Janus Hammerhead 62' Bulkhead Flat Cars

Janus Hammerhead

HO Scale 62' Bulkhead Flat Car

These polyurethane flat car bodies are very easy to assemble.  You have to supply you're own couplers, trucks, screws, washers and weights.  I've used a variety of roller bearing trucks and both 33" and 36" wheelsets.  You use washers to adjust the height of the trucks in order to line up the couplers with your height guage.

There is no beam down the center so there is a ton of room for adding weight.  It's pretty cool that you can weigh them down without having to put a load on top.

I used my Cricut Explore to make some wood decks out of thin bass wood I picked up at Hobby Lobby for $3.  One piece of wood can make at least 2 decks.

I had no trouble negotiating 22" radius curves on my test track and the cars stayed together through all the grade changes I have.

It took me around 10 minutes to wet sand 1 body by hand and about 5 minutes when I used my Central Machinery 43533 slow speed grinder I got at Harbor Freight.  I also used the disc sanding configuration on my Zhouyu 6 in 1 Machine and that worked really well.  Probably the best configuration of that machine to date, but I haven't used the lathe yet.

Polyurethane makes a super fine dust and seems to be quite static.  Even when wet sanding the dust eventually dried and blew around the room a bit.  Definitely wear a dust mask with this project.

I tried both bondo and tamiya putty and they worked great.  Once cured, super easy to sand.  the bondo has the advantage in that it cures so fast.  It's totally possible to do several of these cars and put on the first coat of paint within an hour.

When you want a lot of flat cars real fast, these work.  They aren't even remotely close to being super realistic, but even a few details can make them appear impressive from a short distance.  In groups, they look pretty good.

Here's the ebay pix:

Zhouyu Machine 6 in 1 milling machine and lathe

Zhouyu Machine 6 in 1 milling machine and lathe

I've been looking at this thing on ebay for quite a while now.  I don't have any experience with milling machines, but I'm not getting any younger and the accuracy of freehanding a moto tool is getting worse.

I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a machine when I don't really know how they actually operate.  That's when I discovered the Zhouyu Machine.  It's a learning toy basically, and since I'm just learning, for less than $200 I could at least get an education.

The very few reviews and comments I could find about this machine are almost all totally negative, but have essentially the same reason:  not suitable to machine metal.  Since I work with plastic, I decided to dig deeper.  I found a video on youtube, that I didn't bookmark, that showed a guy setting this thing up into all of its different configurations and testing them.  He didn't have any negative comments and he understood this is not a machine for working metal.

Then he said something that stuck with me....the machine comes with tool blanks that you use to create your own custom tools.  I then talked to an old school machinist and asked him what he thought.  He told me that since it's a kit, the best course of action would be to use the machine to create improved components.  This seemed like a genius idea and I went ahead and bought it from prettyworthshop on ebay.

http://stores.ebay.com/prettyworthelectronics/

Here is the picture of the box:

The machine is super simple to put together.  Once you know how everything attaches it's a simple matter to configure the machine into any of models shown.  I even configured it to something not shown and it worked just fine.

Here are the component storage bins:

The first thing I made was the vertical mill.  I wanted to see if the machine was better than my freehand sawing.

So this was my first experience using a vertical mill.  I wanted to remove the grill from the top of an Athearn Blue Box U28C.  The vise is plastic and much too small for a piece this big.  Needless to say the accuracy wasn't that good.  But the solution to that problem is simply a better vise.  Also being plastic, the torque of the tool can push the piece out of alignment easily.  I did find that setting the depth of the cut is very important for accuracy, something that would have been obvious to an experienced machinist.  My depth had too much tool engaged at one time.  When I backed off, the accuracy improved considerably.

Since the speed is slower than a moto tool, there is a lot less melting during the cut, which I really liked.  To finish my cut I used a razor saw cutoff wheel and that made a huge difference.  The razor saw had no melting and the cut was very accurate.

A drawback is the short travel distance.  The vise has a wheel to move it an inch or two and the rail will allow you to move the vise several inches.

I placed the machine on top of some tool box liner that held it in place very well.  There isn't a lot of weight to hold it in place, but the liner is a bit sticky and held it nicely.

The next step for me is to build a better vise and give it more travelling distance.  Since every part is replaceable I don't think it will be much trouble to make something bigger.  Also, it's a simple matter to bolt the machine to the bench, which I haven't done, but that would increase accuracy quite a bit.

The machine has several collars so any dremel bit will fit this thing just fine.

MP40 fan housing

MP40 Fan Housing

So I needed to make a custom housing for the screens that cover the Maelstrom Death Touch fans on the MP40.  I fired up inkscape and made the screen cover and used my Cricut Explore to cut it out....turned out awesome....

This is the inskscape shape:

Here is the test cut on card stock next to the scribed styrene:

And here is how the test fit looks, it's just a bit off in this picture, but it fits perfect

The sound of starting a 40 cylinder diesel

Here it is the sound of the EMD 1290.

40 cylinders, 7200 horsepower, 4 turbos...

Cold Startup 40 cylinder diesel

MP40-1290 Preview

Here's the mock up preview:

First Bondo Day on the MP40-1290

First Bondo Day

First I had to finish the milling and rough sand most of the shell....

Next I assembled the blower housing

Using the chopper, I made some styrene panels and attached them with Plio Bond in case I made any mistakes.  Using Testors or CA is somewhat risky when fitting panels because the fit has to be perfect, with contact cement there is always the ability to make one more cut if you have to.

Now to mix up some bondo... that's about 2 tablespoons and half a cap full of hardener.  This will give 5 minutes of working time.

With 5 minutes, I can fill the sections and immediately trim the bondo while it's the consistency of rubber.  I can even clean my glass plate I use to mix it on.

5 minutes later.....not a huge amount of sanding to do and a nicely fill shell...

Maelstrom Death Touch 4000 Super Turbo 60" Fans

Maelstrom Death Touch 4000 Super Turbo 60" Fans

And the MP40-1290 project continues... here's a couple pics of the new fan set:

This is the proposed layout of a 40 cylinder 645 ceramic and teflon coated power plant:

The retro future builders plate:

And here it is in the box: