Experience disassembling Kato junctions?

[cteno4]

So when looking at something else I stumbled on this nice little video on YouTube on a general model paint stripping experiment. Nicely done to replicate the usual suspects. I wish he had then just done a try at them soaking for like 12 hrs and scrubbing or ultrasonic. I had heard about the cleaners doing good stripping but never followed up on it. Looks like the la’s best from dollar store may be something to use in the future! Next trip by I’ll grab some.

 

 

cheers

 

jeff

[gavino200]

Very interesting! I think I'll order some Super Clean. The SC spears in the end lineup look the cleanest. I might try it out on some British Rail Class 33 shells I bought to practice masking and painting for a project. I may have a go at creating a 1980's CIE (Irish Rail) train. I already scrubbed them after about a month in concentrated iso alcahol with lackluster results. 

[inobu]

That looks good. If you want a real match. Take the concrete track to Home Depot and use their color swatches to match the color. At

least you can get some type of color name and formula.

 

Inobu

Edited February 23, 2021 by inobu

[gavino200]

3 minutes ago, inobu said:

That looks good. If you want a real match. Take the concrete track to Home Depot and use their color swatches to match the color. At

least you can get some type of color name and formula.

 

Inobu

 

That's a great idea. They may not have an exact match but it's worth a try. They're bound to have something close, and I could pick up a tester. I can adjust it if needed. 

 

I discovered something interesting (slightly, to me anyway). There's an optical illusion at play here. The closer spacing of the Kato sleepers give the eye the illusion that the color is lighter even when lightness (whiteness) is equal. The fake concrete sleepers (painted wooden sleepers) need to be lighter than the genuine Kato concrete sleepers in order to appear equally light. 

 

[cteno4]

good thing with the industrial degreaser is that it can be useful for oven and rack cleaning as well! I expect the higher pH was what did it. Looks like Walmart is the place to get the super clean. I was surprised the styrene or resin did well a month in the stuff, even in the 91 iso. Brake fluid is another common model paint stripper, but I avoid it as it can soften plastics and also pain and dispose of at recycle center.
 

Love those little home despot sample jars! Really best way to get a color you want, I suck at trying to mix colors, I know the right colors and can usually pick them out but just suck trying to mix there! Also many pains will change from wet to dry so it’s even more tedious to get just the right mix... this is my default for road paints, find chip I like and just get it mixed! 
 

interesting visual effect! Things go weird when you scale them down like this and at times takes correction to make it work in the mind’s eye even if it matches the other! 

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[gavino200]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

good thing with the industrial degreaser is that it can be useful for oven and rack cleaning as well! I expect the higher pH was what did it. Looks like Walmart is the place to get the super clean. I was surprised the styrene or resin did well a month in the stuff, even in the 91 iso. Brake fluid is another common model paint stripper, but I avoid it as it can soften plastics and also pain and dispose of at recycle center.

 

Yes, it would be handy stuff to have. I don't want to mess with brake fluid. It stinks.

 

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

 

Love those little home despot sample jars! Really best way to get a color you want, I suck at trying to mix colors, I know the right colors and can usually pick them out but just suck trying to mix there!

 

I agree. But I sort of feel it's something I should master. 

 

 

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

 

Also many pains will change from wet to dry so it’s even more tedious to get just the right mix... this is my default for road paints, find chip I like and just get it mixed! 

 

I've run into this problem on this project. I mix and mix, and then compare until it looks just right. Then halfway through I check again and it's wrong!!! Having the patience to mix, and guess, then let dry, and judge, then alter, then dry and repeat?????? That's some higher level patience right there. It would probably benefit me to attain though. I need to think about this a bit. 

 

 

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

 

interesting visual effect! Things go weird when you scale them down like this and at times takes correction to make it work in the mind’s eye even if it matches the other! 

 

 

Isn't it. I'm actually a bit obsessed by optical illusions. I have more than a few books of them. 

