hay all : got some intermountain steel reefer kits in NP and thinking they were about like a accurail kit I’m finding em to be greater detail with extremely fragile details ,I mean they break getten of the sprue’s [banghead]. also very fragile grab irons the corner ones break under the pressure of picking em up w/tweezers.
now once together they look very nice (missing a few parts) so AM I the only one who has trouble with these ? and advise for this level a kit ?
the TOOLS I use are exacto knife & or xuron sprue cutters for removel…MEK in A1 syringe tip bottle for glue…tweazers for handling and applying small parts …magnifier hood …small bits for opening up holes …
Any advise would help as I dont require that much details and am considering just not applying ALL they come with ,thus spearing the head ache…Jerry
I’ve got the answer to all your problems - a despruing nipper. I picked one up at a train show years ago and cutting all those fragile tiny parts became a snap, and breakage is rare. They are a bit price, I think around $14 or 16 for a pair, but the WORK well. Any kit that has lots of tiny parts, two indespensible tools are the despruing nippers and a set of reamers, to slightly enlarge whols that are a tad too small for the grab irons to go into etc.
I would agree, despruring nippers are better for fragile parts than the Xuron spue cutters which are designed for building kits, etc, with larger sprues. They look sorta like fat tweezers, you can find them at Micromark, (online or mail order), item # 82393 http://www.micromark.com/SearchResult.aspx?deptIdFilter=0&searchPhrase=sprue+cutter.
If you want to replace the grabs, Detail Associates (Walthers) and Tichey (Walthers or http://www.tichytraingroup.com/) have them in metal and Delrin (much tuffer than the styrene ones that come with the kits)
One thing I like to do with kits like Intermountain, Branchline and others with all the fragile small parts, is to drill out the mounting holes so nothing has to be forced into place. It’s much easier to avoid breaking something like a grab iron if you don’t have to shove it into a hole due to reduced clearance from paint. I also keep some Detail Associates brass wire around to replace any grabs or brake system components that do snap.
The super detail kits from Intermountain, Red Caboose and others are lots of fun to build, if you enjoy building kits. If building kits is drudgery and you just want rolling stock that rolls, go with Accurail, Roundhouse or Bachmann.
The sprue nippers are required. Cutting tiny parts from the sprue with an Xacto knife is gonna break stuff. Holes that are too small to accept teeny weeny parts must be drilled out or reamed out. If you jam teeny weeny parts into too small holes, something is gonna break. Actually, a #11 Xacto knife blade will ream many a hole out enough to accept the mating part.
I will have to adjust my wish list for these Items, to go with my battery paint stirrers and glue for delren plastics . Hey maybe i’ll have enough for free shipping [:D] Oh and I will be picking up some METAL grabs too…Jerry
Big Jerr - You might try using a product from Micro-Mart called Pic-n-Stick ( part # 80339). It looks like a micro brush with a waxy adhesive these may not break the small grabs like the tweezers. They are about $12.00 for a pack of 30 and each stick can be used several times.
Intermountain, along with Red Caboose and Proto2000, made some nicely detailed kits that all suffered from the same problem: using plastic for details which were better suited to metal. I’m referring specifically to the grabirons and stirrup steps, but the brake piping and rods could also be included.
In many cases you can simply substitute metal grabs for plastic ones, while some require the cast-in holes to be drilled out, filled with styrene rod, then re-drilled to accept finer wire. The Proto1000 r-t-r Fowler cars fall into this latter category, as do many of their tank car kits. There are ready made wire grabs offered by several manufacturers, or you can easily bend your own from brass, steel, or stainless steel wire. Similarly, roofwalk corner grabs are easily made from wire and building them on a homemade jig makes even soldering them simple.
Replacing stirrup steps with metal ones often involves a little more work, but the improvement in both durability and appearance is, in my opinion, well worth the effort. A-Line offers them in several styles, or you can bend your own from flat brass bar.
Some re-worked Intermountain cars:
Re-worked Red Caboose boxcars:
Proto tank car kit re-worked with metal grabs and steps (brake gear is still plastic, by the looks of it - if I don’t break it cutting it off the sprue, I use it [swg]):
I am posting an old pic showing my favorite tool, a UMM Razor Saw, (lower right) it has a fine & a course side, but is extremely fine in both sizes. I can’t see the teeth well on the fine side & I have a pretty good eye. The only thing I don’t use it on is metal & acetal type plastic. I beleive the blade has .007" kerf, yeah it is precise. If I could only have 10 tools, it would be in the top 3 for sure. The blades are hardened, & I have even plunge cut with them, but can shatter if dropped or misued. Then I put the pieces in an xacto handle for small area cutting. I am on my second blade in 8-9 years of heavy use…
The picture was demonstrating how I cut the center windows out of a Cannon front & put them into a P2K HH cab for an SD10 conversion.
EDIT: I should add, that I really like it for small & very delicate parts. It doesn’t torque the part like an xacto, a razor blade, or a nipper. Usually I back the part with a finger (for tactile feel) & carefully cut it free, yeah i may chaif my finger once & a while, but it doesn’t bust the part. Most other tools wedge the parts apart from the sprue & can fracture them, this is cleaner.
YOU BET ! Doc ,I also miss that young man looking back at me in the mirror…hey Doc ,how bout a short tutorial on weathering that NYcentral Refeer…[:D]
oh Yes ,I ordered all my toys from micro mark and when they arrive I will tackle a nother refeer ,should be easier the second time , I did do some small parts assembly on a couple a baggage carts from Jordan hwy miniatures ,only broke (cracked ) one wheel ,
need to find a way to get smaller drop a MEK out of my A1 glue bottle (I got the smallest needle on it)going to try to put some Cotton (hope it don’t melt) in the bottle to slow it down .
If you can do the baggage wagons, you should have no problems with reefers. Jordan will, as I recall, replace that broken part if you weren’t able to repair it.
That reefer was originally weathered much more heavily than it now appears. When I backdated my layout to the late '30s, I realised that it would have been a relatively new car at the time, and, despite being a mostly white car, probably wouldn’t have been so filthy. I had used Floquil paints for the weathering, so decided to wipe the car’s sides with a rag dampened with methyl hydrate. A couple of light passes, wiping top to bottom, removed the worst of it, then I added a light overspray of Floquil to blend things together. I just looked at the car again to refresh my memory, and noticed that I never changed the re-weigh date - it’s NEW 9-47, [:-^] and was obviously mis-routed in somebody’s time machine. While the NYC is one of my favourite roads, I’m not modelling it specifically, so I have no compunction about changing that “4” to a “3” and calling it good enough. [swg] I’m currently backdating some of my home road cars anyway, so the materials are on the workbench.
I use lacquer thinner as a cement for styrene, and for small jobs, use it out of an old Testors’ brush-in-cap bottle. However, I usually use an approropriately-sized, good-quality paint brush when I need to apply only a small amount.
As for weathering, perhaps a few ideas rather than a tutorial. I prefer most of my rolling stock to be weathered not too heavily, so always thin the weathering colours severely - often up to 90% thinner. This allows you to build-up the “dirt” gradually, and will work for almost-new cars as well as ones whose next stop is the scrap yard. I use mainly Floquil paints, thinned with lacquer thinner and mix my own weathering colours, either purposely or by combining already thinned paints that have been used for other projects and are no longer needed. I also use
Certainly agree about the desprurring nippers - not cheap, but necessary for craftman type kits. I built 6 of them a few years ago, and they all sit in a display case - for they are just too delicate to ride the rails.
