Home made pine road bed takes first track.

David Starr wrote in news:4844376e$0$31752$ snipped-for-privacy@roadrunner.com:

*snip: Construction story*

Excellent idea. I've pushed track spikes in to 3/4" pine boards (on my test track) with little difficulty. I'll definately consider using pine for my track supports when I get to rebuilding my layout.

I've got a flat head screwdriver with a small notch cut in the bottom. I can put the track spike in there and push it in to the roadbed with little difficutly. This works well for the last 1/16" that the needle nose pliers sometimes miss.

Puckdropper

Not a fan of foam, but what ever floats your boat.

Pine is great stuff for roadbed. I used it for my home layout, and my club has been using it for 50 years or so.

A bandsaw? Never thought of that. I use a tablesaw. I buy 1x6" boards of "medium" grade, and pick, pick, pick through the wood pile at a "real" lumber yard (not Home Depot) to find straight and relatively knot-free boards. First I cut them in thirds to make 1x2" boards, then stand these on edge, raise the blade, then rip them to 1/4" thick using the rip fence on the table. There's no waste to speak of.

That seems...wasteful of pine. What I do is lay the roadbed down, and if it needs to curve, I cut slots in it with sabersaw upside down in a vice. Then I bend the roadbed to where it's gotta go, easements and turnouts included, cutting the roadbed to fit. At my club, we use turnout blocks. We mass produce 1/4" pine switch blocks out of pine for the various switches (#5, #6, #8) using the same techniques as above. Sometimes they use a planer for this, but not too often.

This is something I do on the tablesaw as well. Tilt the blade to 45 degrees, and run the pine through it, twice. The tablesaw has to he a lot faster, quieter, and neater than using a router (but if a router is all you got...).

This is one if the reasons I don't like foam. I hate glue. I nail down my pine roadbed to my plywood subroadbed with an electric brad nailer. Works great. And if you want to move it later, just pry it up carefully, and move it.

A planer? What about just using a block of wood with sandpaper around it? My joints haven't been that far off that I've need to use more than that.

1/2" holes are the best for this. I don't know how many times I've told the guys at my club to do this, but no, they insist on cutting a slot. It's a flaming PITA when you're under the table getting that Tortoise in, and the wire keeps snagging on the slot sides. Argh.

No kiddin'! ;-) Messy...

I agree, laying track from the switches out is generally good practice.

Good luck!

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************

On 6/3/2008 8:42 AM Pac Man spake thus:

A bandsaw is *far* better at ripping than a tablesaw (an operation known as "resawing"). The kerf is far thinner, meaning less wood wasted, and much thicker stock can be resawn with less power driving the blade.

Of course, if you don't *have* a bandsaw, as I don't ...

Blue and pink foam are handy materials.

I've built scenery, large model airplanes, molds for fiberglass items, etc...

It's a blast to work with.

1/2" GOOD GRIEF what do you need a open pit hole that big for????

Drill a 1/16" (or 3/32") hole put a piece of 1/16" (or 3/32") OD tube in the hole cut it flush to each surface (push it down until it's flush with the top, cut off the underside) run a piece of brass wire (or piano wire) inside the tube. Bend to hook into the point bars (grr can't remember the correct name). The top bend is much more easily made before puting it into the tube form the top (put a weight on it or have someone hold it in place). On the bottom (where you are going to attach the tortii or whatever) bend the wire to be parallel with underside of the plywood (laminated subroadbed ... whatever) create an oblong loop (parallel to the underside of the plywood and the elongated loop on the same line that runs through the center of the 1/16 or

3/32 tubing)) replace the tortii lever bar (not the fulcrum) with some piano wire (as large a diameter as you can make fit) attach the tortii so the new lever wire fits into the loop of the decending switch wire. If you use a U shaped piece of wire to hold the points half thrown and the tortii at mid throw, you can get the tortii positioned correctly with the loop. Attach the tortii to the plywood.

1/2" GEEZZZZ!!! Throw the installation instuctions for the tortii away.

At the club we mounted the tortii on some standard size (our standard) wood blocks and attached the wired to some molex connectors to we can pop off the connectors and replace the tortii in minutes should the need arise.

Paul

I agree, but you must admit that the table saw would be faster. BTW, would you say that the bandsaw would be give a better or worse "quality" for the cut? I've never ripped pine on a bandsaw before using a rip fence (even tho' I have used one to cut pine shapes), and I don't know how smooth the finish cut would be on one. I know my tablesaw cuts are real smooth, and I'm able to lay track on it without sanding or planing the surface.

