T-track, but which dimensions?

[Densha]

That's pretty thin if you ask me, I'm not planning on using anything to strengthen it, so I'll probably go with 1cm or so.

We've had nearly three years experience with T-TRAK now and have found it ok, most of our modules though, use 65x12mm pine as the frames with a 6mm top to bring the height to 71mm, close enough to the T-TRAK standard 70mm. From our N-TRAK days I guess we are in the habit of building sturdier modules than are needed with the smaller T-TRAK.

But do those modules have any supporting beams or whatever? My module only exists of 3 part, like Sir Madog has built them, and I think that they should be a bit thicker in that case. And if I'm right thinner modules are also more difficult to nail, but I don't know if it can be done without nails, it seems like IST has done it without them.

 

Densha,

 

one trick to try and cut square with a hand saw is to clamp two hunks of something like what we call 2x4 (basically the framing wood for walls, like 50mm x 100mm in cross section) across your board on either side of the board right at your cut line. you need a couple of hunks a bit longer than your cut by like 100mm. then you can try to keep the saw blade as flush to the blocks as possible to keep it cutting straight and perpendicular to the board. you need to be careful not to cut into your blocks or your cut will wander. it will give you a better reference though to keep your cut square.

 

what tools do you have access to?

 

will the store do any cutting for you?

 

the first one or even two may be tosses but you can use the tops to try some scenery experiments on as well. you will find each time it gets better and better and easier and easier!

 

cheers

 

jeff

That could help a bit, but I'm not very confident in my sawing actually.

 

My father has quite some tools. I personally only have some stuff for model railroading. I don't know all names in English, and there's too much to write it down. I don't know what the names of all sorts of saws are in English, so I don't really know what to write down. You can also see my reply to KenS.

 

The store has done the cutting for me, the two side parts were done nicely, but the top was a 1 mm too long. They did it pretty exact though I think.

 

Corner clamps are quite fiddled to deal with. The simpler solution I have done when doing a lot of corner joints is to make an L shaped jig the length of the joint and like 10 cm on each leg. I clamp this on the inside of the joint with everything aligned, then you can drill, screw, nail w/o having to to hold while doing it.

That's an good idea! Then I'll can use those clamps I got after all for this purpose. (not that I couldn't use them for other purposes)

 

Densha,

 

I think Jeff gave a good description of the issues, but I'll add my bit.

 

Getting a store to cut to size is very difficult, as most won't promise any kind of precision.  You are probably better off having them cut 3-5mm long, then marking the wood with a square (one of the essential tools) and using a wood file to trim the end and make it square.  It's a lot of work, but that's the tradeoff: time to do things by hand with care, or money for fancier time-saving tools (and lots of tools, since they tend to be specialized).

 

You can cut fairly square ends (with practice) with hand-held circular saw or a good saber saw and some clamps to hold the wood to a workbench (or table, if it's strong and you're very careful), but a miter saw is a really good investment. You don't need a fancy one, but you may want to get a larger one than you think you need.  Once you start making things, the bug can lead to making other things.

 

I'd suggest making yourself a workbench as a first step if you don't have one.  It doesn't have to be large, if you don't have room for a permanent one. Just 30cm x 1.5m and standing 20cm tall would be a large enough surface for many projects, and provide enough clearance at the edges.  Make the top from a flat board 2-4cm thick (or two sheets of clean plywood glued together) and overhang the edges 3-4cm, and attach it to a support structure that's solid and screwed to it from below so the top is clean.  There are ways to make a flatter top than using a board (boards are rarely as flat as you'd like),  but they generally require specialized tools. This gives you something to clamp to, pound and paint on, and otherwise abuse without damaging the furniture or floor.  If you have room, a larger freestanding workbench is much nicer of course.  Mine is store-bought, ~50cm x 2m, and I still find it small at times, but it's all I have room for.

 

Basic tools include a small metal square so you can mark and check corners for squareness, a good coarse wood file, drill, screwdrivers, and C-clamps, and some kind of saw (personally, I started with a hand-held circular saw, but I might get a miter saw first if I was starting over).  I also like having a couple of bar clamps when gluing box structures together. Always clamp things while gluing; I have a lot of different kinds of clamps...

 

On the subject of corner-clamps, I have a bunch of these, and swear by them. You can work without them, as Jeff noted, and they won't work for really small projects. And if you aren't careful, you can still make a non-square joint (the metal square comes in handy again for checking).  But I get much faster and accurate results with them than I did before I discovered them. I made eight 60cm x 120cm box structures in a weekend when constructing my layout, and I couldn't have done it without those clamps.

