Holding tiny crankpins

One of the problems in building the Japanese 0-4-0T is that the crankpins are very small (about 1.0mm diameter) screws with a plain head, i.e. round, with no slot to stick a screwdriver in. To get around this I made a small collet-type spanner which gripped the head of the pin and allowed me to easily screw them in and out while test fitting the rods. It took a while to make but also saved me hours of frustration. And lost crankpins. It's a piece of 2mm silver steel with the end turned down to ease access, drilled to the diameter of the head on the lathe and with the end slit and pinched slightly to grip the pin.

The photo shows one of the pins in the spanner/wrench/whatever-you-call-it. It would be fairly easy to make one from plastic tube.

Current Projects

The current projects I have nearly finished are:

• A Backwoods Bagnall 0-4-0T, which only really needs painting
  
• A Japanese HOe 0-4-0T obtained via Pete McParlin at Backwoods
• A Backwoods Yorkshire Engine Co. 0-4-4T "Lancashire"

Here are the three of them sitting in low winter sunlight on the kitchen table...

Starting out

I'm setting this up in the hope that it will get me kick-started into 009 modelling again. The blog title says it all. I nearly finish lots of things.

So I'm going to use this blog to hopefully publish some of my efforts, get some feedback and get something finished. Incidentally, my current layout project is intended to be a South African industrial line in the 1950's, which should give me the chance to build and run some nice Backwoods miniatures inducstrials as well as their NGG16.