The Completed Baseboards

With a busy schedule, again progress has been slow, but I am glad to say that at last, the two baseboards are complete and have been joined using fixings from a redundant bed from work that was at the end of its life (I manage rented accommodation for students and young professionals).

Back in the kitchen workshop, (only available when my better half is out of the house) and as with the last board, I started by gluing and screwing the end rails and the straight back rail to the baseboard top.

After this I added the cross members and came to the front rail with the compound curve in it. As mentioned before the plan was to use two layers of 6mm bendy MDF laminating them to form the curve.

While cutting the wood I allowed an extra millimetre clearance should any discrepancy's happen, in the end the MDF soaked up the PVA and expanded quite a lot, I managed to hold most of the expansion screwing small batons over the relevant places. Where I was not able to do this the deviance from the original curve has only been 1 or 2mm at most. At leaset all of this will be covered by the final profile board! Next time I will experiment with just one layer of bendy MDF as I don't think the rigidity of the overall structure will be compromised too much.

Next the bottom board was glued and screwed in place and again access holes were cut using the jigsaw. The two boards were then taken back up to the hobbies room and clamped together ready to drill the holes for the metal inserts.

M5 socket head bolts to match the inserts were also salvaged from the bed. I managed to get a total of 16 inserts and plenty of screws allowing four bolts per baseboard join to be used. The one thread from each of the pairs of inserts have been drilled out to 6mm so that the bolt can pass through. I did this so that the head of the bolt has a hard surface to bare against rather than just the wood and to prevent he hole from being enlarged by the thread of the bolt. I had designed a version of the pattern makers dowel, which are recommended by John de Frayssinet of County Gate fame, the only difference being they would be large enough to have a hole through the centre to accommodate an M6 or M8 bolt. I will save that design for my next project!

Next up...

I need to decide which surface to build the track on. Chris Nevard, in his recent article in Model Rail, recommends making the track directly on the top of the baseboard by drawing the track layout on the board, gluing the sleepers down and once dry, soldering the track in place. Another method I have used in conjunction with Alan French at Cardiff MES, is to stick the sleepers to the printed track plan with double sided tape and to solder the track to the sleepers, once assembled pulling away the paper backing and pinning & gluing the whole lot down.

Again, writing the blog and airing various ways of doing things really puts things into perspective and Chris's method starts to seem much more simple and straight forward!!

This is my first layout, and while having helped to make a couple of points at the club, I don't have much experience of copper clad construction, so please do comment if you have any top tips or any other methods of producing the copper clad track work.

The Kitchen Workshop

It has taken what seems like a lifetime, but at last, one of the baseboards is finished. I might however add some hand holes to aid transportation, but can be done retrospectively. The kitchen has been employed as my makeshift workshop of late as, although the cutting and routing have taken place outside, most of the construction has been done inside to avoid the bad weather!

First off I routed the rebates into the end rails and cut the holes in the cross members.

I then glued and screwed baton to both of the above to enable a good fix to the top & bottom boards and the side rails.

Next I fixed one end rail to both side rails and fixed the top board down to the end rail, matching the end of the board with the rail. I then fixed the other end rail to the top board again making sure the end of the board and the rail were in alignment lengthwise. I then fixed the side rails to the end rails ensuring everything was in alignment.

I could have glued and screwed the end rails and side rails together to start, then added the top board, but I felt it was better to align everything with the top board using that as the datum as I went along to ensure higher accuracy.

After the end rails were in place I fixed the cross members in place and added the bottom board, effectively making it a closed box with no way in...

...Apart from, of course, adding the access holes in the bottom. 

And there you have it! One monocoque baseboard that should stand the test of time and hopefully some rounds on the exhibition circuit!! 

Next up: baseboard two. 

Another Old Kit On The Workbench

This time an Ian Kirk offering of a GWR Mink C Dia. V7 Van. Like the Low Siphon it was purchased on ebay, a great source of seemingly unavailable kits but with some patients and the ability to save searches on the mobile app, it isn't too long before older kits like this that are no longer in production come up for sale. If you are into modelling the GWR, then a good source of information regarding both RTR and Kit based offerings is the GWR Modelling site which has lots of information, including the relevant diagram numbers that the models relate to and notes detailing variations that are possible through modification.

One thing to note about the kit which went together quite smoothly is the roof which is formed from a sheet of plasticard rather than being an injection moulded item, which can be seen by the deformation of the roof line as a result of the thin plastic, this will need the addition of laths at each end of the roof to complete and in future would benefit from a roof rolled from brass sheet.