 

And yeah, expect to make mistakes.  I've been at this for decades and I still make mistakes (usually by being too impatient to carefully think things through before picking up a tool).

 

Using a file is indeed a good option too, I should think about that one.

 

I do have a miter, and a saw that could be used on it. (if my translation is correct, a picture would help ) I also have access to a saber saw.

 

I luckily enough have an 'empty' (read: full of rubbish) room that I can use for things like this. In the far future a model railroad is planned in there, but as I don't have any time nor money for such a large project I decided to give T-trak a go. To get back to the topic of workbenches: I do have some sort of table-like thing with two wooden components that can be moved together to clamp things between, but I don't think that's what you mean. I do have a left-over wooden table though (including legs of course), the thickness is about 3 cm and it is fairly solid. It's about 2m by 1m out of my head. I'm not sure if I want that table to get used like that, I'll have a think about it.

 

I don't get exactly what you mean by certain tools, if it's possible and it isn't a hassle an overview picture of the tools would come lots in handy.

Tools I don't know/understand:

- That metal square: do you mean with lengths on it?

- miter saw (I'm not sure if my interpretation is right.)

- all sort of clamps: I'm getting confused by all sorts of them.

[cteno4]

good wisdom ken.

 

good work surface is really important. it can just be a heavy piece of wood on two sturdy fold up saw horses. ikea has i think some small hunks of butcher block which work well for a workbench surface. important thing is to just have a very solid surface you can work on that has a couple of inche edge all the way around that you can use to clamp your work to. clamps are your third and fourth hands, but they require you to have something flat and sturdy to clamp to easily to your project!

 

dont work on your home floors! i cant tell you how many times ive had friends nail, screw, saw, drill or glue part of their project to their hardwood floor. one friend cracked a ceramic tile in his kitchen floor by using too long a nail for a project... on and on.

 

like ken said nice square (both long and short, the short one with a thick side helps lots and lots) is a must to even start to do square cuts and get things aligned right. like above a few hand clamps are also a must. you can either use old fashion C clamps or the newer bar style clamps you just squeeze the handle to tighten. for most woodworking assembly jobs the newer squeeze style clamps do just fine and are fast and you can use them with just one hand while the other is aligning/holding your work. C clamps take two hands most of the time, but can give you the iron grip (which you need to watch out for you dont crush or mar your project!)

 

the best power tools to start with after an electric drill is probably a hand saber/jig saw. these can give pretty square cuts if you go slow and are careful and are also pretty safe tools to start out on (ie hard to do much more than put a tear in your finger) as you would be hard pressed to take a finger off with it. next would be a circular saw, but danger and skill go way up there.

 

with a jig saw you can just clamp a piece of wood across the piece you are cutting the appropriate amount over from your cut line to line up with the blade and then if you go slow and easy with the jig saw base up flush with your clamped guide piece of wood, you can get a pretty straight and clean cut and should be pretty square if the saw blade is adjusted square. if you get one grab some scrap wood (sometimes the store will give the scraps away free or very cheap) and just practice till you find out how it works for you best.

 

Youtube can also be your friend as there are scores of videos out of doing basic woodwork to help you see how to do something or other ways of doing it to see what fits your style, tools, job, etc.

 

woodworking is a lot like cooking. you learn a bunch of simple techniques with a basic set of tools then most of it is just permutations and combinations building up from those. as you get more advanced you tend to like having better tools, but thats not to say you can whip out a decent meal with a few simple tools and ingredients! its also about your own personal style. everyone approaches a process and even a tool differently. there are more than one way to skin a cat so you can usually find an approach or tool that suits you better than others.

 

do ask around to your friends and acquaintances at work to see if any are woodworkers at home. most woodworkers i know are very happy to help others learn how to do some basics or even just cut a few bits of wood for someone to make their life easier and see them not so frustrated with doing woodworking! probably happy to show you basic tools and how to use them as well so you can get an idea of what you might need w/o having to spend a lot of money and effort. I think my shop here has built part of just about every member of our club's home layouts, modules etc, as well as the jrm layout! it takes up a lot of my train time, but im happy to do it as i know how frustrating it can be for folks to so simple stuff w/o the tools arr the experience.

 

corner clamps are good for certain joints, just most of the train stuff i do i dont find them so useful and i also probably have gotten cocky and just dont want to spend the time with them on smaller projects! im a big jig builder if i have to do a few of something as i can make something more specific to the job that will be more uniform. i have a large range of all sorts and sizes of clamps that helps do more specific clamping. corner clamps are a must though if you are doing 45% corner joints as they can be impossible by hand!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[westfalen]

That's pretty thin if you ask me, I'm not planning on using anything to strengthen it, so I'll probably go with 1cm or so.

