Bending Experiments
Over the past few days I've been looking at this 'bending the guard rail' idea, and thus far I am not that enamored with the idea. Certainly it would save a lot of time, but I've run into a few problems.
Spacer Piece:
First off I though it would be wise to find a good solid piece (metal) to place between the track and the guard rail such that I didn't over-bend the guard rail. I found in my closest approximation that the stock gap is about .050". I happen to have a nice piece of tough steel plate that measures about .030" thick. Using this plate thickness would leave me with a .030" gap which II felt was just right considering that I had done previous experiment with .010" and .020" shims into that .050" gap,....equals .040" or .030" gap on finished turnout.
I had a number of different sets of pliers, including several sets of line-man pliers, and I had an older screwed up turnout to experiment on. I started off squeezing the guard rail with one face of the pliers and the metal rail itself with the other. First off I needed to lightly round off the very sharp edges of one squeezing face of the pliers as they would dig into the relatively soft plastic of the guide rail. Sgueezing directly against the metal rail did NOT appear to be any problem with dislodging the rail, nor marring it up. But even with the smooth face (no 'teeth' in that direct gripping area of my pliers), I still marred up the plastic guard rail (admittedly it was the outer surface of my flangeway), but is still was a little unsightly.
i subsequently discovered that I was NOT getting my flangeway slot down to the dimension of my spacer piece (.030"), but rather to only about .040". What might be the problem? I thought perhaps like a lot of bending exercises it need to be over-bent slightly to end up with my desired slot dimension. I subsequently inserted a slightly thinner piece of metal and achieved that goal,...but it was not a nice smooth looking guard rail any longer, and it had actually peaked up in a few spots that would need filing down.
I was (am) getting discouraged with this ideal and went back looking at the metal shim idea. While this looks really slick, it not as easy as it looks to get a good firm (non-glued) fit.
..and the metal shim is not readily 'trimmable' like the plastic shims.
I believe I may return to some plastic shim experiments,...wish Evergreen made black plastic strips.
Over the past few days I've been looking at this 'bending the guard rail' idea, and thus far I am not that enamored with the idea. Certainly it would save a lot of time, but I've run into a few problems.
Spacer Piece:
First off I though it would be wise to find a good solid piece (metal) to place between the track and the guard rail such that I didn't over-bend the guard rail. I found in my closest approximation that the stock gap is about .050". I happen to have a nice piece of tough steel plate that measures about .030" thick. Using this plate thickness would leave me with a .030" gap which II felt was just right considering that I had done previous experiment with .010" and .020" shims into that .050" gap,....equals .040" or .030" gap on finished turnout.
I had a number of different sets of pliers, including several sets of line-man pliers, and I had an older screwed up turnout to experiment on. I started off squeezing the guard rail with one face of the pliers and the metal rail itself with the other. First off I needed to lightly round off the very sharp edges of one squeezing face of the pliers as they would dig into the relatively soft plastic of the guide rail. Sgueezing directly against the metal rail did NOT appear to be any problem with dislodging the rail, nor marring it up. But even with the smooth face (no 'teeth' in that direct gripping area of my pliers), I still marred up the plastic guard rail (admittedly it was the outer surface of my flangeway), but is still was a little unsightly.
i subsequently discovered that I was NOT getting my flangeway slot down to the dimension of my spacer piece (.030"), but rather to only about .040". What might be the problem? I thought perhaps like a lot of bending exercises it need to be over-bent slightly to end up with my desired slot dimension. I subsequently inserted a slightly thinner piece of metal and achieved that goal,...but it was not a nice smooth looking guard rail any longer, and it had actually peaked up in a few spots that would need filing down.
I was (am) getting discouraged with this ideal and went back looking at the metal shim idea. While this looks really slick, it not as easy as it looks to get a good firm (non-glued) fit.
I believe I may return to some plastic shim experiments,...wish Evergreen made black plastic strips.