Building a layout on a rotisserie

[hon30critter]

rrinker

I had one of those oil filled radiator electric heaters. They take a while to bring things up to temperature since there is no circulating fan, but once warmed up, you can leave them on and they don't run continuously. There is tons of residual heat in the oil and they stay nice and warm even after the thermostat kicks off the heating element.

Hi Randy,

I'll have a look at oil filled heaters.

Thanks,

Dave

[rrinker]

 There's a reason I don;t have a table saw, and that's because most anything I would want to use it for requires manipulating sheet goods which are far to heavy for me to manage by myself, and doing such things is exactly what makes a tool dangerous.

 Even older radial arm saws have directional arrows on them - they're there for a reason, as Mr Jaw Wired Shut found out too late.

 If you want safe efficient heating - to heat my old basement, I had one of those oil filled radiator electric heaters. They take a while to bring things up to temperature since there is no circulating fan, but once warmed up, you can leave them on and they don't run continuously. There is tons of residual heat in the oil and they stay nice and warm even after the thermostat kicks off the heating element. And they never get very hot, either - not likely to ignite stuff, even paper or cloth that might fall on it somehow. Had one in our old office in the basement workshop, too. That wasn't a very large space - it easily overwhelmed it and could make it far too warm if some joker turned it up. Same 1500 watt rating as the typical coil of nichrome wire space heater, but because they can frequently shut off the heating element and continue to warm the room, they use much less power. Mine had wheels, too, so easy to move around out of the way.

                                  --Randy

[richhotrain]

gmpullman

 

Track fiddler

A radial arm saw!  Yowza!  Overhead bite and grab saw they should have called it. 

My mother bought me a Sears Craftsman 10" Radial Arm Saw for high school graduation back in '74. Still have it, still runs great, still no blood stains on it 

I recall the machinery we used in high school shop class back then! OSHA would have a fit! (not to mention the chemicals) .

Of course my compound-sliding miter saw gets 90% of the crosscut work now but I still turn to the Radial Arm every now and then.

Cheers, Ed 

All power saws scare me. I operate any power saw with the most extreme caution and care that I can muster.

Rich

[NorthBrit]

All this talk of temperatures.

At the moment (1300hours) outside the temperature is at a dizzy height of 32f (0c).

David

 

[gmpullman]

Track fiddler

A radial arm saw!  Yowza!  Overhead bite and grab saw they should have called it.

My mother bought me a Sears Craftsman 10" Radial Arm Saw for high school graduation back in '74. Still have it, still runs great, still no blood stains on it 

I recall the machinery we used in high school shop class back then! OSHA would have a fit! (not to mention the chemicals) .

Of course my compound-sliding miter saw gets 90% of the crosscut work now but I still turn to the Radial Arm every now and then.

Cheers, Ed

[hon30critter]

Track fiddler

And a radial arm saw!  Yowza!  They quit making those things for a reason.  

Hi TF,

I fully understand the dangers involved with using a radial arm saw. I used to work for Sears Canada in the Hardware dept. and I have been involved in the sale of quite a few of the beasts. That exposed me to the horror stories of how nasty a RAS could be if you messed up with it! I recall one incident where a furious customer came into the store with his jaw wired shut. Despite the loss of speech he had absolutely no trouble communicating how terribly unhappy (to put it mildly) he was with Sears having sold him a radial arm saw. What he had tried to do was rip a 2x8 in half (why he didn't just buy 2x4s I didn't ask). Unfortunately he fed the plank into the saw the wrong way. That resulted in the blade grabbing the board and firing it furiously out of the saw whereupon it proceded to bounce off a concrete wall and come straight back at the gentleman, striking him very hard in the jaw. Retail teaches you to keep a straight face when you are dealing with idiots!

The bottom line is that I exercise extreme caution when I am using the saw, especially if I am ripping something. I have had good use of my RAS. I have built furniture, bathroom cabinets and much more with it and I still have all my fingers. Recently it has served me well when building the benchwork for my new layout. I have thought about replacing it with a compound miter saw, but a new saw on a stand will take up just as much room in the garage, and I will lose the use of the RAS table which is a very convenient workbench, and a compound miter saw won't do nearly as many things as a RAS will!

Cheers!!

Dave

[Track fiddler]

Hi Dave

A radial arm saw!  Yowza!  Overhead bite and grab saw they should have called it.  They quit making those things for a reason.  

