More B-Furnace

Just a quick mid-week update.   I've worked a bit more on B-Furnace.  The platforms around the upper furnace stack are installed.  They are .020 styrene rings with .040 square framing around the outer and inner perimeters.  I still need to add diagonal bracing and railings.  Note that the upper ring is actually a roof, not a platform.  I use a circle cutter I bought at AC Moore to cut these rings - it's fairly effective, even down to less than an inch.

  

I'm on the fence about adding cooling plates and the piping details to the lower furnace shell.  I've been trying to find more information and or pictures of these types of installations.   But in the end, this portion of the furnace probably won't be visible with the cast house hiding it, so it might be hours of modeling time better spent elsewhere.

  

The uptakes are 3/4" Plastruct tubes.  The top platform is .030 styrene with 5/32 Evergreen I-Beams for framing.   If you are wondering about the cantilevered section - this is a bridge to the top of the first stove and the stove walkways.    The hardest part of this assembly was constructing the two segments of the uptakes where they leave the furnace stack.  Most large piping at steel mills has segmented elbows.  When building these you need to alway make sure the you are always joining like angles otherwise one pipe section will be larger than the other. - For example, if you are making a 45 degree bend in one segment - the joining angles would both have to be 22.5 degrees.   In addition to this, you need to also make sure you have a reference point for cutting and joining the pipe, otherwise it will twist.   I draw a line on the side of the pipe and then use a jig in a chop saw that I can keep this line referenced to when cutting.   I cut the pipe sections in a larger 10" Makita sliding miter saw - I use a 10" plastic cutting blade.    I'll blog about some of these tools in the future.   I forget what the exact angles I used were on these uptakes, but at the time I did sketch it out on a scrap piece of wood.    Basically, the first segment has one angle on the furnace end, and a different angle on the other end.  The next segment starts with the same angle, with a 90 de

gree on the other end.  Where the pipe hits the furnace I put some 220 grit sand paper on the actual furnace and sand the pipe end to the contour of the furnace . If you haven't realized it by now, it was easier to put the platform on and then continue the straight uptake sections.  .  

Glues - I use ACC for any of the plastic to wood furnace pieces,  Tenax or Ambroid for styrene to styrene, and Plastruct for the piping as it is actually butyrate, not styrene.  (Evergreen tubing is styrene, but they only make it up to 1/2 inch)

The CNJ loco was my Valentines Day gift from my wife.  It's an Atlas, RS-4/5.     I was thinking of giving her a NYC GP-7, so she had her own locomotive to run on the layout - makes sense to me - but I she liked the jewelry better.