Option 5 use readily available 3mm sheet* or 3mm Black flat stock and adjust the stretches etc to suit the change in length.

You will have to do this with all plate on the older designs as sheet material is now sold in metric thicknesses.

Frames are not a good thing to make from Bright steel as it will tend to move when you cut out teh axle boxes

* Reeves sell sheared plate in suitable sizes for many loco frames or your local lazer or water jet cutter can provid ea couple of strips if you don't want them fully lazer cut. M-Machine do 3×100 Black flat

J

Edited By JasonB on 29/01/2014 20:13:49

Hi Dominic

Jason is 100% right, use black 3mm plate. Bright or cold rolled steel has a nasty habit of trying to imitate a banana. I am not saying that black or hot rolled steel will not, but it is less prone to it. I once tried to stress relieve some 1/8" x 3" BMS, it had more umps and ollers than the rocky road to Dublin when it came out of the oven (not domestic) . It went straight in the scrap bin.

Hi Dominic

Go to http://www.modelengineerslaser.co.uk they will cost about £60 all cut out and holes spotted

Regards

Stan

hi dominic,

ive made all my loco frames out of steel plate. these days instead of 1/8" it will be 3mm as commented on above. personally ive never had a problem with 3mm steel strip, though scale on surface so not quite BMS. be careful if you go down the laser cut route as the edges etc become quite hardened. personally i think there is an awful lot of satisfaction to be gained from making the frames yourself from 3mm strip rather than laser cut. an 18 per inch tooth hacksaw blade makes very quick work of same, and the 9F frames arent complicated. just be careful when you get to the throatplate on the boiler – the original design is a bit 'iffy' and has caused quite a few problems. a proper double flanged throatplate would be far better IMHO

cheers,

julian

I once tried to make frames from BMS. What a disaster!!!! I braced it, heat/stress relieved it and it still came out like a banana!

Hi Dominic ,

When making frames out of steel which might warp it is useful to do a preliminary cutting out and then go back and do the final profile .

Mark out the frames in fine felt tip pen . Cut away all the bulk material and especially slots like the axlebox openings .

If material distorts it doesn’t matter .

The in plane distortion you just leave and the out of flatness will be easy to correct .

Mark out again using scriber and accurately finish to profile .

Regards ,

Michael Williams .

Wot, no guillotine? Mind you I've only got room for a baby guillotine, capacity 1/8" by 4 feet, for mild steel. I normally cut to size on my guillotine, but if I was really concerned about the sheared edges I'd leave 1/8" to 1/4" per edge for clean up.

Regards,

Andrew

Evening all,

No doubt some of the steel plate supplied today as frame material will distort as the stresses are relived and probably the same will happen with water jet cutting should the material retain stresses from its rolling. Years ago old man Kennion at one time supplied what he called "normalised" steel plate for frames and excellent material it was. Cutting it out was a pleasure, a drop of cutting oil on the blade and it would sail through the plate like a knife through butter. I must be reasonably lucky for all the frames I've cut out over the years I cannot recall ever having a problem with distortion. I must be one of the last model engineers not to use water jet / laser cut frames and components, marking out and cutting frames is one of the simpler operations when building a locomotive.

Regards,

Bob

Norman,

Actually three gliders! Although that will soon be two, as it looks like the syndicate has finally sold the Janus, payment this week if we're lucky. A shame in its way, but I haven't flown it for some years, two of the syndicate members have died, and some of the remainder were not paying their annual dues. I'm happy that I've had a lot of fun, and a few wobblies, in it over the years. A highlight was a diamond height in it while doing a site check at Aboyne. On the downside breaking cloud over Aboyne at 1200 feet was a bit hairy.

My guillotine is an Edwards 'Truecut', bought secondhand on Ebay.

One can never have enough toys, although I'm running out of space. I see that one of the dealers has a full size Burrell SCC for sale. But sadly out of my price range. On the flying side a P51D would be nice, but would require a serious lottery win.

Regards,

Andrew

When I cut out my BMS sheet frames for my 5" KING (20 years and still not finished) I had them sheared over size and then hacksawed down to width(hight). This took the stresses cause by the shearing out of the plates and they remained perfectly flat. Possibly because I did not really know what I was doing then.

Martin