[gavino200]

I made a lucky observation. I had some various extra extra Kato parts on my desk to see if I could use any of them in a kit-bash, when I noticed one of them was a similar color to the Kato concrete sleepers. Well, I'm not sure it's clear in the photo but it's exactly the same color. The good news is that this piece is big enough to get a color match at Sherwin williams. I haven't painted any yet, but the sample patch that I saw in the store looks very good. 

 

The pigment hue elements are simply, black, maroon, and yellow. I was wrong about both green and blue. The print out of the exact proportions are below if anyone's interested. 

 

In the meantime I'm plodding along on a production line. I'm currently cutting rails for a bunch of custom length tracks. I need to find a good method to stabilize the rails as I cut them (actually, I just though of something - I'll post if it works)

 

 

 

[cteno4]

4 hours ago, gavino200 said:

In the meantime I'm plodding along on a production line. I'm currently cutting rails for a bunch of custom length tracks. I need to find a good method to stabilize the rails as I cut them (actually, I just though of something - I'll post if it works)

maybe what youve thought of but i just use a little block of wood ive cut two slots in at 9mm gauge and put that over the tracks while is hand saw or shove thru the bandsaw. ive meant to make a fancier one that has blocks along the edge to catch the bottom edge of the roadbed to stabilize it to the rails but usually just holding the rails is good enough (yeah i can be lazy...)

 

jeff

[gavino200]

So I finally finished painting the non-junction tracks for the station. It's a ridiculously time consuming process. I'd advise anyone who ever thinks of doing it to halt in their tracks and reconsider. It brings tedium to a whole new level. For some reason I've been spurred on by a strange obsession and would probably do it again. Next up will be experimenting with the junctions. I've gotten pretty comfortable painting ties at this stage. The top surface is relatively easy. It's painting all four sides of the ties that makes the job tough. I thought of just not doing that but I couldn't resist. Even if no one else notices, I'd always know. 

 

 

[gavino200]

I had a go at disassembling a #6 junction. What @cteno4 said about them being assembled in a way not designed for disassembly is very true. I now know why. I haven't decided for 100% that I won't go ahead, but probably not unless I can think of an alternative way of reassembling them. I was able to put this one back together and it works, but I was fortunate. 

 

When the rails are removed you can see that they were spot welded to these small brass pieces that protrude through holes in the plastic from beneath. Likely the junction could be stripped down this far with minimal difficulty. But sooner or later there would be a contact issue with one of these. 

 

 

 

Here you can see where it was spot welded to the rail. 

 

 

This is it from underneath. You can see how it's assembled. First the rectangle contact board is placed with these little copper contact pieces sitting in the slots. They're fed through holes to lie under the rails. I don't think you can see on the foto but there are clear circular melt marks in the plastic where a mini-spot welder has been used to weld the copper contacts to the rails when they're already in place. 

 

 

This is the empty shell. I didn't bother to paint strip it. This was only a test. There's no point in doing this if I can't predictably reassemble it. 

 

 

I was able to get the rails back on with good contact to the copper pieces. The junction power routes normally. But I couldn't predictably do this repeatedly. 

Edited April 1, 2021 by gavino200

[gavino200]

I need to think about this a bit more before I make a decision. But what I could do is to wire these the same way that I add wires to my Kato track as power feeds. Basically I make a small hole under the rails where I solder a wire. 

 

In this case, I'd strip down the junction. Then paint it. Then replace the rails. 

 

Then I'd make small holes and solder to the underside of the rails. 

 

After that I'd solder the wires to their respective contact on the contact board.

 

After that I'd replace the switch mechanism. It would be doable. But I'll need to let the idea settle before I decide. 

 

On a light note, I now have the hang of re-springing the switch!

Edited April 1, 2021 by gavino200

[Martijn Meerts]

Do you need to strip them down that far in order to paint them?

