Insertion cast wheels

On Wednesday, I managed to get away from the Christmas concerts for a meeting of the North Shore chapter of the local NMRA division. It was Graham Stokes’s annual “Trains and Scones” evening, and as usual he had a little table to show off progress on our current projects. I wanted to show the wheels, […]

First four tyres

The photo above presents the first four Proto:87 tyres to be found among the chips around my lathe. These are the 30″ pilot wheels, and their brass centres need to have spokes cut in before getting soldered into the tyres. They’re not perfect, but every wheel is better than the last, and I think these […]

Wheel Progress

Parts for the first wheel rolled off the lathe this week. The engine truck wheels are only 8 mm in diameter, and have eight spokes. The spokes themselves are only a couple of millimetres long, and so, I have elected to make these wheels in two parts – a tyre and a centre. I actually […]

Dave Booth is a demon with a jewellers’ saw

Tonight I cut some spokes in one of my test wheels. I was most interested to see if the wheel gets floppy if you take away most of the material in the centre to replace it with plastic. It doesn’t. But I tell you what: fretting out the spokes is hard work! On this small […]

Quite wheelish

My puttering with the form tool is starting to result in things that could be mistaken for wheels. These ones approximate the 30″ wheels for 622’s pilot truck, but with the gross flange of my homemade form tool. I faced them down to the correct 1.63 mm wide, and cut the spoke recess in the […]

Wheel masters

A rather large box of air arrived from Shapeways today. Safely suspended inside were the masters for 622’s wheels. Seriously, the box is over 4000 cubic centimetres of air, and contained perhaps 2 cubic centimetres of plastic! The castings were well protected! No box from Shapeways has ever lasted more than a few minutes after […]

Sneaking up on tyres

I may have been a trifle optimistic about finishing the learning phase before 20 hours are out. I’m still discovering how to hit a given diameter with a form tool. It seems to be equal parts art and science. My approach is pretty much to make each tyre individually. Sure I take note of where […]

Vaguely like wheels

I’m a little over ten hours of practice into learning to use my lathe. To tell the truth, I don’t think I will need the full twenty hours I’d planned. Already I can do most of what I need to be able to do to cut wheels. Wrecking my only Proto:87 form tool would make […]

30 inch wheels are small!

Last night’s lathe practice was about making my own tools. All 622’s wheels need a ridge at the edge of the tyre, and so, I made a little boring tool to create that. Once done, I tried it out and made the test wheel shown here. The wheel is the size of 622’s engine truck […]

Pilot wheel drawing

I’m planning a two millimetre axle for the 30-inch pilot wheels. The wheel hub comes out pretty heavy with 3/4 mm walls, but I daren’t go finer. Indeed, I will have to test to see if I can even turn such a fine wall.