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Truck Wheels
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Spen Kellogg <spenkell@...>
Have just spent a tedious amount of time painting wheelsets and then polishing the treads to get the wheels to look correct. The wheels should be some sort of rust/grime combination with the treads and flanges silver. Won't go into my method, which seems very labor intensive, hard on the hands, and generally very inefficient. There must be a better way, but my poor decaying gray cells haven't a clue. What methods are commonly used and how do you keep it from being a real chore? Shortcuts, tips, and tricks are all welcome.
Regards, Spen Kellogg
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Ron Boham <spnut@...>
Spen,
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I use substantially the same method. One step I include is to polish the manufacturer's coating/finish off the treads before painting, so when I polish again afterwards, all I have to knock off is a little dried paint. I found I was handling them so much using a Dremel on controlled slow speed to clean off both paint and factory finish, some needed touch-up. I have a pine 1x2 with eighteen inches of track held down with push pins, and a small cardboard box with eight slots in the lid. After the initial polishing step, I put eight wheelsets into the box slots and paint wheel faces. After a couple hours, I move those to the track and put eight more in the slots, painting wheel faces on the second set and axles and wheel backs on the first. If you were going to do 200 wheelsets, I suppose it could be tedious, but I do mine while doing other projects at the bench. All my assembled trucks and ready-to-use wheelsets are painted and ready to install. The old Kadee truck cards, with the plastic box glued to a cardstock back, are ideal for this, or, I will use the packaging they came in and hang them on the pegboard. New kits cause me to do research to see if they were furnished with the proper trucks, and, if so, if I want to use them. This way, I never get into the position of having a car built with nothing to put under it. Ron Boham Ralston, NE Spen Kellogg wrote:
Have just spent a tedious amount of time painting wheelsets and then
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Christian Tucker <ctucker1@...>
methods are commonly used and how do you keep it from being a real After a few hundred wheelsets any process is a chore! After the knife and file work I give mine a through wash followed by a soak in Polly Scale Plastic Prep. When dry I use a brush and Microscale Liquid Mask and put a blop of the mask on each axle cone and into each sideframe hole. (The Microscale Mask washes out of the brush. Other brands don't.) I mount the wheelsets on a rack that I cobbled together from styrene scraps many years ago after I saw a photo in MR of A. Sperandeo's wheel painting rack. The sideframes are screwed to a part of the rack. I paint, weather and so forth. When paint has set, I pull off the mask with tweezers. The wheels go into the sideframes. I use a stainless steel disk brush in a Dremel running at a slow speed to whirl the wheels and scrub the treads clean and shiny. Prepare to loose a few wheelsets/sideframes until you get the Dremel technique learned! Christian Tucker New York
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Denny Anspach <danspach@...>
Spen Kellogg inquires-
Have just spent a tedious amount of time painting wheelsets and then polishing the treads to get the wheels to look correct. What methods are commonly used and how do you keep it from being a real chore? Shortcuts, tips, and tricks are all welcome. ____________________________________________ My default standard on all of my freight trucks is to progressively convert to Reboxx .088" wheel sets, something that I have been doing now for at least three years. These wheels have a natural rather dark silvery sheen that makes the treads look just right IMHO. After wheelset change-out, and before refastening the truck back on the car I routinely each time then paint the truck frame, both sides of the wheels and the axle Floquil Rail Brown. I have developed a means of holding the truck by its bolster in my left hand with my thumb and third finger so that I can spin the wheelset to be painted with my second finger, and a particular brush that just "fits". The entire process for one truck takes probably no more than about two minutes, and at the end the truck stands out because of its remaining shiny treads (and the thin .088" wheel treads certainly do help). This of course does not prevent added aging and weathering, if desired, or the use of other paint colors if the particular model requires it. -- Denny S. Anspach, MD Sacramento, CA
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Rich Ramik <rjramik@...>
List:
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Over on the Model Railroad Forum group there is a files showing a "fixture" used to paint wheel sets. I have made one and it works like a charm. It is in the Files section under Ned's Models. Thanks, Rich Ramik
-----Original Message-----
From: Denny Anspach [mailto:danspach@...] Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 11:08 AM To: STMFC@... Subject: [STMFC] Re: Truck Wheels Spen Kellogg inquires- Have just spent a tedious amount of time painting wheelsets and then polishing the treads to get the wheels to look correct. What methods are commonly used and how do you keep it from being a real chore? Shortcuts, tips, and tricks are all welcome. ____________________________________________ My default standard on all of my freight trucks is to progressively convert to Reboxx .088" wheel sets, something that I have been doing now for at least three years. These wheels have a natural rather dark silvery sheen that makes the treads look just right IMHO. After wheelset change-out, and before refastening the truck back on the car I routinely each time then paint the truck frame, both sides of the wheels and the axle Floquil Rail Brown. I have developed a means of holding the truck by its bolster in my left hand with my thumb and third finger so that I can spin the wheelset to be painted with my second finger, and a particular brush that just "fits". The entire process for one truck takes probably no more than about two minutes, and at the end the truck stands out because of its remaining shiny treads (and the thin .088" wheel treads certainly do help). This of course does not prevent added aging and weathering, if desired, or the use of other paint colors if the particular model requires it. -- Denny S. Anspach, MD Sacramento, CA Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: STMFC-unsubscribe@... Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
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Schuyler G Larrabee <SGL2@...>
my methods are similar to Christian's, but my "rack" is a simple piece of
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paper with a ridge folded in it, and notches cut in the ridge. I little screwing around will get you the right height for the ridge. The ridge is thin, and lets you paint all of the axle if you wiggle things around a bit. Also, I use stick-on dots, available in a bunch of sizes, to cover the journals in the sideframes. They're very cheap. Same as Christian on the dot of mask on the cone. SGL
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christian Tucker" <ctucker1@...> To: <STMFC@...> Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 10:58 AM Subject: [STMFC] Re: Truck Wheels methods are commonly used and how do you keep it from being a real
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