You are one of the most intelligent people I've known here Dave.  Your rotisserie layout

 

Just saying though

 

 

 

TF

[hon30critter]

Track fiddler

Dave, ...Please do me a favor and yourself one too! Install a gas line out to your garage and have a regulated overhead gas heater in check just like the one in your house please. 

Hi TF,

Thanks for your concern, but I don't think that installing a gas heater in the garage would be worth the expense. I understand your feelings about using a small electric heater, but as I said, I don't plan on leaving it running overnight, or even for more than two or three hours during the day when I am around.

There are a couple of issues with a gas heater that would complicate the installation. One is that I only have 7 ft. ceilings. That pretty much precludes mounting a gas heater on the ceiling because I would be constantly banging my head on it. The other issue, as I mentioned before, is that I have my radial arm saw in the garage. My grandfather suffered a sawdust explosion in his garage and I don't want to repeat his mistake.

The bottom line is that I will only need to warm the garage on rare occassions when something needs to set or dry. Otherwise, the garage won't get cold enough to impair my modelling.

Cheers!!

Dave

[Track fiddler]

hon30critter

 

 

hon30critter

I have a 1500 watt heater but it looks way too small to do the job, and I am reluctant to leave it on unattended.

 

 

Well, my lack of faith in the tiny 1500 watt heater seems to be unwarranted. I left it on for about three hours and when I went back out to the garage the temperature was quite comfortable and I couldn't detect any hot spots on the fan housing. In fact, the fan housing wasn't even warm. I won't leave it running at night, and I will install a smoke alarm in the garage, but for now it seems the little fan will do the job just fine.

Cheers!!

Dave

 

Yikes!

Dave, ...Please do me a favor and yourself one too!

Install a gas line out to your garage and have a regulated overhead gas heater in check just like the one in your house. 

You won't have to watch it or worry about it anymore.  You can have the low temperature set to 40 degrees when you ain't out there.

I would feel much better about that down here in Minnesota thinking about you up there in Canada knowing you are safe at night and in the day as well if you would please

 

You know this will be way more cost effective in the long run   

AND SAFE!!!   That one time you forget 

 

 

Track Fiddler

[hon30critter]

The PL300 foam adhesive was delivered yesterday so I applied it to the open joints today. Hopefully it will set up fairly quickly with the small heater keeping the garage at a reasonable temperature.

Dave

[hon30critter]

hon30critter

I have a 1500 watt heater but it looks way too small to do the job, and I am reluctant to leave it on unattended.

Well, my lack of faith in the tiny 1500 watt heater seems to be unwarranted. I left it on for about three hours and when I went back out to the garage the temperature was quite comfortable and I couldn't detect any hot spots on the fan housing. In fact, the fan housing wasn't even warm. I won't leave it running at night, and I will install a smoke alarm in the garage, but for now it seems the little fan will do the job just fine.

Cheers!!

Dave

[hon30critter]

snjroy

Dave, although the temperature will be acceptable for work, I would design the thing to resist the temperature swings you will get. How hot does it get in the summer?... In this weather, I would definitely leave some gaps in the track if I were you. The foam will be stable, that's a real plus with your design.

I will definitely have expansion gaps in the rails.

The temperature in the summer doesn't go really high as long as the doors stay closed. In fact it is usually rather refreshing to step into the garage on a hot day. Even with the front and back doors open we get a nice breeze through the garage most days.

As far as golf goes, my father in law Bill used to pride himself on being one of the first players on the course in the spring. Usually there was still snow on the ground here and there. I have a 12 handicap personally. When I lose 12 balls into the woods, I quit!

Cheers!!

Dave

[snjroy]

Dave, although the temperature will be acceptable for work, I would design the thing to resist the temperature swings you will get. How hot does it get in the summer?... In this weather, I would definitely leave some gaps in the track if I were you. The foam will be stable, that's a real plus with your design.

About golfing, I live in a city that has 5 courses, and I've often seen golfers out there in snowy conditions... How's that for dedication to the sport.

Simon

[richhotrain]

SeeYou190

 

When I went to the post office last night, it was 66 degrees outside. I turned the heater on in the car. 

ahh, you Floridians!

I recall my first post-retirement winter in Fort Myers, FL. The golf course was empty if the temperature was below 70.

Up here in the Chicago area, the golf course is filled if the temperature is above 55. My foursome's rule of thumb? If the temperature is at least 45 and sunny with little wind, we tee off without hesitation.

Rich

[hon30critter]

snjroy

I've always wondered about your plans for working through the Winter months... It can get damn cold here, at least in our neck of the woods (Ottawa). Is your garage insulated?

