Continuing Saga …

Like so many builds here, this one has been wonderful to follow. Very nice work.

Thanks all. Was away in the East for the last week. Came back with a bad sore throat and laryngitis. Bummer!

I may think about adding those rings since they let the legs make a square joint instead of a coped spherical joint with a cylinder to a sphere joint. That being said, the ring's not a slam dunk either since the spheres are already well glued and aren't coming apart meaning that I would have to cut an accurate inside and outside circle with the inside being a much more critical geometry.

Just checking in... the sore throat has morphed into one of my bronchitis/sinus infection monsters that stops me cold. I just (finally) got the z-pack antibiotics that will hopefully stop this. Meanwhile, I AM NOT IN THE SHOP!

Sure hope you get better soon! Rest and relax, do what it takes!

Myles,

i hope you feel better. I am sure this up and down weather did not help you. I will post pictures of some of the refining units I am making now and you can see how I did the anchor connections and the platforms. It should help you in the vessels you will be making.

alan graziano

Wow!  I hope you get feeling better soon!

Hope you feel better soon! That junk is no fun!

Thanks for the moral support. Now that I have the Z-pac I may be turning a corner. 

BTW: I did send the OGRR link to the Heaven Hill Corp Comm person. Didn't get a response yet, but I will.

I need to invent a technical use for used mucus. I am producing quantities of the stuff that staggers the imagination. I should be completely dehydrated. And it's really gross!

I hoe you will feel better soon, Myles!

Andre.

LOL Glad you still have your inventive brain and sense of humor.  I have had chronic sinusitis since 1980.  Over the last few years my daily treatment has helped considerably, but from past experience, I know it is amazing how much of that stuff the body produces!!  The Z pack should put you back on track.

Well folks, I'm finally well enough to get back to the shop. That cold/flu was one of the most aggressive I've had in years. I was running a fever on and off for over five days, it settled in my chest and sinuses. I'm still hacking a bit, but am definitely much better.

So this week I decided to stop working the refinery and install the neat Z-Stuff for Trains crossing gates and signal sets. Of course, my layout posed some unique challenges, specifically that there are multiple tracks that feed to the railroad crossing in question. And my distances and angles between the outside and inside crossing signals made using Z-Stuff's integral IR sensor not work.

To make them work bi-directionally on all these approaches required using 6 Z-Stuff trailside dwarf block signals/train detectors. The system is not quite running correctly yet, but I ran out of time today to fully troubleshoot. Most of the block detectors are signaling properly, but a couple aren't. 

First of all, I had to locate the units. I didn't have enough width between track and platform edge on the main street crossing. I added an extension block which I'll camouflage somewhat so it won't be so obvious. I carved the plaster a bit to level the site and screwed it down with the single screw provided.

For the other I had to do some similar fitting. In one case built up the low side after the plaster trimming using some foam core shims. All of this will be re-plastered to fair the bases into the scenery and the bases themselves with be painted with concrete with some other landscaping to further blend it into the layout. That will all wait until it's fully functional.

In another instance, I had to cut the base into the gas station's apron. Here too I will work to blend it into the existing scene.

Here's a view down track showing the right-hand dwarf signals. Notice that the left most one is red. It shouldn't be and the 3rd from the left is displaying red and green at the same time. That's one of the problems I'm having.

In two cases, some of the brittle Taiwanese wires broke off at the circuit board. In both cases I used the Solder Puller to remove the old piece of wire in the through hole and re-soldered a different kind of wire into the hole. In the below it was the black wire that broke off. I've found this to be an ongoing problem with Z-Stuff electronics: very brittle connecting leads.

Lastly I used my tried-and-true termination method still making use of the many euro-style terminal strips that I brought back from Germany when I built version 1. This type actually pulls apart as a connector. I used many of them to join the various roadbed panels which had to come apart for shipment back to the USA. Since I'm not longer wiring the railroad to be dismountable, I had many of these left over. Every piece of electrical apparatus on the layout is attached to junction blocks of various sizes below the layout. This facilitates removal of anything for service.

I was rushing to get things working late this afternoon and was working with the transformer on. I'm using the 14 volt fixed source from my Z4000. I was holding the power and ground leads in my hand while attempting to hook the hot lead to the bus bar that feeds power to all the crossing apparatus when they touched to long. The dinging of the crossing gate bells abruptly stopped. I was under the platform. I thought I blew something out on the crossings, but after dinner thought more rationally and realized that the Z4000 must have circuit breakers for the auxiliary circuits. It does, and it was popped out and I re-set it and everything worked as it should.

I made a very short video of the gates operating. I'm still doing something wrong since they activate and deactivate which the rail car was still blocking the dwarf detector. It's why I haven't plastered anything in yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...ture=em-upload_owner

Tomorrow I should have it all figured out. If not, I'm calling Dennis Zander at Z-Stuff. Then it's back to work on the refinery.

