New Wholestick Cane Trucks

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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Lonsdaler » Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:02 pm

Aaron,
The work you're doing is simply brilliant. Like many others, I've limited myself on batch building to single figures, but that's mostly kits of the Binnie/Phil Sharples variety. Doing the same scratch built in such quantity is either disciplined or masochism :lol:
I can't understand why you think the Inspector wouldn't have much to inspect on your railway. He's finally arrived at Mitch's - I'm sure he could squeeze in a quick visit whilst down under!
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Old Man Aaron » Wed Oct 20, 2021 4:22 am

16/10/21
After a break to focus on other projects, the seven trucks that were waiting for wheels have now been caught up with the rest of the batch.
Slowly working through fitting the planks, though I've only enough bar clamps to do five trucks at a time. Using PVA, tacking with superglue where it won't be seen.
Image

After allowing to dry at least 6 hours, the "coach bolt" locations are indented with a scribe, to allow an 0.8mm drill in the dremel, to locate quickly and accurately each time. Each truck needs 22 dressmaker's pins to complete from here, which get pre-cut to two lengths so they're ready for insertion. A tiny smear of shockproof superglue ensures they'll stay put. Approx. 950 pins were inserted through masking tape, into a sheet of styrofoam, for painting the heads. That will cover the planks, load winches and buffer plates for this batch.
A little paint is lost from the heads when gripping in pliers, but it's still easier to pre-paint and touch them up later, rather than fully priming and painting them in place.
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I've finally sat down and worked out what I'm doing for couplings, and how the load winches will go together. Parts for those are now on hand, I might make a start on them once the planks are all fitted..
Last edited by Old Man Aaron on Thu Feb 24, 2022 6:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Old Man Aaron » Tue Nov 16, 2021 1:22 am

31/10/21
After a lot of thought, I realised the winches would have to be individually fabricated, which thankfully turned out to be less painful than expected. Finding the crucial component - the ratchet-and-pawl, was the hardest part. Ended up using these whitemetal castings from Ozark.

The first casting was bent by eye, to make a mounting bracket out of it. I decided I was happy with that one, and put a piece of masking tape on the pliers, as a positioning guide so I know how wide to make the bent bit at the bottom. Before bending them all however, the lower-most cast bolt detail had to be cut off and drilled 0.8mm for pinning to the wagon chassis - see left-to-right for progression of the castings.

Unsurprisingly couldn't find any suitable winch drums (capstans?), and was seriously looking at machining all 130 of them from aluminium or nylon. But I came to my senses, sparing my remaining sanity and elderly lathe, deciding to just fabricate them over a few evenings. 5mm styrene tube, cut with a razor saw and a simple jig of wood scraps. The washers were aligned by eye, glued with the shockproof cyano.
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03/11/21
For the other side's bracket, I bought some styrene strip just for this - but realised it looked awful once assembled. So some scrap 0.5mm aluminium was cut, drilled and bent, to better represent something forged by the hundreds in a sugar mill's smithy. 1.6mm styrene rod was used as "spindles".
As all the whitetal brackets were hand-bent, I knew there would be some variation in height of the winches, so the spindle holes in the opposing brackets had to be drilled after assembly, to ensure they'd be roughly center-aligned to the winch drums.
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08/11/21
The couplings are the usual cut-down screw eyes, heated to red and quenched in used engine oil to blacken. Links of steel clock chain were used between closed eyes for the permanently-coupled trucks. After degreasing, they were pushed into the foam sheet as the sewing pins were, for painting. I know half the paint will wear off in fitting and use, but with the blackened underlying metal, I'm happy with that.
Image


09/11/21
As trucks were often loaded in the fields at late/early hours, some mills painted the ends of their headstocks white, to make them more visible to tractor drivers and road traffic alike. After a number of failed attempts at achieving an acceptable peeling paint effect, I found simply dabbing a torn piece of makeup sponge onto the headstocks, gave a perfect appearance of grubby/worn paint. The failed attempts were just painted over with a brush, to represent new/repaired trucks.
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11/11/21
Finally starting to get there.
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15/11/21
The winches and buffer plates were drilled after fitting with contact cement, tacked with superglue. I realised the permanently-linked eye hooks wouldn't be able to screw in with both wagons attached together, so they were separated for now. I'll re-couple them after numbering the headstocks and airbrush weathering. These winches aren't perfect by any means, but they're close enough. Every mill's trucks were different, but the winches always had the drum, ratchet and "spindle" (just nubs) cast as one piece. These were bought-in like the wheelsets and axleboxes, with the brackets made locally/onsite, along with the rest of the truck.
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Still a good dozen or so hours of work left, but relatively little to go..
Last edited by Old Man Aaron on Wed Nov 17, 2021 2:30 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Aaron - Scum Class Works

