Model Train Making Process. A 73-year-old Japanese artisan crafting model trains for decades.

[tossedman]

This is fascinating! Great skills on display here.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Todd

[Tony Galiani]

Wow.  And he's not even wearing glasses for all that fine work!

Tony

[maihama eki]

From their website “Inami Railway Model Factory Since 1946”

Serious old school craftsmanship.

I love that one of his bench tools is a chunk of rail.

Watching him build up those leaf springs piece by piece is insane.

His power source looks to be mid-Showa-era laboratory surplus.

Seeing him use a soldering iron that is the size of a garden tool, and meanwhile I think I need a smaller soldering iron for assembling brass kits... that hurts.

I have a former co-worker that is a mechanical engineer and machinist that has built a couple of live steam locomotives and a few cars. I will share this with him.

[cteno4]

Wonderful video. Love his shop. Brass is so nice to work with.
 

3 hours ago, maihama eki said:

I love that one of his bench tools is a chunk of rail.

The best anvil I’ve ever used was a 1’ hunk of rail my dad had in his shop! I have looked for like a 4-6” section for the shop and have a metalworker friend mill half of it flat on the top.
 

3 hours ago, maihama eki said:

Seeing him use a soldering iron that is the size of a garden tool, and meanwhile I think I need a smaller soldering iron for assembling brass kits... that hurts.

Big irons work well for larger metal soldering as the metal sucks hear out of the iron tip fast and takes time to get reheated by the element. Big heavy iron has a big mass so little amount of heat lost when it contacts the metal and metal instantly heated for fast solder and out. I have a friend who does jewelry and she had a huge iron to do little bits and I marveled her using it.

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

I was a bit surprised by the soldering iron as well. But in the end, you use whatever tool you're most comfortable with, and that gets the job done for you 🙂

 

[Welshbloke]

Our ex-chairman at the model club had an absolute monster of a soldering iron he'd been given by a neighbour who made stained glass windows. It was useful for adjusting hand built O scale track (where a normal iron would struggle to get enough heat into, say, the frog area of a three way point where some solder needed reflowing).

 

The advantage of a ludicrously powerful soldering iron is that you can do the job with a quick dab, rather than having to wait for the joint to heat up (and risking such problems as plastic insulation or solder joints you don't want to disturb turning to liquid).