I have yet to see a sider cutter plier that cannot be notched by genuine piano wire! Dremel cut-off wheels were invented to cut piano wire.:shade:
slightly off topic, but Where do you buy replacement parts for a Dremel? (i have one of those generic ones), as i snapped my cutting wheels. thanks in advance
Alexander, those wheels are available from the advertisers here on trainBoard, and at most hardware stores and hobby shops, even at Sears. Sears has no guarantee on electrical items, but they do carry all sorts of accessories for the Dremels they sell. If you strip out the little plastic gears inside a Dremel tool, send it to the factory and wait. Aircraft supply carries diagonal cutter pliers made to cut music wire, and most of those are made by Weiss. (None are made in China yet), that I know of. Mine were made 30 or more years ago and are still going strong. I have seen people rock these pliers back and forth trying cut through too big a diameter, and that will break off a chip too.
Well I was going to say Home Depot carries most of the Dremel and Royobi (sp?) parts but I see you are in Australia and I'm not aware of the availability down under. I have broken many cutoff wheels, too many to count. The problem with those things is that they are very brittle. They gain a lot of strength when they are rotating at significant RPMs but when the motor tool is shut off, you can break a cutoff wheel practically by looking at it crooked. After breaking one cutoff wheel after another by being careless with the motor tool (setting it down wrong, bumping it, etc.), I bought a large quantity of replacement cutoff wheels - like a 25 pack maybe. Make sure you wear safety glasses at all times when using the motor tool!! There is no replacement for safety.
If you are using the thin Rubberoid cutoff disks, do not press hard, let the wheel do the work gently and hold very still while feeding the wheel straight down into the cut slot. Any deviation will shatter the wheel! They may 'polish' on their side, but not intended for that. Yes wear a full face shield, because at 18k rpms pieces of the wheel fly like bullets and will put holes in your face and eyes! If you are not using the flex-shaft head to cut rails squarely, rest the body of the Dremel tool on a rail, then gently and slowly rock the disk down to make your cut. Rocking up and down allows the wheel to shave a bit off the sides, so the wheel does not have to bend as it gets deeper down in the groove and break. Rocking also allows the rail to cool a bit between cuts, to prevent melting plastic ties.
thanks Jasonboche and Watash no, we dont have those hardware shops here, but we have ones like them (huge warehouse type feel, discount, to quote their ad "everything except milk", you could get enough stuff there to build a house, when i'm in there next, i'll have a look for them yeah, mine, being a CHEAP one (dont worry, its my first one, i'm only 14, there will be a long time for more expensive brands later lol), spins at 10,000 revs without a load, its more like 5-8 000, depending on how hard i press (usually lightly when cutting), but, when sanding, its pretty hard yeah, i always wear goggles when cutting thanks for your help btw, Watash, you honestly deserve your title lol
Stopped using code 100 30 years ago when I stopped using Atlas track. Current railroad is code 70 on the main & sidings, code 55 on industry sidings and some spur tracks and even some code 40 on lightly used spurs and abandonned sidings. My layout isn't large. It's all up close and personal and I use nothing but hand throw switches.
Mine is all N scale, but the multi-scalar stuff is this: Wen I changed focus of eras and roads from BN in Idaho to DRGW in Colorado, I should have torn out the whole layout, reesigned a new one, and rebuilt fresh, rather than sticking with what I had,a nd not being happy with it. I shoulda never EVER built the layout to be semi-permanent, bolted to the walls, and the backdrop should have never been glued to the walls, either. That was a lot of repair work, and I don't wanna do that again.
I hear that.. My whole layout is built to be moved. I built this one modular style and nothing is bolted to the walls. There's no section larger than 6' long or 2' wide. The main buss (DCC) is equipped with quick disconnects and all track that spans sections can easily be cut with a dremel w/cutoff disk. Also there are no switches that span any joint. After moving 7 times I learned! I hope I never move again, but as they say... Never say NEVER!!!
John, I just love your sig line.... That's a good one! I have moved 3 times across country, and several times in the local area, during those 3 moves. I have moved so many times, I lost count of how many in the last 7 years. Anyways, I am finally learning to build a layout that is built to be moved. I am hard-headed as my wife says... mg:
Choose your switch hardware carefully! Over the past couple of weekends, I have been installing the Tortoise and Hare's I purchased from Hutch. Wow, cannot say enough good things about him or the products. The Tortoise/Hare combo has me now focused on the 12 Peco switches and motors in the lower staging yard. The Hare allows you to easily and simply add LEDs to tell you the position of the switch. Something I desparately need on the lower level. So, do I rip out the Peco motors and put in 12 Torti/Hares or what? Web research showed the answer and the delimema. For about 4 bucks, the PL13 peco switch glues to the bottom of the switch machine motor and now I can wire the LEDs pretty simply using local track power. But installing the PL13 swiitch to an already installed switch was not trivial, oh, how I wish I would have sorted out my switch theory better before I ever built the first L girder. At least, Joe Daddy is getting some semblance of signalling on the pike. The LED switch position indicators are really useful! Lesson learned? Sort out my switch machine strategy including signaling before you start. If I did that, I'd never get the first train to roll! Joe
ummmmm, this is a noob question, but what is a buss? is it somthing that carries somthing, like a real bus?
Just a fancy word for a wire that runs under the layout that carries electricity, to which feeder wires are connected, the tracks are also connected to, supplying electricity to the layout.
Alexander, In this case, the buss (with 2 s) typically refers to a circuit that carrys something to be distributed. As an example, the main power box to your home is a 'power buss' where all of the electrical connections have a common connection. In the case of the DCC buss, it can refer to two two wires that go to the track in the case of lenz, it is the JK wires. Those DCC layouts that do not use block detection typically have a couple of heavy gauge wires running around the layout to serve as a DCC buss where short feeders can run from the 'buss' to the track. It would also be ok to refer to the DCC network as a common buss as well, as it would be a network buss, but that is not the typical reference within the train crowd. Oh, and within the power box, the 'rails that interconnect the circuit breakers is referred to as the buss rail. Hope this helps. Joe
ok, so, for DC operation, its just a pair of wires that follow the layout around? (with feeders going up to the track?
My woulda coulda shoulda is pretty simple. I'm the kind of person who thinks he can think his way out of any problem, but sometimes you just gotta get your hands dirty. I really should've started building my layout a lot sooner. I really missed out on years of just watching trains run and fiddling with stuff in my spare time. Perhaps I just wasn't ready yet.
My woulda, coulda, shoulda, is that I wired my indicator lights from an electrical switch, instead of from the point rails, to indicate which way a turnout was thrown. This works most of the time, but the few times I got a false light, I had a train wreck of some sort. I have had several times when the lights show the turnout set for the diverging route, then have a wreck when the train does NOT diverge and plows into standing cars! A grain of ballast prevented the points from closing, or the Peco spring snapped the points back due to a faulty throw, or a bug got caught preventing the point rail from closing. This time, I will wire the lights directly from the point rail, so if the point does not close, I can instantly know there is trouble at that turnout and be able to fix it before having to repair some rolling stock.