Those euro-connectors are great. I use them everywhere. You can get them for almost nothing on eBay. I buy them by the dozen.

They really work best when you also use wire-end ferrules. You need to invest in a professional ferrule crimp tool if you're serious about this. The crimper applies the correct pressure and shape to make a secure joint. I've had no connection failures due to terminations using this method. You can get all of it from Ferrules Direct (http://www.ferrulesdirect.com).

I use red and black large gauge size for all my power bus wires, and the smaller white ferrules for all the signal lines. You can get them in many sizes, styles and colors. When using very fine gauge wires that seem too small for the white ferrules, I will double the wire over so it makes some more bulk before crimping. It's not ideal, but the wire won't pull out.

For us cheapskates, another approach to preparing wires for screw-in connectors is to tin the ends of the wires with solder. The "folding over" trick that you mentioned works well with this technique.

Trainman2001 posted:

They really work best when you also use wire-end ferrules. You need to invest in a professional ferrule crimp tool if you're serious about this. The crimper applies the correct pressure and shape to make a secure joint. I've had no connection failures due to terminations using this method. You can get all of it from Ferrules Direct (http://www.ferrulesdirect.com).

I use red and black large gauge size for all my power bus wires, and the smaller white ferrules for all the signal lines. You can get them in many sizes, styles and colors. When using very fine gauge wires that seem too small for the white ferrules, I will double the wire over so it makes some more bulk before crimping. It's not ideal, but the wire won't pull out.

A trick I learned - the smaller ferrules will fit inside larger ones. This works better with the larger opening size European connectors.

Joe

Glad you are almost over the nasty bugs, Myles!

I have seen the ferrules on wires many time, but never put any on myself.  Thank you for the information on the ferrules and the crimper.  Now I have used Pete's method before, with good results.

That's a good idea of using the smaller inside the larger. I'm going to try that.

I interacted with Dennis Zander at Z-Stuff about my setup and he gave me some advice. The front crossing signal was not functioning. When I removed it from the layout I found both the red and black power leads to be broken off at the circuit board. Before I got it to the bench the blue and yellow wires also separated leaving only one white wire connected to the board. I re-soldered all four. This was the 3rd time I've had to refasten wires on these units. I let Dennis know that this was a problem. He said that he thought they had it solved. I don't think they have. I found the same problem with the hook up wires inside his switch machines. These are made for him in Taiwan and I believe that a finer stranded wire could be used that would flex better without cracking off.

Dennis suggested that I use diodes on all of the dwarf sensors so they don't interfere with each other. I've ordered diodes from Jameco Electric which is my go-to place for electrical components.

As I've noted before, I've trained thousands of people in high quality soldering so fixing is not a problem. But I'm sure there are customers who do not have these skills.

When running my Santa Fe through the sensors to make the gates work, the engine and several cars kept derailing on the latch side of the swing gate. Something had shifted and I couldn't manhandle the gate back into alignment. 

t

The bump was too much for the lighter trucked machines. This is a bad spot for a derailment since it leads directly into the tunnel. I wasn't really happy with this junction for a long time and decided to bite the bullet and do some M.O.W work by ripping up the track across the gate gap, install a new piece of straight track, and after the Liquid Nails that's holding it cures, cut a new diagonal break to enable the gate to open. Couldn't lift the track in one piece so I first tore off the rails leaving the ties firmly attached to the VinylBed below. Kind of looks like some real abandoned track...

I repainted the new rail after lightly steel wooling the rails to accept paint, shooting it with rattle-can Tamiya gray primer, and then with acrylic rail brown. I forced dried both coats with the hot air gun and cleaned off all the rail heads. I again used Liquid Nails to glue down the new rail and weighted it to keep it flat while it cures.

Tomorrow I'll solder jumpers on the left end which has no track pins. You can't put in a 10" piece of track with track pins when the tracks on either side are glued down. So I put pins on the right side and will solder 12 awg bare copper jumpers on the left side. I wire brushed the track area before gluing it down to prepare it for soldering. Once the track is soldered and secure, I'll make the track cuts.

Since I didn't used to have a problem with this joint, I'm wondering why now it misaligns. I suspect there's been some atmospheric changes which caused the swing gate to change somewhat. It only has to move a 1/16". That being said, I should probably expect that when winter comes it will move in the other direction. Either way, the track will fit more precisely than the old one.

Last thing I did today was to start assembling a full-size, 1:48 scale set of plan drawings for the refinery. The Plastruct kit's plans are probably HO scale, but I'm not sure since the multiplier was 185%. I need full-size plans for a couple of reasons not the least of which is to see how the out-of-the-box scheme will fit on the layout. It's really big!

