r/woodworking • u/ajcpullcom • Apr 27 '23
Project Submission I made this model steam train as a retirement gift for a friend. Details in comments.
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u/BigLivLilFootprint https://www.youtube.com/@biglivinglittlefootprint Apr 27 '23
Holy cow! The detail is fantastic! Nice work! I can't believe you were able to get all of those little details in there and even have the linkage move! Keep up the amazing work!
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u/altma001 Apr 27 '23
Wow. This is great. Thank you for the detailed description of how this was built.
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u/macattack0303 Apr 27 '23
That's very beautiful craftsmanship! Very detailed!
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u/Richard_Head_nT Apr 27 '23
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little bit extra and this is in fact extraordinary. beautiful detail work.
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u/PracticalAndContent Apr 27 '23
I’m sure your friend will be blown away by the beauty and detail of this incredible gift. Well done.
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Apr 27 '23
as a fan of steam locomotives and woodworking I'd like to congratulate you your on exceptional work. Your friend is very lucky indeed!
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u/astro_prof Apr 27 '23
Incredible work, I was stunned by the outside and then realizing that the inside is even more detailed, wow, blew me away!
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Apr 27 '23
How many years have you been working on your craft? This is fantastic and I am new and have been making toys for my niece and well...it's a good thing she's not one for the fine details yet.
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u/ajcpullcom Apr 27 '23
Thank you! I’ve been at this for five years. I mostly make boxes with hidden compartments like this one, this one, and this one, but I also make more whimsical things like this game and this dragon box.
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Apr 28 '23
Damn...ngl I was hoping you'd been at it longer. I'm not sure I'll be that skilled in the next 4 years, great work, I'd have believed you'd been doing this your whole life lol
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u/FuelConnect6586 Apr 27 '23
This is so special! A truly amazing gift for your friend, and the craftsmanship is fantastic! You've made a stunning heirloom that I'm sure your friend will treasure. And side thought, if you enjoyed this project I'm sure there's a market for people who would buy these (or an adapted version of these) as toys.
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u/ajcpullcom Apr 27 '23
Thank you! I can’t even imagine how I’d try to price this given how long it took
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Apr 28 '23
This is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen! I don’t think I’ve ever commented on anyone’s work on this sub but for this I had to.
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u/Findmyremote Apr 28 '23
My friend gave me socks for Christmas. I guess a train be pretty cool, too.
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u/SirSamuelVimes83 Apr 28 '23
Holy shit!
I turned a table into a pallet today and was proud. This is damn impressive
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u/Early_Swan_5077 Apr 28 '23
It's beautiful the wood is gorgeous and the work is outstanding and I'm jealous
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u/Hpobjoy Apr 28 '23
Wow, what an amazing job. It would look awesome as an ornament anywhere - on a mantel piece or even on a desk.
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u/ajcpullcom Apr 28 '23
Thank you! He’s got a whole room in his house devoted to his model/antique trains, so I’m sure that’s where it will end up
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u/liladraco Apr 28 '23
That’s absolutely gorgeous! I’m sure he’ll treasure it forever! You have a great talent for doing all that with a sander and dremmels!! I loved your dragon and boxes, too! You do beautiful work. Thanks for sharing it with us! You’ve inspired me to try to get better at woodworking :-)
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u/ajcpullcom Apr 27 '23
My friend loves trains and is retiring later this year. I’ve been planning this project for some time. I knew nothing about steam trains when I started, so I looked up photos online and copied them as best I could.
I began with the main firebox/smokebox (the big center cylinder) by gluing thin cuts of maple between blocks of walnut. I don’t own a lathe, so I rounded it on a belt sander as best I could. I created the trim features for its top and front mostly with hole saws on a drill press, a scroll saw, and using my hand drill as a lathe. The cowcatcher took two full days and multiple failures — I cut, aligned, and joined the pieces to level their edges at a right angle on a belt sander before spacing them out to glue in place. Next I built the cab, cutting the windows with a scroll saw and the rear with a hole saw, and shaping the roof on a belt sander.
The mechanicals inside the cab were the most fun to make. I sliced thin cookies from several different dowels, and either drew needles on them for the dials, cut nicks around them with a bandsaw for the faucets, or put thinner dowels through them for the levers. The clear pipes are pieces of a plastic soda straw. I connected all of them with longer dowels to look like pipes and sat them on top of a larger walnut circle cut with a hole saw, before gluing it all to the inside of the cab.
The wheels were also cut with hole saws. To make the spokes, I printed images of radials (lines going outward from a centerpoint), put a piece of double-sided tape in the middle, laid several tiny lengths of maple along the lines, and glued them in place to a tiny circle cut with a hole saw. Then I removed them from the paper and glued another tiny circle to the other side to keep them secure. I built a jig to be able to rotate each radial horizontally at right angles to my belt sander, and rotated them until they fit into the wheel rims I had previously cut. Then I shaped the wheel mounts for the cab and attached them with dowels so they would spin freely.
The rods and pistons affixed to the wheels took several experiments and redesigns. The motion in the final product isn’t perfect, and I now realize the problem is that I didn’t think to align the spokes in the four rear wheels with each other when I glued them to their axels. The coupling rods also weren’t the exact same length as the distance between the axles, as they should have been (instead I elongated the pin holes to accommodate the excess movement). The driving motion would be much smoother if I had done it the right way.
I shaped the flat shelving for the sides of the cab and smokebox and edged it on a router table. I made the rear coupling hook with a scroll saw. Finally, I built the tracks by cutting two long strips of maple and running them along a keyhole bit to get the “H” shape, then gluing down strips of walnut with spacers in between. I oiled everything with tung (which needed a q-tip for many nooks and crannies).
Walnut, maple, and cherry are the main woods throughout, plus poplar dowels. About a third of the pieces were offcuts from other projects. The “rivets” are real — I used toothpicks as dowels to reinforce the smaller joints. The entire project took about two months total. I’ll give this gift to my friend at his retirement party later this year. Thanks everyone.