MU hose's/brake lines/gald hands

KCS

Member
OK I need some serious help here and I need it from someone who is into extreme detailing. Now I've been doing this all my life but recently started getting down to the work's of things in detailing. OK here's what I am attempting. I am putting brake line's on all of my car's and loco's but! (here's the tricky part) i am trying to find a tubing that is scale brake line size b/c extreamly flexable and i mean "extreamly" flexable. reason for this is b/c i was just throwing some thing together to get the idea of how to make it work to where the brake lines between to cars will hook up for a more detail and realistic look. i used 2 type's of thread and magnet's out of an old hard drive. reason why i used an old harddrive for the magents is b/c they are very powerful. then i took them and busted them up into many piece's where i later crunched in a pair of plier's to make small magnetic grandulets. (sorry if i can't spell!) but i took 2 piece's of the grounded up magnet and glued each one on it's own piece of string and temporaraly glued it to the side of two car's. the result's were great. you coould couple the car's without them hooking up and leave them for a switching type look or use a piece of brass rod bent on one end to pull them together and they connect and they even stay together runing around on tight curve's. but what i need is to find a tubing that is just about as flexable os thread is but will be to scale in HO. can anyone help me? :NOTE: my email has changed and i havent gotten a chance to to do so here yet so it is: xcrash42069x@wmconnect.com thanx
 

KCS

Member
ok that was one of the 2 thread's i used. problem with the elastic thread which i have 3 roll's of is that over just a short time it will start to loose it's elasticness and will start streching. it is a pretty good idea to start out with but will cause problems in a few short months. it's pretty close to the scale piping but also clue doesnt adhear to it very well b/c if you use plastruct or any glue of that type the tread just soak's it up and make's it hard as a rock. i'm looking for more of something like a really fine soft wire so i can pull a piece of the sheeting off and then grab and pull the wire out of it. i've looked around but i can't find it anywhere and our radioshack's dont carry item's like that anymore b/c of 9-11. (they are to afraid some one will buy this stuff and make a bomb. i'm make's no sense why we can't buy it.)
 

NYC-BKO

Member
How about 22 or 24 gauge wire with the wire removed, use the insulation only, or since you're using old computer parts, how about the ribbon wire cut up with wire removed, that's pretty flexible!!
 

up_santafe

New Member
You could try using the insulation from 30 gauge flexible wire that radio shack has. I use it for mounting decoders in Steam Loco tenders and the super flexible wires go to the loco and don't bind. I use the black, which looks about the same size as brake hoses. Though I haven't tried any glue, I would guess that a small amount of CA would work ok.
 
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