I was reading a book the other day in which a guy smashed his fingers in a door. Blood had built up under the nail and the doctor simply straighten a paper clip, heated it over a candle, and punged it through the fingernail thus allowing the blood to escape.
I use a lot of flex track on my HO layout and the preformed track nail holes always seem to be in the wrong place. I figured if the heated paperclip worked on a fingernail, why not on a plastic tie. Tried it and it worked great and thought I would pass the information along. (Obviously you need a pair of pliers to hold the heated paperclip.) The large paperclip creates a hole that fits standard track nails.
Thanks for posting. My problem with the holes that are visible/easily found is that they’re a bit too large. Also, getting the nails into what lies below them, the roadbed, has been problematic. They bend too easily. If we had a method of drilling down into MDF/plywood/board/homasote/whatever with the perfectly sized hole, the rest would be so easy!!
Works on foam board as well, I use a very small bit, just through the ties, and straight pins, through roadbed and into foam board, just to hold alignment. (Adhesive from ballasting will hold down track as well, once the straight pins are painted and weathered with the rest of the track, they are flat out impossible to see!)
I use a #62 drill bit where I need a nail adjusted to the length of the nail in a mini chuck with a hex shaft. I have a small handle with a hex connector to drill the hole, if the hole is where I can use a mini battery operated drill I do it to it. I’ve been pretty lucky only breaking a few bits over the last 8 years.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
I’ve heated up a pin and pushed it into the bottom of a plastic model figure for painting otherwise hard to hold figure. I’m sure I didn’t invent this, and must have read about it somewhere in the distant past. I will say it doesn’t take very long to heat up the pin in a direct open flame (e.g. a candle), but I can’t say if that works efficently for many nails over a long length of flextrack.
To put the few nails I have used in, I used a push hammer. Holds the nail and prevents bending. If you worried that you will push too hard, just push the nail in most of the way, finish with a nailset and the hammer spot on the push hammer. I think Micro Mark has them also Harbor Freight, not very expensive.
With ME flex track, you create the nail holes. I use a pin vice and track spikes that hold the track nicely for areas where the track rises slightly. This isn’t a big deal to fix with track spikes.
Most of the track doesn’t require securing down since I glue ballast over the track.
In the effort to save the right size drill. I simply nip the head off a nail or spike, place it in a drill chuck and use the nail as a drill… not problems about size being correct and the nail will last a while in this way and the cost … usually a fraction of cent. Works OK in plastic and wood!
Good tip! Tried it by simply heating the spike with a lighter, of course holding it with a needlenose plier, then driving it into the crosstie. This worked a LOT better than when I got the brilliant idea that I could do finer work if I held the soldering iron closer to the tip.