I made many passes on our scanner/printer to put it into the laptop and then printed out the pieces at the aforementioned enlargement factor. There were some gaps in my scanning of more than 1/2", but they won't affect much. I'm also using the plans to design the pipe runs, cut work platforms, etc. The enlarged and Plastruct plans are both seen in this image. I ran out of Scotch Magic Tape and resorted to using blue tape.

Lots of stuff to cover today. Finished up the M.O.W. work on the track and tested it...A-ok. Finished cobbling together the 1:48 scale refinery plans and tried them on the layout in the selected spot. And got back to work actually building refinery unit ops spending lots of time sanding the mating edges of all the vessels to make them appear as a welded whole. Finally, got back to building the heater unit with its dubious transition piece.

With the Liquid Nails set solid, I moved my RSU onto the train platform and quickly soldered the jumpers across the pin-less track joint. I use paste rosin flux when doing rail soldering to add some more oomph to the rosin core solder I'm using. The RSU heated the joint in a couple of seconds, got good solder flow and kept the RSU hand piece tweezers on the jumper until it solidified, then moved to the other end and did the same thing. Very simple, very easy.

I cleaned the excess flux off with 91% isopropyl alcohol and then painted the bare areas with rail brown.

With the rails firmly attached, I took the Dremel with the Flexi-shaft and hung it from my portable Dremel hanger and made the diagonal cut through the gate gap. The tracks are now aligned perfectly both horizontally and vertically.

Time for some re-ballasting. I used alcohol/India Ink to pre-wet the roofing granules, and then liberally applied W-S Scenic Cement. I think I may have used too much ink since it looks a bit dark. Of course it's not dry. Tomorrow I'll know better if I did it right.

I did a test run and the Santa Fe and its train ran through the new track perfectly. With the train running I made another short movie showing gate activation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...ture=em-upload_owner

I finished taping the massive amount of paper together to make the 1:48 Refinery plan. I then brought it to the layout and supported it a bit to see just how it would fit.

From this view you can see how wide it is. It protrudes into the open space a bit too far. But you can also see that there's plenty of room on the left. In fact, I'm going to re-design the plan to allow it to spread leftward and be less wide. I'm going to move the high pressure side-by-side, move the location of the big storage tank, turn the longitudinal pressure vessel so it would be parallel to the tracks and re-arrange the distillation tower and heater. This should reduce width about 10 inches. I still need room for the cooling tower, and some offices. I ultimately want to fill in all that open space on the left and extend it out at least a foot.

Back to the units. I first used the belt sander to knock down the gross irregularities in the joints. The belt sander isn't ideal for working with ABS since it melts it as much as sands it. You need a very light touch to keep it from making a mess. Here's a pressure sphere after the belt sanding first step.

Then I added a lot of elbow grease starting with a 100 grit sanding stick and working my way up to 600 grit. I keep dipping the sticks into water to keep them from loading up. The final result will look okay when painted. While I could use some filler to remove the very last vestiges of a joint, I'm not going to worry about it since this who display will be over 10 feet from the viewer.

I did the same thing on the horizontal pressure vessel and the big storage tank. Then I went back to work building with the heater. The transition piece is a thin bit of ABS that was vacuum-formed by Plastruct to a pointed cone. You have to measure the two diameters and cut it to a truncated cone. I measured the diameters with the calipers. made this mark on the cone, and then used the surface gauge to draw a cutting circle. I cut the large diameter with a scissors, glue it to the base with Bondene, and then measured for the small diameter. This was cut with a razor blade.

I attempted to glue the stack with bondene, but it didn't want to be secure. Not seen is a styrene disc that forms a surface upon which the stack can glue. Another way to do this would be to make the upper disc with a hole and have the stack go through all the way to the bottom thus supporting it in two places. I didn't do that since I just though about it. To make it more secure, and, equally as important, to really secure the transition piece so I can safely remove all that excess that's hanging over the edge, I used 30 minute epoxy to hold it all together.

Here's the assembled unit before finishing which will take place on Monday.

Notice too that I added an ABS baseplate that will get the NBW treatment like the distillation tower and it too will get a 1/4" "Concrete" base. I just checked and the epoxy is solid as a rock. I'll use epoxy with micro-balloons to fill in the remaining gaps at the transition piece top.

Next session I'll finish up this piece and move onto one of the more complicated structures; the reactors and their "concrete" and structural steel support frame. With the main units built, it will be time to add platforms, ladders and valving.

Myles;

Please see below:

Back to the units. I first used the belt sander to knock down the gross irregularities in the joints. The belt sander isn't ideal for working with ABS since it melts it as much as sands it. You need a very light touch to keep it from making a mess. Here's a pressure sphere after the belt sanding first step.

The best tool here is a finish sander like the Porter Cable Speed Block. Unlike a random orbital sander which s design for fast material removal the finish sander is designed for the last part of the process where light removal is required. For severe scratches I start with 60-80 grit then work my way up to 150, sometimes 220. I tend to like the rough appearance plus the rougher surface holds paint a lot better. Note - if you plan on placing decals after paint be sure to spray with Dullcote or Krylon clear coat first or decals will develop the silver blotch issue due to the rough surface.

