Yuletide riveting

It’s a busy time of year for certain, but it turns out that installing Archer rivets doesn’t take that long. This is the last step before things get black.

622’s boiler jacket

According to the erecting card, #21’s boiler jacket was “Planished Iron” when she emerged from Baldwin’s shops. What colour that was is almost anyone’s guess, I think. I doubt it was true Russian iron, but as that was also planished, I figure the boiler was probably a similar colour – which is to say some […]

For the next locomotive

I’m about to cover all the parts of 622 in primer, and will soon forget some of the details of construction. These will be important when I go to build 622’s sister locomotives. For future-Rene’s benefit, here is a list of construction notes, design improvements and wire sizes. wire Sizes Boiler handrails .02 Phosphor Bronze […]

Cricut makes quick work of tapered course

The original tapered boiler course took about a week of fitting, filing and filling before it was acceptable. Now, the process to draw the shape may have been painful, but cutting it out with the Cricut took all of five minutes. Because the two boiler sections are actually quite accurately formed, it took very little […]

Re-drafting the taper course ends in a draw

I first noticed the crack in 622’s taper course when I was putting together the slides for my recent clinic on modern tools. Just before going to prime all the parts, I decided there was no point in seeing if it was serious enough to fix. I made the original taper course from .010″ styrene, […]