Wheel Castings

[Jason]

As most of you must know by now I am building a MW Duchess, and I am also quite new to Model Engineering.

My question is this, when you have finished turning the wheel castings, how long would you spend cleaning the spokes. Would you file them until nearly polished or just give them a general clean with a small file so once sprayed they are almost smooth?

Thanks in advance,

Jason

[Tel]

Up to you really Jason, take 'em as far as you want to. One thing tho' - it's best done BEFORE you machine 'em

[ron]

Hi Jason
It depends on the quality of the casting, if they're good just give it a light clean with a file to take the edges and casting flash off, it holds the paint better. I agree with Tel, do it before machining, it's sometimes worthwhile painting the spokes before machining as well.
Ron

[Laurie_B]

I would agree with Tel and Ron-its better to clean all the spokes before machining.That way you can attack the casting in the vice without any fear of marking the machined surfaces.
I used a old set of riffle files to clean off all the flash and unwanted lumps and bumps,and try and even up the vee section rim.

[Lurkio]

Hi Jason,
Like you I'm fairly new to loco building and I've had the same dilemma - how much time do I spend on cleaning up the wheels?
It's a laborious, time consuming job, depending on the state the wheels are in to start with. Just what you could do without at the start of the build, when it would be much better to get on with some interesting stuff.
After all, it's a cosmetic difference only, and full size locos don't have 'perfect' spokes.
My advice, though, is to do the job to your own satisfaction, no matter how much time and effort it's going to take. If you don't you'll always look at the wheels and say 'Why didn't I?'.
I've decided in my own case to press on and get my wheels as smooth as I can - a personal preference only. It's going to take me ages, though.
I agree that it's best to clean up before machining, though I have seen the opposite opinion, on the grounds that if you mess up on machining, all that time cleaning up was wasted.

Lurkio.

[baggo]

Hi Jason,

I find a decent set of diamond needle files to be ideal for cleaning up the castings. The surface can be very tough sometimes and it's hard work with ordinary files. I did try using the diamond burrs in a mini-drill but I found it difficult to avoid digging in, hence the change to hand filing. As mentioned, the quality of the castings vary a lot. The wheel castings for 'Helen' were dreadful and took ages to get looking reasonable. I have a set of wheel castings for a 5" Black Five and they are superb and will need little, if any, finishing.

I found a useful 'tool' for holding the wheels whilst filing to be a piece of flat bar with a hole drilled in it. The wheel casting is bolted to the bar through the axle hole and the bar clamped in the vice. The casting can be revolved as work progresses.

John

[Lurkio]

Jason,
Further to my previous posting, luckily my own wheels are proving to have very few hard spots requiring the use of a diamond file. As they need a lot of cleaning up though, I've taken a small hand file and ground the back smooth and shaped to allow me to get between the spokes. Grinding a rough radius along the edge provided a 'safe edge' so it leaves a rad at each end of the spoke rather than a sharp corner.
This allows me to quickly remove metal before getting down to finishing off properly with needle/riffler files.

Lurkio.

[John Lee]

jason said:

As most of you must know by now I am building a MW Duchess, and I am also quite new to Model Engineering.

My question is this, when you have finished turning the wheel castings, how long would you spend cleaning the spokes. Would you file them until nearly polished or just give them a general clean with a small file so once sprayed they are almost smooth?

Thanks in advance,

Jason

Hello Jason,

Perhaps take a look at a real loco, they are examples of precision engineering when anybody cared.

Your express loco was engineered to the highest standards in 100% scale. If you have the patience and want to follow the original get the castings dead smooth.and paint them almost gloss. The steam, heat and oil when you run it will deaden it down for almost a perfect effect.

I underestimated elsewhere at it taking 400 hours to complete this one. Yours will take much longer with this level of care, but it will be a beauty. Go for it.

Regards,

John

[3405jimmy]

Jason

Being a bit of a lazy sod and not wishing to spend days filing spokes. I used a small die grinder with a 1/8 cutter in it to buzz the flash away. Hard spots or not they all seem to fly the white flag when exposed to 1500RPM.

Reading everyone else’s replies I’m thinking it seems a bit rough compared to all files on offer. Admittedly my wheels are 10”plus and having crawled all over the real thing in Buckinghamshire, I think by the time we got to the fifty’s the most generous thing you can say about the General Steel Casting companies efforts was they were rough. So I don’t think my own will compare badly with the full size wheels.

Oh and of course a good undercoat and a generous top one covers most things.

Jim

[Deleted]

Jason,

I spent several hours scraping the spokes of 70013's right leading wheel at Loughborough earlier this year, using a piece of industrial-sized hacksaw blade, as shown at www.geocities.com/britanniabuilder/GCR0506/wheelcleaning.jpg

The castings are really quite rough - but maybe they were better in the pre-war days of the Duchesses?

Regards, John

[jgb7573]

Hi Jason,

I'm not sure from your original post whether your wheels are already machined or not. I know the advice has been to clean up the spokes before machining, but that's not a lot of good if you (or someone else) has already machined them. If they are machined already, just take care with how they are held in the vice (or otherwise) so that the machined surfaces are not damaged (use something soft between the vice jaws and the wheels, I use a bit of copper tube opened out and flattened). Then go to it and spend as much time as you like making them look good.