At 02:20 PM 10/31/01 -0800, you wrote:
>Hello Clark, Harry & Group... I've been drawn out of lurking mode!
>Jon
Well it is All Hallows E'en. :-)
>About wheels...
>My original Project had Barratt Engineering / Walsall wheels.
Jon,
Do you know if Barrett at that time get their wheels from Walsall?
>Johnson' Midland 4-4-0 have Locosteam wheels.
I would be very interested in seeing photos of this if you have them.
Is this one of the "Beatrice" classs?
>The thing that struck me about his (Mark Wood) wheels was that they look
easy to ruin... the scale profile and thickness of the spokes makes them
fragile to machine...
This is very much the case and I'm afraid it's going to present
problems for builders who are not accustomed to turning castings that of
that delicately (and I wasn't). Most of the conventional techniques of
wheel turning do not apply. The secret, and solution, is the making of
jigs to hold the wheel blanks while being turned. Mark has included in
his last few catalogues a fairly elaborate description, as Jon mentions, of
how to turn his wheels, including of course how to make the jigs which hold
the wheels without transferring any torque through the spokes, either from
the hub outward, or the rim inward. There may very well be other ways of
doing the job, I haven't yet machined the M. Wood wheels I have, but when I
first spoke with him about this he was quite positive that this would be
the only way to get them done without breaking them.
Regards,
Harry Wade
Nashville, Tn