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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by philipy » Tue Nov 16, 2021 7:04 am

I flicked through the pictures before going back to actually read the words and I was in complete awe about how you'd scratch-built the rachet and pawl units, and that was going to be my first question! Nevertheless those trucks are simply works of art, not just models, and they keep getting better and better. Absolutely phenominal,
Philip

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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by ge_rik » Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:58 am

Jawdroppingly brilliant! The detail you've included in those winches is really impressive, especially as each of them has been scratchbuilt from oddments. And the rust effect really finishes them off!

Wonderful!

Rik
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Peter Butler » Tue Nov 16, 2021 10:51 am

Most impresive Aaron, you have succeeded in making mundane items stand out and show their individual importance. Wonderful work.
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Andrew » Tue Nov 16, 2021 11:00 am

Peter Butler wrote: Tue Nov 16, 2021 10:51 am you have succeeded in making mundane items stand out and show their individual importance.
Nicely put - I agree!

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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Old Man Aaron » Mon Dec 20, 2021 8:46 am

Thanks gents, can't let my standards slip. ;) :study:

15/12/21
Not far to go now. Couldn't find any suitable stencils for numbering the headstocks, and I wasn't going to make a paper stencil, or hand-paint them like the old trucks had. Didn't want to spend the money on custom decals either. Not every mill numbered their trucks anyway.

Mills lashed the cane onto the trucks with either cable or chain. Kinda stumbled bottom-backwards into getting a great result, here. Experimentation paid off..
Coarse thread was cut to 7½" lengths (next batch will have 8½") and tied onto Binnie hooks - which were prepped and painted to match the rest of the metalwork. They're a little big for this job, but they work well with the split pins I'm using for anchor points.
Superglue was soaked into the thread to stiffen it up, but the fuzziness remained. This was burned off with a heat gun. (candle was too intense and focused, just burns the thread) The heat gun had an interesting effect in that it melted the superglue, allowing the thread to droop under it's own weight.
This drooping and re-solidifying effect made for a very convincing beat-up old cable, which is still flexible enough to wrap around things.
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16/12/21
An 0.8mm hole was drilled in each winch barrel, and the "cable" superglued into place with a fine-tipped applicator. A couple of cables were made to look neatly reset after unloading, but most were just more-or-less secured by wrapping around a stanchion or two, as there's no time for tidy when unloading.
Trucks must be unloaded quickly to keep the mill fed, any patch-ups made in the truck shop, then returned to the empty yard ASAP for re-deployment to the fields.
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17/12/21
The trucks at this stage weigh 40g, which although I've not tested them, I feel is a bit too light. Full-size wholestick trucks are very light and prone to derailment at the best of times, particularly when being pushed around curves. As I'd like to pull long rakes, I don't want these too heavy, so only 15g of lead flashing was added.
Pre-painted the pieces where they might be seen through any gaps in the planks - another lesson learned from mistakes in my early trucks, many years back.
Conversely, those old trucks were weighted to 270g each, :roll: to allow them to negotiate a terrible S-bend imposed by a tree on my first garden line.
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18/12/21
I was going to airbrush-weather the running gear, but realised I'd have to make note of how I'd mixed the paint, so that subsequent truck batches will match this lot - but that method wouldn't play nice with my usual "make it up as I go" approach to airbrushing.
So I settled on three aerosol cans: A light, general dusting of "Jasper" (sort of a dusty/dirt colour), focusing slightly more heavily on the running gear.
Random "blotches" of dark brown for variation, followed by a light blotching of flat black under the chassis, and an even lighter overspray of black above - which was all to easy to overdo.
Forgot to get a before/after shot of the sprayed trucks, but you can see the first one I did, on the left of that pair, now re-coupled to another truck to have the treatment. A fan was set-up nearby.
Trucks became somewhat blackened in use, because the standing cane crops were burned a day or two before harvesting. This deals with any disease, the snakes, and leaves of the cane plant, leaving behind only the stalks, allowing the hand cutters to move in for harvesting.