[gavino200]

1 hour ago, Martijn Meerts said:

Do you need to strip them down that far in order to paint them?

 

I think so, yes, in order to do it well and not have it look very obvious. Because of the spot-welding, removing the rails is essentially the point of no return. Everything else is actually quite simple. 

 

I couldn't say it would be impossible to paint these things intact. But it would be extremely very very extremely very difficult. And I bet it would look worse too. 

[Dinosbacsi]

Damn, that seems like a lot of work, imagine doing it several times for a proper layout.

 

But I do see many nice layouts online where they have different colores ballasts, how do they do it? Or they generally go for trying to not have turnouts so this is not an issue? I'm really interested in this as I really dislike the original gray colored ballast of Unitrack, I much prefer the darker brownish ones they usually have in Japan or here in my country, but I suppose painting is time consuming and not easy.

[gavino200]

1 hour ago, Dinosbacsi said:

Damn, that seems like a lot of work, imagine doing it several times for a proper layout.

 

But I do see many nice layouts online where they have different colores ballasts, how do they do it? Or they generally go for trying to not have turnouts so this is not an issue? I'm really interested in this as I really dislike the original gray colored ballast of Unitrack, I much prefer the darker brownish ones they usually have in Japan or here in my country, but I suppose painting is time consuming and not easy.

Yeah, it’s a lot of work. I’m only doing it for the station section of the layout. After that I’m moving to a different brand of track.

 

what you’re talking about is different and much easier. People change the color of the ballast by painting it with an airbrush. It’s called “weathering”.

 

I’m not changing the ballast color, or weathering it. I’m just painting the ties/sleepers to try to make the look like concrete ties.

 

[Dinosbacsi]

Ah, I see.

[gavino200]

I'm not sure you could call it a "decision". I just became aware gradually today that my compulsion level had risen way beyond decision threshold. I will proceed. 

 

I ordered some anhydrous alcohol that will arrive on Sunday per amazon, so I'll open it up again this weekend. I'm going to try to solder wires to the rails without enlarging the existing holes. My plan is to lightly tin the rails at the right spot while removed. Next I'll use my small soldering iron to blob it up a bit. Then I'll attach wire linking the rail and the contact board. It really shouldn't be too hard. 

 

Having considered this now, I think I'll apply the same technique to making my regular track power connectors. Hopefully, I should be able to make them completely undetectable from topside in future. 

 

It's odd but I find it somewhat satisfying knowing what's inside these Kato junctions. I doubt that I'll ever dare tackle the double crossover though. 

Edited April 1, 2021 by gavino200

[Martijn Meerts]

I do think you can paint just the ties without disassembling them, but it would very likely not save a lot of time considering you'd need to be a lot more careful with the painting, and some parts of some ties might not be reachable. It should also get easier to disassemble/re-assemble them once you've done a few.

 

I generally also like knowing how things work / what's inside them. Having built a couple of brass kits now, I feel much more confident I can also fix pre-built plastic locomotives, even the more complicated issues like steam loco wheels being out of alignment 🙂

 

[inobu]

5 minutes ago, Martijn Meerts said:

I do think you can paint just the ties without disassembling them, but it would very likely not save a lot of time considering you'd need to be a lot more careful with the painting, and some parts of some ties might not be reachable. It should also get easier to disassemble/re-assemble them once you've done a few.

 

I generally also like knowing how things work / what's inside them. Having built a couple of brass kits now, I feel much more confident I can also fix pre-built plastic locomotives, even the more complicated issues like steam loco wheels being out of alignment 🙂

 

Actually it just getting the paint and application method correct. I have said it before it is all about fooling the eye.

 

There is just enough brown paint to fool the brain into see the ties painted completely. Where as it is not close.

 

The ties are not painted completely.

 

 

Here is the concrete ties, same thing.