I attempted to glue the stack with bondene, but it didn't want to be secure. Not seen is a styrene disc that forms a surface upon which the stack can glue. Another way to do this would be to make the upper disc with a hole and have the stack go through all the way to the bottom thus supporting it in two places. I didn't do that since I just though about it. To make it more secure, and, equally as important, to really secure the transition piece so I can safely remove all that excess that's hanging over the edge, I used 30 minute epoxy to hold it all together.

The tank shell and cones are grey ABS - Bondene should have worked. My guess is not enough glue surface.  If the cone overhangs the tank shell a little bit then cut a circle of same diameter as the tank shell. However, glue it to the inside of the cone first then glue the assembly to the tank shell. If you are using styrene for the circle then use Plastic Weld to bond it to the ABS cone.

Joe

Myles/ Joe,

sometimes I have found it best to fit up the heads and shells the best you can and not sand at all. Since this would be a welded joint, you might want to leave the line rather than erasing it.

alan graziano

My joint was too large so filling is warranted, then I'll scribe a line which would serve as that weld.

In fact, yesterday I did add the filler: 5 minute epoxy thickened with micro-balloons. I'm letting it cure all night and will sand it later today.

I made another faux concrete base and epoxied the heater to that base. That too cured all night. I bought new scroll saw blades at Lowe's. This time I got some that were coarser than the 28 tpi blades that I was using. For thin stock the fine blades were okay, but they broke constantly on anything with any thickness. It was very frustrating. I first went to THD and they didn't have any blades without pins in them. I need plain blades. I then went to Lowe's and got them.

I then enlarged and taped together all the elevation drawings of the units to use in aid to piping and platform locating. I asked Al (on another post) about the beautiful tie-down anchor bolts he added to his distilling tower project. Notice on the Plastruct drawing, there is no detail at all about how this tower is held to Mother Earth.

I also asked him about curving Plastruct railings. I've had a tough time forming them and want to know if there's a secret technique he uses. I tried softening them with a heat gun, but I overheated some and they distorted badly.

Notice on the drawing, when printing with Adobe Illustrator, I lost some of the image on the page tiling and had to fill it in by hand. There's an "overlap" setting on the print, but I wasn't getting it right. The drawing isn't very clear, but those various side cut tray takeoffs should probably connect outside of the tower. The drawing looks like they loop back into the tower and that makes no sense. The ladders included with the O'scale kit include cages which aren't shown in these (originally) HO drawings. Someone said this kit is not for the fainthearted. No kidding!!

Myles:

If you want to curve Plastruct railing you need to use the white styrene,  not the black abs.
You also don't need to cut a circle for the platform. You can cut the platform at straight angles - see below

Joe

Myles,

when working on small tower diameters (2-1/2inch diameter and smaller), I usually make the handrail by using angle or tees for the posts and styrene strips for the top rail, mid rail and kick plate. You can roll the strips in your fingers, allowing you to build curved handrails easily. Make sure you glue the posts first and let them dry so the will stay vertical and not move when you glue the rails onto them.

alan graziano

Thanks Al!

I decided to use a hybrid of your methods. I made the platforms with straight sides with the width the same as the Plastruct post spacing. I then cut or attempt to notch/bend the rails to conform to this shape. I used Bondene to adhere everything, followed up by med CA to reinforce.

First up was chucking the heater into the lathe between the chuck and a steady rest and sanded off the excess epoxy filler using progressively finer sanding sticks. I then scribed some seams at the transition and above to simulate its "real" construction. Not perfect, but Al says these aren't perfect in real life.

I got back to work on the distillation tower. I scribed the various levels for platforms and pipe fittings using the surface gauge on the surface plate. After laying out the shapes for the platforms, I engraved all the lines deep enough to crack the ABS on the lines. To get the inner diameter I measured the tower diameter with the digital caliper, divided by 2 and set caliper to this new number, and then set the dividers between the caliper jaws.

To ensure that I had a reasonable fit, I attached a small piece of adhesive sandpaper to the tower and used it to final shape of the opening. 

I laid out the vertical braces out of the same thickness ABS stock. I finished them up on the NWSL precision sander so the mounting edges were all square. I fastened the tower into the woodworker's vise I have attached to the modeling table to stabilize the tower while I held the bracket in place and applied cement. Went back and reinforced glue joints with med CA. The bottom platform had to align with the upper so the ladders would align AND they needed to be positioned to clear the tray downcomers that will go on later.

For the railings I first attempted to notch and bend the rails to give me the shape I needed, but most of the thin rails broke. So for the rest of them on the four sided platform, I installed each piece and glued to thin rails together after the kick plate was adhered to the platform. This looks easier than it was. Again, joints were reinforced with CA.