Hi Simon,

The garage is insulated and drywalled including the ceiling. The doors are insulated too and fit quite snugly. It shares one wall and the ceiling with the house. It never goes below freezing regardless of the outside temperature. I can work in it in the wintertime with just a jacket or a vest, but I think I'll have to find a way to heat it on an 'as needed' basis so things like the PL300 and DAP can dry. I have a 1500 watt heater but it looks way too small to do the job, and I am reluctant to leave it on unattended. I looked at larger garage heaters but they require 220 volts and I don't want to spend the money to run a circuit. I haven't looked at propane heaters yet, but I don't like the idea of using a propane heater with my radial arm saw in the same room.

Dave

[snjroy]

As a fellow Canadian, I've always wondered about your plans for working through the Winter months... It can get damn cold here, at least in our neck of the woods (Ottawa). Is your garage insulated?

Simon

[SeeYou190]

hon30critter

Unfortunately the weather has turned cold so it will likely take a couple of days for the PL300 to cure.

When I went to the post office last night, it was 66 degrees outside. I turned the heater on in the car.

I feel for you.

-Kevin

[hon30critter]

I got the PL300 foam adhesive today so now I can finish attaching the foam slabs to each other and to the fascia. Unfortunately the weather has turned cold so it will likely take a couple of days for the PL300 to cure. I do have a small electric heater which I can put into the garage, but I'm concerned that it will be overwhelmed and I would rather that it didn't catch fire for obvious reasons! I'm going to check Amazon for bigger heaters.

Cheers!!

Dave

[hon30critter]

I just made some major changes to my track plan! Actually they are minor in terms of the general plan, but they are significant in terms of improving the appearance when the trains are running.

I was following the thread "Another easement question" and Sheldon's comment about always using easements got my attention. 

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/t/284983.aspx

I had previously decided that I couldn't fit easements into my mainlines because of a lack of space. It turns out that I was wrong. After spending a couple of hours with 3rd PlanIt I figured out that, if I moved some turnouts back from the entrances to the curves, the easements would work! The changes to the track plan are actually pretty subtle, but I think the trains will look better. As a bonus, I was able to slightly increase the radii in the center of all of the curves by pushing the track slightly closer to the ends of the layout.

The annoying part about this is that all of the mainline track location points that I had recently plotted on the foam are now wrong. No big deal. I will just paint over them and re-plot the new points. I even discovered a previously unopened can of beige paint dated from 2013 in the stack of old paint cans that were headed for the dump. 

There is a funny story about the paint. There was no colour sample on the lid, so I decided to open it to see what I had. When the lid came off I was greeted with a bucket of what appeared to be bright royal blue paint. I said to myself that that didn't make sense. Why would we have purchased a bucket of blue paint when nothing on the house had ever been blue? I decided to start mixing it and all I saw for the first few minutes was blue. I was a bit confused. Then I started to get faint swirls of beige, but still almost totally blue. After about 10 more minutes the beige started to become more dominant. Eventually I realized that paint was in fact beige, which was logical since that was what colour we were using on the house at the time. It took another 10 minutes or so to actually blend the blue fully into the beige. The blue was obviously some component of the paint mix that had separated out and risen to the top over the years. So, now I have a can of perfectly coloured paint to do the base of the scenery with, and to cover the errant plotting points. It almost made it to the dump!

Cheers!!

Dave

[rrinker]

 Yes. I used some of my adhesive caulk used to roadbed and track to fill gaps. I had a large on back in the staging area so I stuffed a scrap piece of 1x3 in, one piece under each track, and didn't worry about the space in between since it was ultimately goign to end up behind a removeable backdrop. The other gaps were all rather narrow, so a bead of caulk, and a second one after that set to level it out, was all it took. 

 The foam was well attached to the plywood - this was before I cleared out my MR collection so I had close to 50 complete years worth (maybe more, I had pretty much every issue from 1970 to present, and MANY years of the 50's and 60's filled in) so PLENTY of weight got stacked on when putting together each section.

                                      --Randy

 

[hon30critter]

Hi gang,

After the glue dried on the uneven foam seams, I realized that those sheets were much more stable relative to each other than they had been. Before the glue I could move the higher of the two sheets up and down a tiny bit. I was concerned that the temperature and humidity swings in my unheated garage would cause the benchwork to expand and contract causing the gaps on the foam sheets to play havoc with the track. I decided to glue all of the seams including the ones that were even (which I should have done in the first place ).