 

 

 

[gavino200]

That's a good point, inobu. There's definitely a point beyond which you get seriously diminishing returns for time and effort. Absolutely the key is to consider what the unaided eye will perceive and not get hung up on what you see with magnification. The easiest part of the "method of paint aplication" (😛) is painting the tops of the rails. That's 90% or more of what anyone will notice. If the track is far from view it would be foolish perhaps to paint anything more. In fact the ties don't have fully formed "sides". They're shallow and sort of just morph into the ballast plastic. Kato do paint the sides a decent bit. Perhaps with pad painting. I don't know. I decided to paint them about as much as they do. It's likely no one but me will notice but to me it's quite noticeable. These tracks are for my station and I like to take close up scene pics so it's important to me. I'd never say it's necessary. Making that tiny line of paint on the side so that it's even takes very careful brushwork, so it's pretty slow. Lots of effort for little gain. Also I like to have no paint on the rail or stray paint on the grey plastic. I think most people wouldn't notice this but I would. Definitely a character foible rather than a reasonable consideration. The more normal thing to do would be to weather the rails anyway making it moot. I'm on the fence about weathering myself, but that's a whole nother conversation.

 

I'm curious, how much track do you have to paint, inobu? How "fast" is your painting going? 

 

For anyone who stumbles across this and thinks they'd like a concrete grey kato #6 junction, there is a less insane way to do it. Just buy one from Kato! 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10708436

 

I've thought of this, but I'd rather not waste the five #6 turnouts that I already have. I'm also a bit hung up on the idea of making the junction partly "synthectic" brown/crimson ties as well. Resoldering the junction isn't actually much different to the work I'd do to install a decoder (hopefully). A second reason is that I don't think Kato makes concrete #4 turnouts, so I'll have to paint those anyway. 

[Martijn Meerts]

There's also the thing that fooling the eye generally only works for people who didn't do the actual painting. If I know there's a piece somewhere that I missed, it'll bug me enough to eventually go back and fix it. Just like having multiple locos or cars with the same road number bugs me to the point where I don't want to use them 😄

 

But, definitely paint things to the point where you're happy with it, even if it's not 'perfect'. After all, it's your layout, and you're really the only one that needs to be happy with it. Like Bob Ross said, if you're happy with it, you're doing it right.

 

[cteno4]

I agree, you have to be happy with it, but it’s good to temper this some if you can. In my professional career I’ve had to do tons and tons of production work and most clients/projects can never afford to do A work for the scope of what they have planned (yes always pointing this issue out to them, but many times they just have to do this or that and only have this much money). In this case we need to try to gauge what level we can achieve on all the pieces with the given budget and then be really careful to stick to it for consistency sake. This is because human psychology usually is to grade you at your poorest piece, not your best. But if you are consistent in your quality they usually give you a bump up in your grade. It would drive some production folks crazy to not do A work all or at least some of the time, but if they did we would then end up with some being much lower as it would blow the budget. Took work to get to this place and turn off the everything has to be perfect, but the end result was better. Also when folks got into the mode of consistent production quality, their through put would go up and usually interesting economy or quality improvements would show up in the process. At the end everyone was really happy with what was done and those that had difficulty dialing back the quality (required by the budget) usually agreed it came out great and not what their fears of not being able to do their top work were telling them.

 

the few clients that could get perfectionist use to go down another rabbit hole. One project we were doing video on a large auditorium screen. The video person there was in love with a new codec that at the time took a lot of time and money to do. We had any money needed but little time. We did test of the the two and we could not tell the difference on the big screen. Video guy was emphatic it was better so we should use I even though he could not tell the difference. He almost blew all the deadline, made everyone work around the clock, and blew out the budget (but this client had it and didn’t care so much) forcing the new codec to be used because “he would always know the old one was used even if he couldn’t see any difference”. I was ready to shoot him by the end.