On the bottom platform, I was more careful with the notching and bending and was able to put the 3-sided piece on as a single item. 

I also drilled the top for the pressure relief valve and the main top downcomer. Marks were made on the sides for the other side taps. I'm going to add some flanges on the support brackets to give them some more details.

Next week work will continue.

Oh... I started today's session still trying to find out why one of my Z-Stuff crossing gates is not responding to the trigger signal. I had it apart and it works perfectly. Dennis Zander has been giving me some pointers, but so far, nothing is making it go as it should. I am nothing if not persistent.

Myles:

Looking good!

Joe

Alan Graziano posted:

Myles,

when working on small tower diameters (2-1/2inch diameter and smaller), I usually make the handrail by using angle or tees for the posts and styrene strips for the top rail, mid rail and kick plate. You can roll the strips in your fingers, allowing you to build curved handrails easily. Make sure you glue the posts first and let them dry so the will stay vertical and not move when you glue the rails onto them.

alan graziano

Alan:

What size tee do you use?

Thanks

Joe

Joe,

i use 1/8 or 3/32 inch tees.

alan graziano

Alan:

Thanks

Up till now I have been using the HRS-24 handrail stanchions - expensive way to go and never really liked the looks.

Joe

According to the catalog, the HRS-24 is a 1:16 stanchion. They don't seem to show one for 1:48. I've made my own out of brass drilling holes in brass angle. Soldering them together makes the best looking rails, but much, much slower and more difficult.

Got back to the shop today. My daughter was at a conference in Washington D.C. so I was tasked with carpooling the boys to various activities. Yesterday we took the grandsons to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Lots of fun, exceptional CGI with thousands of people employed making it. You have to sit to the end of all the credits to see all the vignettes that are included.

Today I did some more distillation tower work. I decided to do some Internet research and looked at tower design and noticed that many had a platform on the very top the was to access the pressure relief valve that sits up there, and access the davit which is used to hoist components in position during maintenance. So I scratch-built one and installed it. I had a limited supply of Evergreen structural shapes that would would so I cobbled together what I could. The I-beams I used for the sub-structure was a little overkill. You have to cope the pieces that lie between so they nestle together.

I glued on two vertical supports to the tower and shaped them so the platform would nestle tightly to the supports.

These probably should have been structural shapes, but I didn't have one of the correct size.

I then added some Evergreen styrene angles underneath to brace it all up. It works and adds another level of "busi-ness" to the structure. I also added a series of styrene bands (0.015" X .125"). I noticed in my research that there are reinforcing bands that serve as places where pipe/ladder brackets are attached to the tower.

I also added some small styrene bars to the underside of the platform supports to add interest.

I went as far as I could without the ladder brackets, nozzles and manholes from Plastruct. They should arrive in a couple of days. So I started work on the "concrete" foundation structure that supports some of the other unit ops.

Here's the plan of this foundation.

The base is made of 3/8" square ABS. The cross pieces are 1/4" ABS. I cut all the parts using an Xacto saw with my miter box fastened to the workbench. The miter box is wearing and no longer produces dependable square edges. So I clean them all up with the NWSL sander, constantly checking that they're still the same size.

I employed my magnetic building tray to hold parts in place and square.

After the cross pieces were installed, I clamped it up for the 90 degree pieces. I first used Bondene to glue it up, and then reinforced with med CA and accelerator.

I just pulled the clamps and found that I had glued one side reversed from the other. I have the 1/4" stock set back from the front edge (or that's how I was supposed to do it.)  I have two choices; break it apart and re-glue to the correct side, or let it alone since it will so far back that viewers won't notice. I would have thought that the model would have included enough 3/8" stock to build the whole foundations, but they didn't. There was one piece that was exactly the amount needed for the vertical supports.

Upon this goes 3/8" I-beam and cross beams. I'll do that tomorrow. It's a fun project!

Myles,

The structures are looking good. Enjoy the project.

alan graziano

Thanks Al! You're the master and I appreciate your critique.

Well... my AMS kicked in and I broke the incorrect joints and re-glued it in the same orientation as the other side. I then added the I-beams and made another small error. If you'll notice in the drawing in yesterday's post, the I-beam extends out beyond the concrete pedestal. I glued them flush.  So I added a little extra bit to extend it since this is the side that the ladder goes. I made the other end flush since I was out of that size I-beam. Plastruct is not generous with some of these raw materials. I had exactly the amount needed for the pedestal and have found the situation with the I-beams.

I also closed off the tops of the hollow "concrete" pedestal legs. These wouldn't be hollow and the I-beams didn't entirely cover the open ends. 

Here's the I-beams and the thin ABS mounting surface applied. In reality, there would be more structural steel underneath the platform, but for the model this was fine. Besides, as I noted, there's no more I-beam stock.

