I Built a Box!

There was no need to make coffee tonight. All my train buddies from the North County Interchange Operating Group (NCI) are over at Packrat Paul's for train night. Sweet Marie is drinking with the Bunco group across the street. So I'm baby sitting. Not that I mind staying with Taylor, mind you, but she is asleep at 7:30 and I can't make loud noises. Arrgh!

I took a picture of the coffee to remind me to buy some more and some creamer.
After the accident last week I took a look at the saw like Glue Bob recommended. He was right, this is a finishing blade and not a cutting blade. Still, it was a heck of a knot.


The cutting blade for wood has gaps for clearing wood chips. This blade is for moulding.


I'm working on the gurney tonight. My camera ran out of battery power, so there aren't many pictures. Essentially I need to build a rolling carriage under the gurney. It needs to be strong to handle moving, and heavy to avoid tipping over. I'm going to build a box fram with a 3/4" thick plywood base to mount the castors on. Then I'll extend legs from the top frame to the box, and add another small shelf in the middle.
The frame is built on top of the 26" x 48.5" sheet of plywood using 3/4" plywood ripped to 3" boards. All joints are glued and screwed.
This "box" or fram will hold the legs and the castors. It will also hold items that I want to transport with the module.
I started putting an additional pad glued to the base to hold the castor bolts, then realized after I had drilled one that the castor mounting bolts weren't that long. I had to pull them up.
Then I realized the castors didn't come with a top nut. Damn. Ok, when nothing is going right, go upstairs and go to bed. More tomorrow!

Knots, Nuts and Nearly Done!

We were short a few folks tonight but still got more done than I thought we ever wood. Taylor went to be early after a hug from Glue Bob and we got straight to work with Coalfinger Ken and later Mark the Neighbor.


Coalfinger brought in his new fancy Porter Cable drill with the Lowe's flip it bit that is a drill/countersink and a screwdriver bit. I love it! Gotta have it!
I keep running out of screws so I took a picture of the 1 5/8ths drywall screws so that I remember to buy another box. May need more glue, too.
We started the evening buy putting the gurney up on fake legs. It is very sturdy and level. This area of the layout I was saving for myself to build for NMRA A/P points, but I decided to let it go and get it done. 2013 is not far away!
We put some temporary legs on with some handy and cheap clamps. You need clamps! Whenever you think you have enough, you don't, so buy more. Tell all your relatives to buy you clamps for your birthday. One day you'll have enough. My birthday is July 31st, by the way!
With the gurney up on stilts the crew was able to get an idea of what I was seeing in my head. They were quite surprised and gave me the normal "you're stupid" looks. I'm use to it so we moved on. The scenery is very deep and Reverend Rick will understand.
The base block was built with two3' boards. Nice and level with Concrete Keith's sturdy leg system.
With the base done we now started looking at the angle piece. Everything is 30 degrees from the wall. I had to go back upstairs and get more dimensions from the CAD system which took up some time.
INJURY! Our first really good injury happened tonight. It is the first time in the whole history of the group that we've had anything severe. Guess who took the shot! Bob asked me to cut a small block of a 2x4 so that we could use it as a support. Using my trusty hi-powered Dewalt chop saw I cut into what I thought was a clean board. There was a knot imbedded in the wood. It jammed the saw and the blade through the board back at me at the speed of light...and hit me right in the family jewels. I fell to the floor temporarily blinded as the board recocheted off the saw again and struck me just below the ribs. OUCH! I stayed on the floor on all fours unable to talk and then slowly got up and went up stairs to cry. I'm better now but have some very large and black bruises.

Here you can see how the gurney is going to look. It is MUCH bigger than the guys thought but there is still a lot of space in the layout room.

Mark and Bob werestled the poplar contact board into place as Ken and I tried to keep the gurney from moving.

Screws and glue were used at all joints. We don't want anything to move because it won't align with the moving gurney.

Next, we placed the long 8' poplar face board in and supported it with a 64" plywood board. Solid and level! I keep copies of all the detail drawings and notes on a bright yellow clipboard that is easy for the team to find when they need it. The clipboard backing helps keep the drawings from getting damaged and gives you a good writing surface. The bright yellow plastic makes it easier to find than the masonite clipboards.
Once all the supports were in, we finally got tired of tyring to decide how to put the legs in, so Bob grabbed a piece of L-girder and we just screwed one in.

