Brake pipe mod?

Morning all

Well rather like the poor old overworked postie, I have been 'pushing the envelope' (see what I did there?) in modelling terms at least. Some may recall my adventures with making a slightly less toy-like flat-bed and digger load (a la LGB starter set).

With my recent experiments with using the brass hooks/chains on the box vans, I decided last night to take one off and apply it to the aforementioned flat. In doing so, it occurred to me that perhaps something remotely interestng could be done with the moulded brake pipe? I had some thin-ish rubber tubing courtesy of a garden irrigation kit which has been 'maturing nicely' in the shed for several months now, so I had a go with a piece of that.

I cut off part of the moulded pipe - leaving a stub behind so as to mount the new piece of rubber. At the other end I cut the fitting off at the stanchion and stuck the 'nut' bit of that into the other end of the tube. Here's the result:



Here's a better shot in close-up:



The tube looks a bit new, and possibly a bit on the thick side, but other than that I think it looks the part.

Comments welcome!

Looks fine to me Clive, and with a bit of weathering...

mikey

What about winding some wire round it to make it look like....wire wound pipe.

I made some once like that and used the very thin strands out of multi core low voltage cable.

I glued one end with a dab of superglue and wound it round quite tightly.

How about using a suitable sized coiled spring (similar diameter to a biro spring but a bit longer).... use a piece of thick copper wire down the middle (doesn't have to be a tight fit) to pose the spring and to help attach to the wagon stand pipe .... then get some heat shrink tubing to cover the spring and heat with a hair dryer or heat gun until the tubing shrinks and gives a ribbed appearance.

Sounds good Andy - I tried googling for heat shrink tubing, but it seems its a big old subject all of its own, and it seems most suppliers are to 'the trade' as opposed to Joe Public. Would you know of a source for this stuff? If I could get hold of some, I'll have a try to see how it looks.

Cheers mate, nice one.

Probably the easiest but most expensive place to find HST is Maplins ....

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?criteria=heat%20shrink&source=15

What diameter heat shrink tubing do you want. I have loads of the stuff all different diameters.

Or I'll send you a few samples to try.

It's cheaper here,

selectronic

It's called 'gaine thermo rectractable'.

Comparing Maplins they are more than twice the price.

I was looking at a site yesterday that talked about 12mm-down-to-3mm thin-wall tubing. I guess that would be a reasonable thing to try if you had anything approximating to that, but failing that anything really (colour is immaterial as I can spray it black if need be)

Do I need a special heat gun, or will e.g. a hair drier do the trick?

I just bring it close to the tip of a soldering iron

I will sort some stuff and post it.

A hairdryer on very hot will be ok watch out it doesn't blow everything away on 'high'.

A proper heat gun is best but be careful as there are heat guns to remove paint and light charcoal at about 2000watts and you only need about 250watts!

I wouldn't personally recommend a soldering irion except for tiny areas such as the terminals of small switches and components. You need an overall even shrinkage.

Much appreciated Carl - no hurry, I seem to have lots of little 'projectettes' on the go at the moment!