines, they were ok. Pre-pocketed holes and all. No problem with them, but these Walthers freight cars and the drilling and placement, it’s a total PIA!
It sounds like all of you are missing 2 essential tools in your tool box for doing the small fiddly work: an optivisor or equivalent magnification and a small pair of needlenose pliers, (as an extention of your fingers)…
A trick I learned was to enlarge the hole a bit with a #76 or #77 drill bit, this makes it a lot easier to get the grabs in the holes and the CA, applied from the back, will fill the rest and the touch up paint will make it dissapear altogether. Use a strip of .040 styrene to keep the grabs equi-distant from the bodiy. You can adjust the for levelness after the CA dries.
The biggest mistake many people make trying to do detail work is not to use proper magnification, this is how others are capable of doing the fine detail work, ask any of them. It is truely amazing and rewarding how much your skills will improve with just the addition of an optivisor, you will actually be able to see what you’re doing!
Grab some Evergreen scale 3"x3" strip, paint it boxcar red with a rattle can or #5 brush, snap off some 1/4" pieces with vise grips, and cement them to the car sides and ends with tube glue. Voila: scratch-built bluebox brick-style grabs.
I pay for the tiny women and children in the orient to put those things on for me. It may not be much, but they still get to eat, and I get to play with trains. Otherwise, they’d be bare cars.
If I can do it with my bad eyes and fat fumbly fingers, anyone can! I’m even making my own drop grabs out of guitar strings. It just takes patients and the right tools.
I patiently built four Branchline reefers with Grabirons installed in all the right places. I gnashed my teeth, cried in frusteration and lost a bazillion grabirons to the vacumn cleaner and it took MONTHS to get em all in.
Never again. Im buying them WITH Grabirons.
If they come with a little baggie to be installed? Well they stay in the baggie. Besides I dont want to have to match paint, find proper adhesives etc. Too much hassle to see them snap off on the first derailment.
Now you know why I like my Athearn Blue Boxes. The grab irons are “Good enough” and dont induce mental issues when they are too delicate to stay on the car properly.
Guilt? NAH. There is more than enough Craftsmen around here with assembled cars with all the irons in the right places that they machined from scrap stock and chewing gum in a field somewhere.
I think your on to something, tools make a world of difference. If you don’t have the right tool then the job just gets frustrating. I bet most people that don’t like putting them on aren’t using the proper tools for the job.
I suppose that would suffice for some people. Personally, I like to model the knuckle skin left on the burrs of my bolt heads, all handcast pewter, and cast so that it looks as if the wrench slipped, rounding and burring the heads. Nothing less for my layout.
Grab Arns? Grab Arns! We don’t need no stinkin’ grab arns! I did one of the P2K boxcars recently, got a tank car sitting there waiting to be done. It’ll be sittin’ there a long, long time. More power to those that have the patients… er uh… patience… whatever… to do them. I don’t and don’t want to take the time to develop it. BUT… but… when I was cussin’ my way through the boxcar the optivisor and lot’sa, lot’sa light did help. A little. How could they help a lot when you have five thumbs on one hand?
Yeah!!! But, how do you get authentic fingerprints, for those benighted souls too dumb to wear gloves. (Gotta be that dumb, if they’re wrenching bolts outdoors barehanded.)
As for me, it’s not just grabs that don’t always get installed. I have a whole fleet of JNR freight cars that don’t have the standard step-on-me brake handles - and they are NOT invisible!