Especially for the rivet counters - A rivet spacing technique

[tramcar trev]

The prototype I'm building as a cover for the track cleaner has rows of neatly spaced rivets and I'm thinking what a job, marking out for those.....
I came up with this idea using my elcheapo cad program but "word" would do it as well.
Set up to draw dotted lines with the pitch of the dots at the required spacing, then cut out the rows into strips and spray the reverse with a light coat of adhesive and apply to where you want your row/s of rivets.

Then is't a relativley simple matter of drilling holes on the dots and peeling the paper off leaving a row of neatly spaced holes for one to stick ones Russian rivets through....
Errr wait a sec, I'm being told you can get strips of self adhesive rivet heads that just stick on at my local war gamers shop....
Too late for me, I've got the Russian ones....

You can see in the pic on my prototype the placing of the rivets and my rows of holes have a line running between them that line is to allow me to line the rivets up with the corners and fold the paper around.....

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[vsmith]

Looks like a Dr Loveless creation from "Wild wild west "

 

[Ray Dunakin]

What the heck is that prototype?? I've never seen anything like it.

Nice idea on the rivets, I'll have to remember that one!

 

[PaulRhB]

Simple as all genius ideas are
But what is it???????

 

[tramcar trev]

Have a look here; http://www.gscalecentral.net/tm?high=&m=262663&mpage=1#262795 < Link To http://www.forum.gscalece...p;mpage=1#262795
Or google "Balmain Dummy"
In essence it was a giant counterweight system exactly similar to the operating system on a sash window.....
Having visited my local war gamers shop they have self adhesive rivets however they are tooooooooo small and tooooooo finely spaced....

 

[Ray Dunakin]

Ah, I see. Very interesting!

 

[Woderwick]

Great minds as they say, here is a similar option. At the risk of hi-jacking, (not intended) here is some additional.

I prefer to use the "cladding" method, with a little variation, I use two layers. The first part is the familiar punching of the rivet detail from a piece of 20 thou styrene sheet, the templates I drew are shown here. There nothing really hi-tech about this procedure.

Here is a picture of the toolkit. A good steel rule, compasses, paper templates and the riveting tool. This is a piece of brass rod that has a steel point on the end with a drop hammer made from a piece of lead wrapped around a slider. The higher you raise it, the bigger the rivet, and its consistent.

The picture here shows the tool placed in a small nick that has been pierced in the template by a compass point. Since the eye will most notice any rivet deviating from a line, rather than a rivet being slightly closer that it's neighbour I work looking down the "long" side of the template, with the line going away from me. The templates are held to the styrene with tape. Make sure you have plenty of light on the job.

The same procedure was performed for the smokebox front. The templates were produced together so that the rivets on the wrappers matched up. Again its really noticeable at the sharp end if they get out of sync as they go around the smokebox. The green arrow was to remind me to place the "best end" to the front. You can see that the rivets follow the edge of the tube nicely. This is where the two layer method comes in I mentioned.

[font="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"]Since the styrene wont stick very well to PVC tube with the usual styrene welds my preferred choice is to use the thinnest Cyano I can get my hands on. Since getting a six by two inch wrapper positioned accurately with an instant glue is very difficult I cheat, I use two. The first 20 thou wrapper is stuck to the PVC tube, this has no detail and is just wrapped around and trimmed off, this allows a little licence. The next wrapper to go on is the rivet detail and now I have a piece of styrene to stick it to I have time to [/font][font="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"]manipulate it as I apply the usual poly weld stuff[/font]

Bye bye.

 

[Tony]

I say wodders that's very cleaver and looks brilliant