We've had nearly three years experience with T-TRAK now and have found it ok, most of our modules though, use 65x12mm pine as the frames with a 6mm top to bring the height to 71mm, close enough to the T-TRAK standard 70mm. From our N-TRAK days I guess we are in the habit of building sturdier modules than are needed with the smaller T-TRAK.

But do those modules have any supporting beams or whatever? My module only exists of 3 part, like Sir Madog has built them, and I think that they should be a bit thicker in that case. And if I'm right thinner modules are also more difficult to nail, but I don't know if it can be done without nails, it seems like IST has done it without them.

 

Our modules have the 65x12mm frame around all sides, if you build the three piece modules like Sir Madog thicker would be better.

 

There has been a lot of discussion of this type of module on the Australian T-TRAK Yahoo group based on this Japanese modellers work. http://space.geocities.jp/popoya2008/b-1.html He uses 13mm and recommends not using less than 10 for the reason you mention above.

[KenS]

I do have a miter, and a saw that could be used on it. (if my translation is correct, a picture would help ) I also have access to a saber saw.

 

A "miter saw" is a circular saw on a mounting, so that it can be set to cut boards at an angle (or square at 90 degrees).  It's basically the same as using a handsaw with a miter box, but much faster.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miter_saw

 

Some fancier versions allow the saw blade to move front-to-back as well as up and down (technically I think that's a Radial Arm Saw or some variant of it).  There was a discussion of these on the tools forum a while back.

[Martijn Meerts]

I have one of the more fancy powered miter saws with the front to back movement and various angles, and it's great :)

 

Densha, you're free to drop by and use it, but the travel time/cost to Venlo might be a bit much just to cut some wood ;)

[Densha]

Jeff,

 

Working on the ground is off-limits, I always do it on a table of some sorts.

 

I do have a tool which can be used for 90 degrees angles, I think that's probably enough. Otherwise I'll take a look at what's available.

I also do have a jig saw, like this.

 

I guess I'll ask and look around for how-to's and people who are familiar with it. I think it's a very good idea to try out with some scrap wood.

 

@KenS

Then I'll have to rectify myself: I have a handsaw with a miter box. Hopefully I can find someone where I live who has one like that.

 

 

I think that I will look around some more bit for what tools I actually have and can use.

 

 

@Martijn

Thanks for the invitation , but it's exactly as you say.

[cteno4]

Densha,

 

yep thats the saw. very handy things and if you go easy with them with sharp blades you can actually do quite a bit of decent work. they are also really safe as well. dont mean to sound like an old bitty but power tools are things that folks tend to forget how nasty they can be and even folks really experienced with them do dumb things. ive know two very safe and excellent professional wood workers that have lost fingers to them!

 

experiment on some scrap wood using a strip of wood as a guide for the saw to cut straight lines. also use the wider blades to cut straighter lines, the thin ones are for doing curves. also the top knob on some of these jig saws can actually turn the blade a bit to help you go around corners, but you want to make sure not to do that while trying to cut a straight cut!

 

practice is the best thing. even nailing and driving screws as dumb as that sounds. when i was about 4 my dad gave me little nails screws and let me go to town on blocks of wood pretty soon i could drive a nail with as big a hammer as i could swing and screw in screws w/o stripping them! that started the building then! same with hand and hack saws! remarkably i never really hurt myself, but that was probably from the initial supervision and then practice.

 

miter boxes are great, but usually only work up to like 15-20cm widths unless you have a really big one. if you do have one larger enough to cut your board width then they are great for doing nice square hand sawn (or power if its a power chop saw) cross cuts.

 

its too bad that shop classes are gone from many schools, its one of the best things anyone can learn for life and teaches a lot of basic critical thinking skills as well as some art/design and its fun to boot!

 

have fun!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

I still had shop classes at school, but by that time I already knew how to use all the tools they were trying to teach us how to use :)

 

Never had any bad injuries myself either, but I've been lucky a couple of times. The worst I've had was when I cut half my thumb open with a hacksaw, but luckily my nail actually took most of the beating. Sawing your nail in half does hurt like hell for quite an extended period of time though :)

[Densha]

A little reply, I just didn't felt like writing.

 

Only one side of the module is not in 90 degrees, the other is, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to try to get it loose and retry it. I know that water can get the glue loose, but that will probably ruin the wood.

 

Once I get to it again I will try to practice some bit, but not for now. I'll be sure to be careful with it of course.

 

I did have some classes on carpentry a looong time ago, if I'm right it was when I was in the third grade (Dutch system of course), I don't think they give those in these days anymore because of the reasons mentioned here before.