I suspect the problem with the foam sheets still moving a bit was the result of me not putting enough weight on them to spread out the PL300 underneath. There apparently were still some small gaps between the plywood cover on the benchwork and the foam.

The Gorrilla carpenters glue flowed down into the seam leaving most of it open at the top so I will fill the remaining gap with PL300 foam adhesive once the carpenters glue has dried completely. I had planned on just using the carpenters glue but the quantity required is significant and it is not really designed to fill gaps. The PL300 will do the job nicely. There are also some small gaps between the fascia board and the foam which need to be filled. I just hate having to clean the PL300 off of my trowel and anything else it gets on.

Dave

 

[SeeYou190]

hon30critter

Be prepared to be bored!!

I did not get bored.

I have never used cork turnout pads. I am interested to hear how these work out for your layout.

-Kevin

[hon30critter]

hon30critter

Once I have the foam sheets more firmly attached to each other I can proceed with the cork and the track.

I figured out a way to firmly attach the foam sheets to each other. I used my hot foam cutter to widen the joints between the foam slabs and then I poured in copious quantities of Gorilla carpenters glue. It will take a few applications to fill the joints but once the glue hardens I don't think the slabs will move relative to each other, or so I hope!

Next step will be to level the joints between the slabs. Then, on with the cork!

Dave

[rrinker]

 I used those turnout pads on my last layout (I guess I got lazy - it's not that difficult to overlap and cut the cork and make a tight fit), though I think mine were from Midwest. Don't know if it made any difference, but since I was using Midwest cork for the rest, they matched up perfectly. I didn;t do anything special to place them, just put the turnout in place, drew an outline around it, and caulked the pad down centered in the outline. Then I marked on the pad where the throwbar hole and the frog wire hole needed to go.

Definitely a good reason to use cork again instead of the foam from eBay that's pretty much midway between cork and WS foam - softer than cork but not nearly as squishy as WS foam. I didn;t transfer all the locating marks from my plan, I just measured off a printed to scale copy and marked the centerlines of the 3 legs of a turnout to locate it and then filled in the connecting track after the turnouts were in place. Using the cork pads made that easy, a lot easier than trying to locate the first one and build it up by cutting overlapping bits of cork.

                                   --Randy

 

[hon30critter]

richhotrain

More, more, more. Wanna see pics of the rotisserie.

Hi Rich,

I think that I am fairly close to being able to put the rotary function to use. I want to stabilize the foam sheets so that they can't move relative to each other. I should have applied the foam glue to the edges of the sheets when I was installing it but I messed up. Once I have the foam sheets more firmly attached to each other I can proceed with the cork and the track. I have to figure out how to get the cork roadbed lined up properly. Once that is done I can start laying track and then do the feeders and bus wires etc. That's where the ability to rotate the benchwork will pay off.

Stay tuned! I promise I will try to do better on the pictures!

Dave

[richhotrain]

Excellent!

More, more, more.

Wanna see pics of the rotisserie.

Rich

 

[riogrande5761]

I am not bored.  Pictures are part of what makes following a topic much more interesting.  Thanks.

[hon30critter]

I decided to give in and show you a couple of photos pertaining to the track plotting. Be prepared to be bored!!

This is the track diagram printed from 3rd PlanIt with the plotting points notated on it:

This shows the plotting points on the foam. If you look carefully you will see a single dot beside the coordinates which marks the exact position of most of the pieces of track (hopefully).

I have to do some experimenting with the cork roadbed to figure out how to get it in the right position. More specifically, I have purchased pre-cut cork turnout roadbed from Itty Bitty Lines so I have to take a piece of the cork and a turnout to see how they fit together and what trimming the turnout cork might require. There will likely be a lot of head scratching as I work things out.

Cheers!!

Dave

 

[hon30critter]

riogrande5761

Any photo updates on that rotisserie?  Is it getting cooked evenly on all sides? 

Hi riogrande5761 and Rich,

Sorry, but there isn't much new to photograph. I have finally marked all of the track and turnout points on the foam but they aren't particularly photogenic.

In the next couple of weeks I hope to start laying cork. Before that I have to add a little glue to the foam joints but that shouldn't take long, although it may take some time to dry.

I'm going to have a bit of a learning curve to go through with the cork because I bought pre-cut cork turnout pads. I'll have to figure out how to position them properly.

As usual, the major limiting factor has been my back. I can manage about 15 - 20 minutes at a stretch before I have to sit down. That is a real PITA. I also have to admit that recent events south of the border have seriously depressed me. At least that's over with, more or less.

Please be patient.

Cheers!!

Dave