Tomorrow, I'll have more time and will start installing some of the upper works and the condenser vessels that will go on this structure.

Still waiting on my pipe fittings from Plastruct so I'm going as far as I can making up vessels and finishing the condenser platform. 

Before I got started I had to go to Lowe's and replace a workshop light. It had some LED florescent replacement bulbs I bought at Costco. It was flickering yesterday and when I tried wiggling it, it started sparking and the end connectors caught fire. I perceived that catching fire is generally frowned up in ceiling lighting. I shut it off. After inspecting it I found that it was burning at both ends so it clearly was breaking down internally. That's the trouble with LEDs (or should I say the myth). While the lighting elements themselves, the LED, will last 10,000 hours, the circuitry that turns 110 VAC to some DC value that the array needs will not last 10,000. In this case it lasted a little over a year. I replaced it will an entire LED fixture. They produce greater output than fluorescents with significantly lower energy use. We'll see how long this one lasts.

I glued the ends on the three remaining kit vessels. Two have domed ends that are Plastruct parts, and the other has flat ends formed from sheet stock. After gluing and setting, I sanded the ends to even out the seams. The smallest of the three fit into my lathe chuck so I was able to spin that while sanding which produces very nice results. 

The smallest one suffered a near calamity. While working on the pedestal, I had unknowingly knocked over my bottle of Tamiya thin cement which now contains a mixture of Bondene and Plastruct plastic cement. I had screwed the lid on, but apparently not tight enough. It wasn't fully sideways, but tipped enough that it leaked. And of course Murphy was right there watching the whole thing. When I finally realized what happened, the small vessel's bottom was fully soaked with solvent cement and it did some damage. I let it all dry, and then re-chucked it in the lathe and re-sanded it all until the blemish had disappeared. Whew!

I laid out the tanks for their respective valves and pipes. I'm using V-blocks, a surface gauge and my granite surface plate to lay out the locations. I pick the dimensions off the full-size prints with my caliper and transfer this to the surface gauge. There's no reason for any of this to be specifically accurate, but I just try to work that way. But... the pipes should all come off the center lines AND they should be vertical and in-line, so there's that.

The horizontal center line was already laid out in this image. Here I'm adding the cross lines to the two equi-distant (from the ends) openings are the vessel bottom. This is the big vessel and has 6 penetrations: 3 on top, a man hole on the side and 2 on the bottom.

After prick-punching the cross line, I partially drill each hole with a  small drill, and then, again using V-blocks, drill the holes in the drill press. The pipings is 1/", but I'm drilling with a .126" number drill that enables the piping to enter much more easily.

Can't add any piping yet, but I was playing around adding some stuff together. According to the drawing this center hole is actually the relief valve line, not a gate valve.

Finally, I got back to building the structure which will hold these units. I cut four small H-beams for the verticals, and glued the long horizontals. I was in the process of cutting the short horizontals when I ran out of time. Have to wait until Monday. I needed pressure to hold the pieces together and after messing with quick clamps reverted to good old reliable gravity clamps.

Speaking of gravity... has anybody been watching "Genius" on National Geographic channel? Story about the life of Albert Einstein. Very interesting! Speaking of Einstein, just now another prediction of General Relativity was proven by being able to measure the mass of a star based on the gravitational lensing of a star that lies behind it. The star in question was a white dwarf 14 light years from Earth. Using Hubble, astronomers watched it eclipse a star that lied behind and then that star reappeared by the exact predicted amount which then enabled them to derive the occluding star's mass based upon how much it warped space-time. They observed it over several years. It took until now to do this because previous telescopes simply weren't sensitive enough to measure the tiny amount of light bending. Pretty cool!

Happy Monday!

Did more work on the pedestal finishing up the steel work for the upper deck. Then UPS delivered my Plastruct pipe fittings. So I went back to work on the distilling column.

I initially picked up the wrong size vessel footings and thought that the upper deck was too wide and immediately measured and cut out a notch on both sides so these footings would fit. Then I attempted to fit the vessel to them and immediately realized that these were way too big and searched for the right sized ones. So now I have two erroneous chunks removed from the decking and found little pieces of ABS to refill the gaps and then used Tamiya filler to make it all better. Then I glued the correct footings in place. All of this gets painted of course.

One type of new pipe fittings I got are nozzles which are the flanged extensions that come out of pressure vessels to make pipe connections. Since I'm spending so much time on this project, I wanted to do it as best I could.

Also, on the very top of the tower is a davit which is used to lift components into place for maintenance. I thought it needed a pulley at the end so I fabricated one out of excess PE fret and turned little brass pulley and a piece of -032" brass wire. I really don't know what's really going on up there since most of the pictures I find of these vessels are taken too far away to make out what's going on. The post is assembled from Plastruct #4 piping. Those are True Details resin NBWs at the ends. Whether it's prototypical or not, it does add interest.

