Rivets

[Edavillenut]

i am building a water tank like the one that was at edaville railroad. for the tank i am using a peice of 1 1/2 copper pipe. and i want to put rivets on it but i dont know the to make rivets. can someone please help.

 

[Matt Probst]

Hi Edavillenut! And welcome!!

Not sure how you would "make" rivets, but Grandt Line Products, Inc. sells rivets of all types and sizes for scale models.
Here's their link via Walthers ...

http://www.walthers.com/exec/page/manuinfo/v300

Good luck and let us know how it turns out!
By the way, what is a Edaville railroad? It sounds like an interesting short line thru the cranberry bogs!


Matt--Hershey, Pa.

 

[Edavillenut]

the grandt lines rivits are the on a sheet or what. edaville railroad is where alot of the maine two foot equiptment went in the latw 40's it is a 5 1/2 mile loop of two foot gauge track going thru the Oceanspray Cranberry bogs in carver mass. www.edaville.org

 

[BillD53A]

Tichy Train Group makes rivets, too...they're like little pins; you drill a small hole in the model and glue the rivet in it. Another way would be to use paper, thin styrene, or foil and emboss the rivet heads from the back. Depends on where you are using them.
Here's a URL for a list of Grandt Line's products...its a little out of date, I guess.
http://www.mria.org/companies/Grandt.html
Dont know if Tichy has a website or not. Bill

 

[sumpter250]

Edavillenut,
I think you've encountered one of the "modeling monsters", how to add rivet detail to an object.
The usual process is to emboss rivets in a wrapper(styrene,brass,or copper sheet), and then apply the wrapper to the form.
The only time I know of, where rivets where applied after the fact, was a model of the Disney version of Capt. Nemo's Nautilus.
This was done, one at a time, using epoxy resin, and a sharp pointed tool.
In the case of styrene, a separate sheet of "rivet detail", with body putty filling in the back side, was made so that any damaged rivets could be replaced by slicing each one off and glueing in place of the damaged one.
Pete

 

[billk]

Just brainstorming here -- but would a depression, i.e. a hole, "fool the eye" and look like a bump, i.e. a rivet? Might not hold up under close scrutiny, but seems like it would be a lot easier to do!

 

[Edavillenut]

it might but the model is going to be in the foreground of the layout

 

[billk]

Optical illusion

Here's a web page showing what I was talking about - go down about halfway or so. Looks like there might be some special lighting needed.
http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/~amos/visualillusion.html

 

[Edavillenut]

the tank is going to be silver so what if i just painted black dots to represent the rivets. do you think it would work

 

[billk]

Works for me. What scale, HO? A 1" rivet would be < 1/64", just a fly speck except to a real "rivet counter" (but he could count fly specks instead). What would be more obvious would be any stains left by water leaks, etc. around the rivets.

 

[Edavillenut]

it is On2

 

[Gary Pfeil]

An O scale foreground model would be a good place to use individual rivits cut from a sprue as mentioned previously. Drilling all the holes evenly spaced would be time consuming but doable. An alternative also mentioned above is to emboss rivits from the backside of a wrapper. Thin brass sheet embosses well. Place it on a piece of pine and use a ponce wheel to do the embossing. Micro Mark has a 3 piece poncewheel set. One of them should have spacing you find acceptable. Careful drybrushing will really make them pop out. Post a photo when you're finished, o.k.?

Gary

 

[60103]

rivet, rivet

Edavillenut:
I don't do rivets myself, but I can suggest two ways:
1) put them on a wrapper. the old classic method is to use a clock gear, but these are now collector's items. The ponce wheel from the sewing shop is a possible replacement; just have to get one with the right spacing. You'll need a thin piece of plastic for the wrapperand a slightly yielding surface to put the material on.
2) separate rivets. same method but after you emboss the rivets in the plastic, turn it over and shave them off, them glue them to the tank. Need lots of patience for this one.
I worked a demonstation table next to a Master and he was putting rivets in a plastic car by drilling holes, gluing in a bit of plastic rod and cutting it off with a little bit sticking out. Bit difficult with plastic pipe.

We went to edaville some years ago. What's left at the cranberry bog now?

 

[Edavillenut]

edaville.

the 4 steam locomotives are gone. they were sold in 1992 when edaville went bankrupt they are now up in portland ant the maine narrow gauge railroad. the still have diesle #2 and the bought a british hudswell clarke 0-6-0 (which i am also making a model of) most of the original buildings are gone. the machine shop was torn down this past winter. oceanspray still grows most of its cranberries in the bogs. edaville is working on rebuilding the place. Slowly.

the thing with the pounc whell works great. my mother has one she uses for soweing and i tried it on a peice of scrap sheet brass and i really like how it turned out. now i just have to buy the brass that i will use for the wraper and "rivet it" and build the cement block base. now i just have to find some thing to make the base out of

 

[Woodie]

How bout cutting the heads off pins? You know, sewing pins. They may be a bit big though. Is it N scale?