 

Personally, I try to not get caught into the perfection spiral badly. I usually can turn off my own feeling like I see the little flaws there I know I left and I also like seeing others reactions to what I make and that helps me see it thru a bit fairer eyes. If your hobby is for your eyes only then you have to follow what they will allow. But I usually do my hobbies for others to share as well so it really helps me try to step back and look it like others would and let go my own knowledge of flaws. This also helps do another thing I like to do with this hobby of playing with the mind’s eye a lot and fooling the viewer some by using their visual memory to help fill in details and cover up flaws so they are not seen in the mind even if seen by the eye.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[gavino200]

Thanks Jeff, there's a lot of wisdom there. Not to mention some great observations on human psychology. I definitely agree on curbing perfectionism. I certainly don't want to do work that is actually imperceptible. On the other hand I love fine detail, such as building interiors and scene details. I think that simplicity can be key to tricking perception. One or two very well made details can draw in the eye and create a sense of depth and reality, even when details are sparse. But conversely, one poorly made detail can ruin a scene that's otherwise a masterpiece. 

 

Hand painting in n-scale is a difficult thing to get away with. It has to be done very well otherwise it looks horrible. A tiny blotch or blob is very noticeable. Lines especially need to be very straight. If they can't be, then masking tape, decals, or simply not doing it are preferable. These track ties are similar. For a station where I like to take scene photos, I think it's worth doing well. I was sort of joking about the "well, at least I'll know" stuff. I do actually think doing a little bit of the sides makes a difference. I tried it both ways and it's not actually that subtle. If you paint strip the track you could get away with it. If you don't paint strip and don't cover up the Kato black paint completely then it looks atrocious. Again, I tested that. 

 

If I were doing this to earn money I'd see it differently. In terms of time/money it would make more sense to just waste the track and go directly to Peco concrete track. Or at least to waste the 6 number six junctions and buy 6 Kato custom units. But, it's not a job, it's a hobby. From a hobby and general interest point of view there are a few benefits from doing this.

 

First, I'm a very novice modeler. I learn a ton from doing this. In fact my painting skills have leapt a decent bit just in the course of this mini-project. I've learned about paint matching and thinning. Where I need primer and where I don't. I've learned about pain stripping, and I've learned how the Kato junctions work. If one broke, I could fix it in a heartbeat. I wasn't sure I'd even like the half concrete/ half synthetic junction. But I do. In terms of just the finished product on the layout I think it was worth it. 

 

I agree with you about getting outside reactions and opinions. I've no intention of ever showing stuff. I love to go to train shows, but when I do, I can spend literally the entire day looking at things. I'd be frustrated to have to stand there next to my own work, talking about my own stuff. But I generally get opinions from my family. They're pretty good about telling me when something doesn't make a difference. They give pretty honest feedback. 

 

As a novice. I like to try to do my best. It's theoretically possible that I could overshoot, but really I haven't experienced that yet. Perfectionism is a problem when it leads to perseveration. But doing your best is how you get better, at anything. Of course, knowing where to stop, is part of doing one's best.....

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by gavino200

[gavino200]

I finished the first #6 junction today. I actually quite like it. I'm putting it on my practice layout for quality control. If there are no problems with it after a month or so, I'll do the rest. 

 

The junction in place. 

 

 

Still works 😜

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1IUIoxsAa0

[gavino200]

As I titled the thread "disassembly of a Kato junction" I should probably give a little guide. This is a re-assembly guide. I'll add a dis-assembly guide when I take the next one apart. 

 

Starting with the basic shell

 

 

 

Step one - Tin the rails at the point where they were spot welded to the copper contacts from below the plastic shell. Try to keep it very thin, so as not to interfere with sliding the rails back into place.

 

 

I marked these spots on the rails from below before removing the rails. Also, tin the contacts on the contact plate.

 

 

Paint the plastic shell, if that was your purpose for disassembly.

 

 

Replace the rails frog, and movable rail

 

 

From below add a little more solder to the tinned parts of the rails. 

 

 

Solder wires to the pretinned rails.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by gavino200