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************

"David Starr" wrote in message news:48458e30$0$7051$ snipped-for-privacy@roadrunner.com...

Yeah, I'm one of those guys that would rather build up from a void than carve down to the shape needed. Besides, foam dust really annoys me. ;-) I can work neater with plaster (or rather, Unical) than I can with foam (I also didn't have much success using the hot wire method). BTW, do you cover up the foam with anything, or just paint it?

I do love bandsaws, but I just don't see much need in HO scale for large slabs of 1/4" pine. At my club, we've used some usual pieces because they either weren't sure where the track was going yet, or they were handlaying something extreme (like a No. 16 curved switch). But for home, I haven't needed anything like that. The question I have for you is can you get three pieces of 1/4" thick stock out of a 1x6"? I would think that the last piece would be only around

1/8" thick...

Actually, I don't. I only get two pieces of 1/4" stock out of my 1x2" boards that I cut out of the 1x6". The rest is almost all sawdust and splinters.

For laying the pieces out on the subroadbed, I draw it out full scale on the plywood, then bend the pine to fit the lines. For known switches, I have in the past cut the shoulder away on the diverging side of the switch path to make the joint a little easier. For unplanned switchers, I just kind of fake it in there with a triangle piece, then bring in the spur's roadbed. The switches themselves don't mind the gap, and when ballasted it all disappears anyways. Now if I was handlaying all my switchers in place, that'd be different (that's why my club uses switch blocks). But with my plastic switches (or with jig built handlaid switches), no big deal. I cut the slots about every 1/2" to 3/4" along the inside of the curve-to-be, and the depth of the cut is almost all the way to the opposite shoulder (like maybe 1/16" away from the top of the shoulder edge). You must cut it pretty deep to get it to cuve nicely. But since it's pine, it bends pretty good and doesn't snap unless you abuse it. Also, each cut must be darn close to identical in depth (I draw a cut line) so that the curve has no kinks in it. IOW, if you cut 99% of them to one length, and then cut one in the middle only 3/4 the depth of the others, you will see a distinct kink in the bending of the pine. BTW, for ballasting, my club tends to seal the surface of the roadbed with drywall mud (before laying ties) so that the ballast doesn't fall through to the floor (we use a lot of open spline construction for subroadbed). At my home layout that's not needed since I'm laying on plywood. Also, be advised that if you want to curve roadbed under a 30" radius, you may have to use a thicker blade to make the cuts. Using my sabersaw blade, the ends of the cut almost touch on a 30" curve (which is the min. on my layout anyways). For something like 18" radius, you'll probably have to use a tablesaw to make the cuts.

The router will do the deed, but lordy are they annoying to use. Stuff goes everywhere, and the noise...ugh. The sabersaw in the vice isn't much better, BTW, but at least it's not *as* loud, nor *as* messy as a router.

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************

Um, well, I don't cut a bending kerf into the 6" boards directly. First I rip the 1x6" boards into 1x2" boards, then rip these again on edge to 1/4" thick. Then I make relief cuts every 1/2" to 3/4" into the inside edge of any curve approx. 1/16" away from the opposite shoulder top. Bending a 6" wide x 1/4" thick piece of pine would not be fun as the cuts would have to very wide...like v-chaped...to make most any curve. Essentially what I'm making is Tru-Scale roadbed out of white pine, then cutting slots into it to bend it. BTW, last time I bought a 1"x6"x10' of medium pine, it was $10 (a few years ago). I was able to get 60' of roadbed out of it, for a price of around 17 cents per foot. Not bad.

Paul A. Cutler III

****************** Weather Or No Go New Haven ******************

On 6/4/2008 11:48 AM Pac Man spake thus:

A bandsaw *probably* isn't going to give as smooth a cut as a well-made tablesaw rip, so will require some smoothing (a couple passes with a hand plane would quickly take care of that). And it *is* harder to resaw on a bandsaw: you can't just push it through, as the blade will tend to wander. But all in all, it's the more appropriate tool.

But, as I said, an appropriate tool I don't have. So I rip on my (9") tablesaw.

On 6/4/2008 12:13 PM Pac Man spake thus:

You should be able to answer that yourself, keeping in mind how thick a

1x board is ...

"Paul Newhouse" wrote in message news:HJOdnZsgrtcSm9vVnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com...