I installed all the pipe nozzles in their various 1/8" holes. I filed the area right at the apex of the curve so the nozzles would fit more closely on the curved tower surface. 

Now it was time to build some man ways, access ports so humans can get inside for maintenance. I used the larger #8 nozzles and made some 7/16" disks to serve as covers. I punched these out using a hollow punch I got from Harbor Freight. I mentioned this before when building the substation, but these Chinese tools are really not very good and do not hold an edge, but they do work in a pinch.

After gluing the covers to the flange, I chucked them in the lathe to true up the edge and then engrave a ring on the face that would be the bolt circle.

With a divider set at the radius of this circle I set out six pin pricks to serve as bolt locators.

After drilling with a 0.032" drill, I installed Tichy Train Group small (1.125 scale inch) NBWs and glued the assembly to the tower at the proper pre-drilled locations.

In this case, instead of filing the tower curve to help the man way to fit, I milled little bit from the back of the fitting to relieve it around the curve and help in seat better.

I think these man ways are a bit out of scale. I think they extend too far out and their diameter is too small. They're 16" scale inches. I don't think a human adult can squeezed through that space. They probably need to be at least 24" scale or bigger. But again, they add interest, and Plastruct gave no parts or specific instructions about making them other than a few callouts on the kit drawings.

Meanwhile, I did order enough of these #8 nozzles since I didn't realize at the time that I needed them for both pipe attachments AND man ways. Instead of ordering more, I'm going to make my own out of the large diameter pipe and some of my cut discs.

Boy! I wish I had Al's experience building refinery equipment. I got the ladders and piping into place on the distilling tower. It could have been better. The Plastruct ladder supports interfere with the Plastruct ladder cages. I placed the ladders too close to the platforms and after I installed the ladder supports and therefore didn't have enough room for the ladder cages. I have pipe valves impinging on adjacent piping. And so it goes. If I were to make another one of these, all of these challenges would have been solved. But I'm building only one. The other problem, as I see it, is that it's a very narrow column with a lot of stuff going on it. I would be easier to get them all nested together if it was a larger diameter tower.

I did spend over an hour doing a very annoying job. The tower fell over and the glued connections at the ends of the rails on one section of the lower platform's railing. It needed reinforcement. I first tried a piece of bent fine guitar string so it wouldn't be too noticeable, but it was impossible to get it hold still long enough to glue it with CA. I then turned to making some very small brass angle stock using PE fret material. This too just was not working to the point that the rest of that rail section broke away. I replaced the section with a fresh piece after pre-fastening the reinforcing angles and this time got it all together. You can see the brass pieces in the picture, but you won't when it's buried in the chem plant at the back of the layout. I really have better luck actually soldering the whole deal out of brass, including the platforms. If I made another one of these, I'd use brass.

Here are the ladder cages completed and waiting for paint. I'm going to prime and paint all the unit ops at the same time since it's going to be with solvent paints and that's done outside (until I get my spray booth... still working on that one).

I bought the transparent ladder supports, but these do not work with the ladder cages. I had to notch the cages to let the supports clamp to the ladder, but even there is was sub-par. Also, by staging the ladders too close to the platforms, the cages again, needed to be trimmed to clear. I'm going to paint the ladders safety yellow and the rest of the tower to be bare metal metallic by Tamiya. Everything will get a Tamiya grey primer coat first.

Since I ran out of Plastruct man ways I scratch-built one using some of the largest tubing and the same discs I used for the factory ones. I again used the sandpaper on vessel method to impart a curve to the bottom of the man way that would match that of the same vessel.

I finished adding all the tank bases and trial fitted them on the pedestal. I'm having to figure out the piping for them. The P&ID drawing is a bit cryptic.

I also cut apart the plot plan and rearranged the unit ops to make it longer and less wide. I like how this worked out. It no longer juts too far into the open space in the railroad's mid section. It uses more of the linear space, and still leaves plenty of room for any other things I want to build in that space (maintenance and ops buildings and a cooling tower). I also found a left over piece of the tubing that I used for the stacks on the distillery's boiler house. It's about 20" tall and will make an excellent flare tower. I turned the two HP storage spheres 90 degrees as I did with the mechanizer reflux drum (the big horizontal vessel). I moved the heater and the big liquids storage vessel towards the track so the whole thing is much thinner. It now extends into the open space and 10" which is about what I anticipated it should be. It may or may not take more piping and I hope I won't run out. It looks like I'm going to have to fabricate about 4 more man ways. Now that I know how to do them, it shouldn't be too much work.

The big storage vessels will be white. The long reflux drum I'm thinking of making red. The heater will be black and the distilling tower bare metal. The other three vessels will be some mix. The flare tower will be broad red and white stripes. I'm thinking of pupping a simulated flame LED up top with some cotton to show some minor waste flaring.

