Starting to look like something, but noticed that the inside was getting crowed, good thing for the side shed. Turning my attention to powering the mill, I have always been fascinated with belt driven factories and the boiler from a stanza provided the start. Shortened the boiler and placed it on a LGB bridge pillar, it gave a nice look when painted looking like fire proof brick. Use the side rod and cylinder from a Lionel gold rush 0-6-0. Made a governor from styrene then turned my attention to the drive system. Unable to find suitable pulleys I made them out of Tim Holtz gears and wheels kit. Cut close to size PVC pipe and glued the wheels to them, and after a little red and silver paint I had some rather decent looking pulleys. Had 2 different sizes to work with so it gave it a little variety. As I moved along with the pulley system I found I needed some thing different, and tried to logically figure out how power got from one place to another. Ah below the floor, out of site out of mind. The first one I tackled was the log puller and found a gear looking wheel in the kit that small chain would fit on the cogs and figured I would let the ends drop below the floor. Added a drum and cable. Second one was the cutoff saw which I had to turn the table sideways cause I was running out of room which I use again wheels with a much smaller piece of PVC pipe then used a girls pony tail elastic holder for the belt. Last 2 were the same idea transferring the power from wide pulley to small width. Unable to get the pony tail holder below the floor with out cutting and trying to secure, I used small styrene tubing with a paper clip straightened and inserted in it then bent to the curvature of the pulley and dropped thru appropriate placed holes in the deck. used this in 2 places 1 being the saw blade drive. The wide pulleys I used elastic banding used for sewing in waist bands of slips and such.
Are you planning on 'spinning the blade'? There are (were) some good FREE sound files on google search for "steam saw mill." I downloaded one a few years back that was almost 2 minutes long and downloaded it to a cheap single file mp3 player from radio shack. Too bad RS no longer exists. Last year in halloween time my local Michael's had a unit for use with decorations of haunted house etc. 24+ hours on 9v batt. It had a 'record button' for changing the sound by clipping 'headphone cord' to speaker connections. Kit came with 'headphone cord' full instructions and a cheap USB memory stick with a dozen other sounds. Just an idea for future thought.
Tom Trigg
excellent idea, I'll keep my eye out at the craft stores, still don't have anything on the ground yet, going to see back surgeon middle of next month and hopfully they can do something. in the mean time I will just continue my metroplis and fleet of engine/cars. Did you ever see if you had any pictures of your sawmill? Bill PS when I was looking up stuff about sawmills I found were some guy made a working g scale one, crazy
Just a thought--one of our "One-page project" columns used old smartphones as "speakers" for sound effects. I'll bet you could do the same for sawmill sounds.
Rene Schweitzer
Classic Toy Trains/Garden Railways/Model Railroader
yes and Tom Trigg also gave me some good ideas, thanks, Bill
Back when Cell Phones were simply a portable phone and electronic folks were flooding the market with cheap mp3 players I bought a dozen $10 players. Then to radio shack for some cheap speakers, wires and headset plugs. Great sound, but with drawbacks. #1, cannot be left outside. #2 recharging every night.
A neighbor, 3 doors down, has an N scale layout and he has 'salvaged' about 30 'recordable greeting cards'. He replaced the battries with a 2 volt power supply and has switches around the layout so he can turn on only the sounds he wants. Not too sure how they would survive outdoors. As a senior electronics engineer he did a modification so the 'sound card' will run continiously.
Yea, I got one of those cards for Christmas 1 year had santa sitting on the "throne" and when you opened the card you got different outhouse sounds, too funny
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