Here is all the supporting benchwork! It's very big and deep, but that is what you need for O scale.
Naturally I just have to put a train on the table. Ken and Mark are tired at 11:30 pm so I'll send them on home.
Wow! I can see the scenery already!
A lot of work went in to this section, but the hard part is still to come. The mobile gurney leg/castor system is going to be tough.
We move the clamps down to give us a smooth surface. The nice poplar wood is pleasant to work with.

Went spent some time talking about the Penoles layout and there are some problems with it from a raffle layout standpoint. It still has merit as a stand alone layout and I will finish the project.

I also showed the team my adobe building model that now has vigas on it. They liked it but I hate the thing. Time to build another one.

Thanks guys for another great evening!

The Midnight Special

Our spring break plans were trashed yesterday so my wife gave me the night off! Hooray! So at 6:00 in the evening and during dinner, I start calling the crew to see who can come over. Bob and Paul were available so we started working on the benchwork again.

I put the coffee pot on, baked some cookies and headed to my sawdust covered paradise. Paul came in and we immediately started talking about his really cool layout under construction. He was telling me how the East Broad Top might be loaning his railroad some hoppers. Being an EBT fan I was all ears.

Bob came over shortly after and we began on the right hand side of the layout. We finished the cantilevers (two of them) and the joist, which were already cut by Steve and Ken the worknight before. We decided to put the first cantilever at the weak point which is also the narrow point of the layout, then the second one in the middle of the nine foot L-girder.



These both require cutting an angle that is steeper than the 50 degree limit of my chop saw. I'm not aware of a better way to do it so we were unsafely holding it and cutting by using teamwork. Later in the evening Bob was cutting a short piece by himself as Paul and I looked on. Little did we know that this 2x2 piece has a serious knot inside that was invisible to the naked eye. It went off like a gun shot and the saw through the piece at me like a bullet. It crashed about a foot away from my face and into the sheetrock. I staggered and caught my fall as I landed in the next room. I kindly excused myself, changed my underwear, and went back to work. I do wear safety glasses for just such projectiles. Needless to say it made me jumpy the rest of the night. Later in the evening the guys broke a small profile board and I hit the dirt, much to their delight.

Since the L-girders were pitched at an angle and not parrellel to the wall, we had to notch the 2x2 uprights to make them fit. We carefully measured, cut way the excess with a chiesel, test fit the piece, noticed it was upside down, and began the process again. I laughed way to much last night, amidst dodging flying lumber.

After finishing the left side, we grabbed a cookie and a fresh cup of Joe and headed to the left side. We completed another six feet of bench and then retired to the talking table.



The rolling table module which we are now calling "the gurney" has still not been finalized. The guys brought up some great ideas and I had a few as well. Still, nothing struck my fancy. Paul came up with an excellent idea of making a mock up so I grabbed to eight foot boards and Bob dropped in a 34" cross piece and we pretended we had the module. Paul and I moved it around and we really began to understand that it was huge! Nine feet won't work and neither will 34" wide, so it either has to be 8' x 32" or two pieces. I'm really not liking the option, so I'll think about it more this evening. I might need to change the trackwork, but the track is EXACTLY like the Billy's Island trackage and it will break my heart to move it around.


At midnight we decided to pack it up and walked back into the train room to gather our jackets when Bob got the itch to put up a simulated fascia board just to see how the layout would look. I had some 4" pieces of luan plywood scrap, so we screwed them in place and the layout is going to look GREAT!

It's great to have good friends that will drop what they are doing and come play. Steve, we missed you but we know you work long hours.

I've gotten a lot of requests to start the Swamp Stories again. These are coming from the guys on the On30 Conspiracy from several years ago when the swamp modules were being constructed. I think I'll crank them up or at least post some old ones. At the time I was constructing some scenic test modules for the swamp. Here is a picture of one section with a crossing and piling bridge. It was destroyed when the "water" I poured reacted with the sealing paint on the foam and devoured the module.