HO tip of the day: Painting wheelsets

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A

AllenB

Member
If you take cork roadbed and triple it up side by side, it is the exact same width as a wheelset. So you snug the wheelsets down onto the cork strips to hold them still. I took a 10 inch section of roadbed, tripled it up...stuck a few long nails through it to hold it together (which made a great stand of sorts) and placed about 20 wheels on it and shot it with Polyscale "rust". Turned it around and shot the other side :D

It took me the longest time to figure out how I was going to hold those wheelsets still while I painted them. Now I know. Hope it helps someone.
 
Sounds like a nice cheap easy to make jig! I use those plastic ones that do 8 or 10 at a time, but I like the "Andy Sperandeo treatment" where he paints the wheels grimy black on the outside and rail brown for dark rust on the inside and axles. I also model when most cars didn't have roller bearings and the wheels got oil all over the outward face. Good tip!
 


Espeefan said:
Whose are you using and solvent or acrylic?
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The wheels are Intermountain 33". I'm using waterbased Floquil.

DSCF7314.png
 
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holshot14 said:
What do you do now with the paint on the wheel that touches the track?
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The best that I can do is to put them on trucks and run them by hand along a spare piece of track while they're dry to the touch but not cured fully. If you run them quickly, the paint wears off. Not the best solution and doesn't fully come off, but so far that's my best solution. I'm open to other suggestions though.
 
Put a piece of paper towel or J cloth over the track with alcohol on it, should do the trick?
 


Sorry about that!

Membership to that forum (Nscale.org) is free. You can join by clicking here. Then you will be able to see the images.

However, if you prefer not to join, the tool in question is basically a homemade version of the tool below, which lets you paint the wheels while keeping the treads and flanges free of paint.



- Jeff
 
jdetray said:
Sorry about that!

Membership to that forum (Nscale.org) is free. You can join by clicking here. Then you will be able to see the images.

However, if you prefer not to join, the tool in question is basically a homemade version of the tool below, which lets you paint the wheels while keeping the treads and flanges free of paint.



- Jeff
Click to expand...

That is a very cool tool. But I had about 100 wheel sets that needed done. I may pick one of those up in the future though.
 
Well, of course if you were making a homemade version, you could make it to hold more than 4 axles at a time. Plus there is time to be saved by not having to clean the treads and flanges.

- Jeff
 
What about the needle ends of the axles that fit into the side frames? Wouldn't those need to be cleaned off too? I would think that paint on them would gum the free turning axles up a bit.
 
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