You're making a very good fist of it, Myles. 

Myles,

I think you are doing a fine job on this. The detail on the flanged bolts is far in excess of what I do. That detail looks great. Keep plugging away and enjoy  building.

Alan Graziano

Myles,

This is just another of your tremendous models and excellent documentation to boot!!

Trainman2001 posted:

Speaking of gravity... has anybody been watching "Genius" on National Geographic channel? Story about the life of Albert Einstein. Very interesting! Speaking of Einstein, just now another prediction of General Relativity was proven by being able to measure the mass of a star based on the gravitational lensing of a star that lies behind it. The star in question was a white dwarf 14 light years from Earth. Using Hubble, astronomers watched it eclipse a star that lied behind and then that star reappeared by the exact predicted amount which then enabled them to derive the occluding star's mass based upon how much it warped space-time. They observed it over several years. It took until now to do this because previous telescopes simply weren't sensitive enough to measure the tiny amount of light bending. Pretty cool!

Yes, my wife and I have been watching and enjoying the show. She is a Chemistry teacher and her inner "geek" has come out a couple times. I have to admit it is fun watching it with her because she is way more familiar with some of the names than I am. Most of the groundbreaking scientists at the time had interactions with each other. It is fun seeing how a discovery by someone else aided the research of others.

Your work is amazing! I really enjoy following your progress.

Thanks all. This is a very challenging project. We've been watching the Genius program On-Demand, generally the commercials are a little less.

Did a lot of finicky pipe work today. I'm having trouble with the plans. There are dotted lines indicating the structural steel that lies under the upper platform AND more dotted lines showing hidden piping. It's quite challenging to figure out which is which. Furthermore, the plans show the center top pipe leading to the overhead top discharge from the distillation column, but the booklet photos show this center top position as a relief valve location and the line running straight into the ground. I'm using the input from the column in my design. The column needs a receiver for the top flow and it's a bigger diameter line (gas vs. liquid) and the plans show this. Where I'm having the most trouble is figuring out what all the underneath piping is.

I added the lines to the receiver. After messing around trying to get the piping to stabilize, I finally add some "welded" braces to it since there was no place to put a Plastruct pipe support. I don't know if this is prototypical, but I really needed it since the piping was very fragile and kept breaking loose. I find the white ABS piping does not weld as securely as the gray. You think it's adhered and then suddenly it just lets go.

I also had to fit one of the bottom entry pipes coming from the smallest vessel below. This pipe isn't going to be connected until the tanks and platform are separately painted. I had to tape the receiver into position to hold it steady enough so I could measure the distances involved.

I added the pipe to the medium-sized receiver. This too will be separately painted. Due to the restricted overhead space, I used and angle valve. This was not included in the kit. I had it leftover from the boiler house project. I added a drop of medium CA under the S-curve to stabilize this pipe also.

I decided to start building the pump sets. They're not all piped the same. This first one feeds the big storage tank. It has two gate valves and two check valves on the discharge side. The instructions say (and I quote), "Assemble the pumps". That's it! It doesn't say that there are not holes for pipe fittings. It doesn't show where the intake and discharge sides are. It doesn't talk about how big or thick the base should be, or the spacing of the plumbing. I drilled them out 1/8", but then realized that I wanted to use the small diameter pipe fittings so I glue in the small diameter tubing in the holes.

I added the discharge side piping, but after checking the plans had the T facing the wrong direction.

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Here's the completed array with the check valves and the piping facing in the correct direction. If I wanted to be silly, I would cut spokes in all those valve wheels, but I don't want to be silly since this stuff will be buried in piping.

I'm going to build all five pumping stations now since I'm getting the routine down. Next up will be the large demethanizer vessel. It too has the usual array of nozzles, valving, and piping.

With the little time I had today I continued building pump stations. I got three complete and one more than half leaving only one more set to finish them up. The last set has a different configuration according to the plot plan.

I'm getting sort of an assembly line working here. I'm doing the drilling before the motors go on the base so I can clamp the pumps more effectively in the drill press. I measured all the pipe pieces and cut them ahead. I've standardized on the exact placement of the pumps on their bases and the bases on the base board. There's not specifics about how this should be done, but, you need to have them parallel and at the same edge or the piping goes in out of square. I'm also short of check valves and will make some out of standard valves.

I have a few odd-sized pieces of OSB and found enough that I can puzzle together to make the base for the entire refinery complex. It will consist of four pieces all joined together. That was a big relief since I didn't want to have to buy another 4 X 8 sheet which I would only use about 1/3. I'm running out of things to build with OSB. It's a little bit of overkill to use it for a spray booth. I'll do the cutting some day when #1 is out of the house since the circular and saber saws raise on heck of a ruckus. I use 3M sound deadening ear muffs, but upstairs doesn't have that.