Miniature millwork plus

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Greg_Lewis
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Joined: Wed Jan 15, 2003 2:44 pm
Location: Fresno, CA

Miniature millwork plus

Post by Greg_Lewis »

Here are a few snaps of the doors for the cab for old # 26 1/2.

One of the things we learn in this hobby is to plan the order of operations before you start making parts. If you don’t do that you can get into a corner that you can’t get out of. In this case I had to make the door stiles and the door frame uprights first so I could cut the rabbets for the hinge plates and get everything aligned. The hinges have to match up perfectly. There would be no way to do that after the frames and doors were assembled. I hate cutting wood in the mill and rarely do that but in this case I had to in order to get the depth of cut and alignment right.

I started with the hinges. I looked at dollhouse and jewelry box hinges but everything I found was too big. So I took a lesson from Jack and made these. I had some brass tube that was about 3/64 o.d. that worked perfectly when silver soldered onto some .010 brass shim stock.
002.JPG

Here’s a door frame rail with the rabbet for the glass and a tiny biscuit. I thought I could just butt join the door stiles and rails but after thinking about it I realized that a butt joint wouldn’t have the strength I needed. This isn’t going to be all that much stronger but it’s better than nothing, and it helps with alignment when gluing. The glass will be glued into the rabbets, which will add quite a bit of support to the assembly.
001.JPG

The glass is hard to see in the photo. Found some .050 thick glass in picture frames at the dollar store.
003.JPG

I made tilt-out windows in the doors operational as Baldwin had them. Here’s one with quadrant. The wood on the inside isn’t prototype but I wanted to hide the glue that holds the glass in. Clear, solvent-based cement such as Duco or similar will adhere glass to metal good enough for this application.
004.JPG

The complete window assembly with mount bracket. All parts were bead blasted and treated with brass black. They’ll be painted but this is insurance against bleed through or chipping. The little defects that show in this photo will disappear after painting and when viewed at more than 12 inches.
005.JPG

Test fitting in the door. The rabbets for the glass were painted black before assembly as the bare wood inside the rabbets would have shown through the glass. I forgot to treat the hinges with brass black. Too late now as the brass needs to be super clean for the brass black to work. I might try getting in there to clean with some acetone on a Q-tip.
006.JPG
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
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Greg_Lewis
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Location: Fresno, CA

Re: Miniature millwork plus

Post by Greg_Lewis »

Part II:

I drew up the quadrant with my little shareware CAD program, printed it out and pasted it onto the brass. Cutting it out with a jeweler’s saw was easy.
007.JPG

Here’s the door in it’s frame with the tilt-out window installed.
008.JPG

And here’s a long shot of the finished door in the frame. The frame will become part of the front wall.
This has taken way too much time but, hey, as Jack says, too much fun.
009.JPG

Finally, this is the home-made saw I use for cutting little bits of stripwood. The motor is on the other side and is salvaged from a copy machine drive. I made this years ago when I was playing with HO trains. The fence is on lead screws front and back and I can cut to ±.003 if necessary. The blade is a 4-inch diameter blade that was made for a Dremel table saw. Unfortunately they're no longer available and any replacements I've found have a different arbor hole diameter, which would mean a reworking of the saw.
010.JPG
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
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Fred_V
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Re: Miniature millwork plus

Post by Fred_V »

Harbor Fright sells a mini chop saw and a mini table saw that use a 4" or maybe a 3" highspeed steel blade. My wife has both of these units and loves them.

Can you make an adapter ring to fit a different blade?
Fred V
Pensacola, Fl.
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Greg_Lewis
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Re: Miniature millwork plus

Post by Greg_Lewis »

Thanks for the tips, Fred. I tried a Horrible Fright 4-inch blade, which is really only 3 3/4, but it's a 24 tooth and doesn't work well on tiny bits of wood. It's a good value, though. I note that they have some 5-inch 32-tooth blades I might look at. Porter Cable has a 4 1/2-inch 120-tooth blade that looks good but the arbor hole is 3/8, which would require a re-work of my saw. The saw arbor is 1/2 and runs all the way across between pillow blocks at each edge of the table. I might try a Porter Cable blade and see if I can open out the hole. There are also slitting saw blades but they don't have the tooth set that wood cutting blades have.

The Dremel blade was great but I made a "tactical error" and ran my otherwise flawless Starrett 4-inch double square into the blade. Now the blade is bad and my square has a ding in it. As my sig line says: Celebrating thirty years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
jcfx
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Re: Miniature millwork plus

Post by jcfx »

Have you looked into what Micromark might have in terms of blades ?
They sell similar mini table saws like the Dremel, and Proxxon saws.

Super nice work on the hinges and frame.
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Greg_Lewis
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Re: Miniature millwork plus

Post by Greg_Lewis »

jcfx wrote: Mon Mar 04, 2019 7:48 pm Have you looked into what Micromark might have in terms of blades ?
They sell similar mini table saws like the Dremel, and Proxxon saws.

Super nice work on the hinges and frame.
Thanks for the suggestion, yes. They are all too small in diameter. A blade I ordered off Ebay arrived today that is 4 1/2 inches in diameter, 40-tooth with a 5/8 arbor hole. I'll make an adaptor bushing tomorrow and we'll see how it works.

And thanks for the compliments.
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
prlawiii
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Joined: Tue Aug 12, 2008 9:42 pm
Location: Prince Rupert, British Columbia

Re: Miniature millwork plus

Post by prlawiii »

Micro Mark has a 4 inch 40 tooth carbide tooth blade with a 1/2 inch arbor hole. item number 60294
They have a super fine tooth 310 tooth hollow ground narrow kerf 4 inch blade with 1/2 inch arbor.

Herman
Just starting an Allen Mogul
renewing a Marie Estelle
Asteamhead
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Re: Miniature millwork plus

Post by Asteamhead »

Greg,
very detailed miniature work, looks fine!
Asteamhead
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Greg_Lewis
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Re: Miniature millwork plus

Post by Greg_Lewis »

Thanks, Herman. Somehow I missed those. The blade I mentioned above has been mounted and works well with a slow feed, so now I'm back in business.
Thanks, Asteamhead, for the compliments. This has been a fun project. I love working on little fiddly stuff.
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
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Pipescs
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Location: Lester Alabama

Re: Miniature millwork plus

Post by Pipescs »

This is one of the best saws on the market.

http://www.byrnesmodelmachines.com/tablesaw.html

Thickness sanders.

http://www.byrnesmodelmachines.com/sander5.html
Charlie Pipes
Mid-South Live Steamers


Current Projects:

Scratch Built 3 3/4 scale 0-4-4 Forney
Little Engines American
20 Ton Shay (Castings and Plans Purchased for future)
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