Reprofiling Slater’s wagon wheels for ScaleSeven

[Ian@StEnochs]

There you are Richard, a section through a Slaters Barclay Industrial driving wheel which got damaged so I cut a section to see what leeway there was for reducing the thickness. I expect the other wheels in the range share similar tyre profiles.

Most of my wheel work has been drivers and bogie wheels. Wagon wheels I have just used the S7 wheels from the trade. However I have reprofiled Slaters Martin Finnie bogie wheels, which use a 5/32axle, exactly the same way I would do wagon wheels. Just as described in my previous post then using a holder very similar to yours clamped by the tailstock. As long as you use a very fine feed and take off the minimum metal your wheel shouldn’t slip but as I have a Myford the clamping pressure will be much higher than your Cowells.

 

[RichardG]

Ian this is brilliant.

Yes I do wonder about the clamping pressure of the Cowells, but it seems to just about cope with a scale 3ft 7in wheel. Logically, smaller wheels will be okay, larger wheels might slip. But with my own light railway and small industrial interests, I'll be usually wanting smaller wheels.

Thank you very much.

 

[RichardG]

I expect the other wheels in the range share similar tyre profiles.

Having ruined one Slater's 3 ft 7 in wagon wheel, I thought I'd best do something useful with its mate.


This tyre is 3.4 mm thick. The S7 standard tells us 2.9 mm, so when I reduced my test wheels to 3.0 mm, working entirely from the back, this was a fortuitous thing to do. I must have ended up a wafer thickness away from the plastic insert.