'Cause I'm going through 3/4" spline subroadbed, 1/4" pine roadbed, and the 1/4" mounting pad our tortoise machines are screwed to with a 0.039" dia. piano wire. The wire flexes and needs some room to do so. It also cannot hang on the sides of any hole or you will get undesired operation (jerky movement, etc.).

Or, I could just put a long piece of piano wire into the Tortoise, feed it straight into the center of the throw bar from the bottom, center it, secure the Tortoise, test it, then snip off the excess wire, then trim the rest of the wire down to the surface of the throw bar with a Dremel cut-off wheel (if needed). No tubes, no bending wires, no hidden linkges under the bench, and it can be done by one person. Besides, why would I want a visible linkage on top of my layout? My club's way is faster, cheaper, and looks better, too. Not to mention easier to maintain and adjust.

You do know that with the two point ties and the throw bar covering it that you can't see the 1/2" hole? Unless someone is shining a spot light from underneath the layout, no one would ever know that there's even a hole there. Especially with Walthers/Shinohara switches (which is what my club uses...when they aren't handlaying them). And about the instructions...why not throw them away? We throw their

0.020" wire away as it is all but useless.

Ever replaced a Tortoise because it failed? We haven't. We've been using Tortoise machines by the hundreds for years. The only one I've ever replaced was one that got lobotomized when some knucklehead drilled down through the top of it and went right through the motor windings (you think he would have stopped when he hit green plastic, but noooo...). We do mount ours to mounting blocks made in a jig from 1/4" MDF. We used 2-56 bolts and nuts to hold the Tortoise on to the block, and use 1" drywall screws to mount the board to the layout. The blocks are roughly U-shaped, with two "fingers" that are on either side of the throw wire. First, after adding our wire harness, we mount the machine, then add the long 0.039" wire. This is fed from the bottom through the throwbar, then the machine is screwed the benchwork with a 1" drywall screw through the pad on the centerline of the machine and to the rear. This allows the machine to be turned slightly to adjust it. Once set, another screw is added to one of the "fingers" to lock the machine in place. We thought of using edge connectors, but we determined it was wasting time and money. Each machine has an 8-conductor cable soldered on the machine on the bench (which would have to be done anyways for an edge connector). Once the machine is installed, this cable is then routed to a terminal strip. If a machine needs to be replaced, we undo the 8 terminal screws, unscrew the two mounting screws for the machine itself, and drop the Tortoise. An edge connector would make sense if these machines had to be constantly replaced, but Tortoise machines are very dependable. Our club has installed hundreds (literally) on our layout that will eventually fill a

6300 sq. ft. room, and we even had ones on our old layout (pre-1998). We have never had one fail due to wear and tear (just drilling). FYI, our club's website is

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************

The key is to either set the fence for drift, use a single point fence, or tune the blade with a file.

A perfectly usable bandsaw fence is simply a straight board or metal shape clamped to the table, fine tuned with hammer taps. You don't have to buy an expensive fence for this tool. Expensive fences have a much more appropriate place on a table saw, where kick back due to parallelism is an issue.

A single point fence is where you use the corner of a board clamped to the table and aligned with the blade, and follow a rip line drawn on the edge of the stock. Here is an overcomplicated example:

To tune a blade with a file, you can LIGHTLY touch a file or grindstone to the moving blade, on the side the cut drifts towards. The cut is drifting because one side of the blade is sharper than the other.

We've installed the tubes through 1-1/4" laminated subroadbed sometimes with

1/2" of Homasote. The depth isn't really an issue.

Have fun cutting your 1/2" holes from the underside *8^)

Paul

-- Excuse me, I'll be right back. I have to log onto a server in Romania and verify all of my EBay, PayPal, bank and Social Security information before they suspend my accounts.

Working the rockie road of the G&PX

Depth is an issue with the simple, quick, and easy-to-use installation my club does. The greater the distance, the longer the wire, the more that wire flexes. IIRC, the Tortoise instructions say to use a 1/4" hole. Ha! The wire flexes when it's thrown all the way over. If the bending wire touches the sides of the hole during the throw, the point will actually go all the way over, then come away from the stock rail at the end of the throw. This is not good. If we have extreme subroadbed depths (exceeding 1 1/2"), then we not only drill a 1/2" hole through the roadbed, we also drill a 1" hole from underneath to give the wire more room to flex. FYI, I think we've only ever done this twice (out of hundreds of installations).

I did that once. It was enough. All other holes are drilled down from the top.

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************