Non standard bits in your tool box

[commerlad]

7 minutes ago, Broithe said:

Nowhere near as good for your purposes, but I do still have this 'wavy line measure', from the days of paper maps. Quite useful at the time, double sided and with dials in the popular scales, for direct reading.

You did have to be aware that not all the scales ended at a 'round number' for a full revolution, but still far easier than trying to lie a thread along the route and measure that.

I mainly use mine for working from scratch off different scale plans.

Picked up in a charity shop in Beer, Near Peco, Still wonder if it came from 1 of their  designers originally.

 

Edited 22 hours ago by commerlad

[Broithe]

13 minutes ago, commerlad said:

Picked up in a charity shop in Beer, Near Peco, Still wonder if it came from 1 of their  designers originally.

Perhaps a similar reason that I found this planimeter at a boot sale. 

"How much for the planimeter?" - "What?" - "That!" - "That's a compass." - "Is it? How much is it?" ...

It is used for measuring the areas of flat shapes, a difficult task back in the days of real maps, etc. You just set the arm length to the right dimension for the scale of the map and the unit that you want to measure in, with some common examples in the chart on the bottom. A remarkable device that I had always wanted, after seeing one at school once - and I got it it a reasonable price, due to the ignorance of the vendor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planimeter

[Mol_PMB]

4 minutes ago, Broithe said:

Perhaps a similar reason that I found this planimeter at a boot sale. 

"How much for the planimeter?" - "What?" - "That!" - "That's a compass." - "Is it? How much is it?" ...

It is used for measuring the areas of flat shapes, a difficult task back in the days of real maps, etc. You just set the arm length to the right dimension for the scale of the map and the unit that you want to measure in, with some common examples in the chart on the bottom. A remarkable device that I had always wanted, after seeing one at school once - and I got it it a reasonable price, due to the ignorance of the vendor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planimeter

The ignorance of the vendor is often the best route to a true bargain! But sometimes ignorant vendors stubbornly believe that their goods are worth far more that their actual value, and refuse to accept a fair price.

[Mol_PMB]

Perhaps not in the toolbox but a non-standard item in the materials store.

Sommerfeldt, the model catenary manufacturers, sell copper-plated steel wire in packs of ten 500mm lengths, perfectly straight. The same as is used in their catenary.

It's solderable just like copper or brass wire, but very stiff and strong in comparison to those materials. Equally it is easily bent to sharp corners using pliers. Absolutely perfect for handrails, for example. There are a range of thicknesses available from 0.35mm to 1.0mm.

I suspect its commercial application may be in TIG or MIG welding, but it's a godsend in my modelling.

[Broithe]

1 minute ago, Mol_PMB said:

The ignorance of the vendor is often the best route to a true bargain! But sometimes ignorant vendors stubbornly believe that their goods are worth far more that their actual value, and refuse to accept a fair price.

That's up to them - they offer it for sale at a price and that price is acceptable to you or not. That its the Free Market.

Conversely, I have had someone get really stroppy with me because he offered me, out of the blue, a reasonable price for something that I had no intention of selling - he seemed to think that his offer must be accepted...

 

My favourite, though, remains the time I asked a bloke how much a Sandvik carbide scraper would be, having decided that I would go to £2 for it, if necessary. He required me to make an offer for it. He was a good bit older than me and I felt that he would easily understand my offer of 'thirty bob'. His response to that was "Oh, no! I need at least fifty pence!"

So, I reluctantly gave him a third of what I had actually offered him...

The other smaller scraper there was a great buy - nice-looking, but also hugely useful. And it is a product of a firm that proudly embossed on the blade "Cutlers to Her Majesty". No doubt it took her ages to repaper the whole of Buck House.

[Broithe]

6 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

Perhaps not in the toolbox but a non-standard item in the materials store.

Sommerfeldt, the model catenary manufacturers, sell copper-plated steel wire in packs of ten 500mm lengths, perfectly straight. The same as is used in their catenary.

It's solderable just like copper or brass wire, but very stiff and strong in comparison to those materials. Equally it is easily bent to sharp corners using pliers. Absolutely perfect for handrails, for example. There are a range of thicknesses available from 0.35mm to 1.0mm.

I suspect its commercial application may be in TIG or MIG welding, but it's a godsend in my modelling.

In a similar way, but not really railway-related, there are many sources of "free nice materials".

I always retrieve the long leaf springs out of old wiper blade. It's a nice material and has many uses.

I fixed this thing the other day. It's for holding a queen bee as you mark it, apparently - but the foam-faced plunger had gone very sloppy and it was hard to use reliably. I suspect that the foam block was the 'friction brake' originally, but had worn too much to hold the weight now. A few seconds grinding a bit to length and a little 'set' in it to give a friction load on the plunger and all was well again.

A sweet job and it got me a free pint last night.

It's very handy stuff for light leaf-springs.