I'm getting too old for this .... trying to detail a steel support on a stone arch bridge. My original photos suggested that one panel on the steel support was riveted so I promptly created a small piece of styrene with four evenly spaced rivets.
But when I took a closer look at the bridge I saw my photos were misleading -- they were not rivets but nuts and washers on a steel rod. Darn. Fortunately I had access to the back of that small piece of styrene.
So off to Walthers and I came home with Grandt Line plastic castings for Nut/Bolt/Washer combinations (usually referred to as N-B-Ws or NBWs).
They are tiny! Fortunately and by coincidence, the dimple on the back of each rivet was a perfect place for the small drill bit (in a pin vice) to start, so my holes are as evenly spaced as my rivets were. But getting those tiny castings off the sprue -- thank heavens for the Sprue Cutter thingy that looks like a tweezers with sharp edges -- getting a wee amount of glue on the post, and then trying to get that tiny post in the tiny hole -- reminds me of installing the grabirons on a P2K kit. My 54 year old hand just is not that steady enough any more, even with good light and high magnification (under which I could see just what nice detail is on those Grandt Line N-B-W castings. Very impressive. Several of them landed on the floor by the way. But they come in a pack of 100 for $3).
Finally I got them in but they did not look right to me. Then I realized -- the N-B-W head is slightly offset from center on the mounting pin. I assume this is deliberate. So it was a matter of moving things around a bit with a toothpick while the cement still had some give in it.
There is no particular lesson to be learned here, other than that the back side of a rivet dimple makes a good starting hold for drilling with a tiny drill bit. I just needed to calm down and get my hand steady again for the next part of the project.
Dave Nelson