After an hour or so, each truck was clearcoated with Dulux Duramax Flat Clear. That night, around the axleboxes and outer faces of the wheels were drybrushed with a dark, grimy acrylic mix, to simulate filthy, overfilled axleboxes.
Image

19/12/20
Apologies for the very poor lighting in this ex-works shot - who'd have thought that pulling up most of your garden line and replacing it with a carport would make ex-works shots difficult to do? :roll: :lol:
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Had to plonk 4m of track on the front lawn for these shots. :roll:
I'm extremely happy with how the rake has turned out, and am looking forward to hanging them behind one of my Fowlers. Even more-so to having four times as many trucks - but that's a job for future Aaron, :twisted: and there's plenty enough to do in the meantime..
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Thanks for reading,
Last edited by Old Man Aaron on Sun Feb 27, 2022 6:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by philipy » Mon Dec 20, 2021 9:35 am

Those are beautiful Aaron. You must be absoluteley chuffed(!), I know I would be.

Just a word of caution though, seriously, you need to be very careful with heating the superglue on the cables, heated superglue is nasty and gives off cyanide gas.
Philip

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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by ge_rik » Mon Dec 20, 2021 9:55 am

Wow!! That's going to make a really impressive train. Can't wait to see the video :thumbright:

Rik
PS Actually, the grass does look something like a sugar cane plantation.
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Peter Butler » Mon Dec 20, 2021 10:12 am

A wonderful collection Aaron, congratulations on your persistence and patience, much more than I could manage!
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Old Man Aaron » Wed Dec 22, 2021 2:06 pm

Thanks again, good to know about the superglue. Lucky I had the garage door open to keep the heat gun from cooking me. :roll:
Had the same thought about the lawn, too.
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Hydrostatic Dazza » Wed Dec 22, 2021 7:34 pm

Sweet.
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Andrew » Thu Dec 23, 2021 1:40 pm

Wow...

Those are truly amazing. Each individual wagon is a masterpiece, the who rake is truly exceptional.

I want to see them behind one of your Fowlers too - are you sure you need a car port??!

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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Old Man Aaron » Fri Dec 24, 2021 3:51 am

Andrew wrote: Thu Dec 23, 2021 1:40 pm I want to see them behind one of your Fowlers too - are you sure you need a car port??!
When you see what I'm parking in it next month, it'll finally make sense.. ;) :lol:

Next time I visit another layout (Zillmere open day in April) I'll get some video. Aiming to have the Bundaberg Fowler finished and heading the rake..
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by GTB » Mon Dec 27, 2021 8:17 am

The unloaded rake will look great trundling along behind a small loco. Have you started stockpiling the straw brooms you'll need for a loaded rake? 8)


If you want to defuzz cord, when I went through a ship modelling phase many years ago I found rubbing yellow wood glue into the cord used for model ship rigging would glue down any standing fibres. I never found the need to burn off any remaining fuzz.

My method was to cut a length of cord, clamp one end, tension it with one hand and run a bead of glue along it. Then run a thumb and forefinger along the cord to rub in the glue and press down any loose fibres.

The wood glue doesn't dry instantly like CA, so it can be draped in position before it dries. I found it was it easy to coil it up and drape it over belaying pins, but if it was hung with a weight on it, it dried dead straight and didn't need excessive tension to stay that way on a model.

I used the technique again recently when I was rigging the brake handles on one of the log bogie pairs.

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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by Old Man Aaron » Tue Dec 28, 2021 2:48 am

A while back, I did pick up a pair of new Vietnamese grass brooms that were going cheap. They're finer and more floppy than millet/straw, and I'd like to have a go at modelling that characteristic droop the cane has over the sides of the truck. The loads will likely need painting, so if that goes badly I'll bulk order some cheap millets instead..

That sounds the better way to go, for rope. Even before treatment it certainly looks better than dyed kitchen twine I've been using on other projects.
Will have to add some to the next Cornwall Model boats order.. Cheers!
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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by 11thHour » Tue Dec 28, 2021 9:04 am

https://www.thetraveltart.com/wp-conten ... tralia.jpg

Because they weren’t all that neat when they stacked them

Tim

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Re: New Wholestick Cane Trucks

Post by ge_rik » Sun Jan 09, 2022 1:33 pm

11thHour wrote: Tue Dec 28, 2021 9:04 am https://www.thetraveltart.com/wp-conten ... tralia.jpg

Because they weren’t all that neat when they stacked them

Tim
That certainly looks like a challenge - not just to model but to keep the wagons on the track!

Rik
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