Continuing Saga …

Myles,

Bravo! 

Dave

You did an outstanding job and it has been a good read following along.  We just got back from a road trip, and as a result of your article, I was eyeing substations as we passed them.  Actually knew what some of those items were for - thanks for the education!

Gregg! You and me both. I have to watch myself when I'm driving that I don't do something stupid while trying to get a good view of substations (rock formations, telephone poles, cloud formations, etc.). There's a few here around Louisville that are accessible from public areas. I want to photograph them, but don't want to be too 'suspicious' about it.

Today I got some shop time and felt it was time to clean up a bit between projects. I straightened some and then got sidetracked. I repaired the Victorian Station's loading dock which got whacked when my J1-a collided with it. It was just too wide.

I decided to reduce the width by 1/4" to make sure that it never happened again. I scribed the line and just took the razor saw and hacked it off. I then trimmed some of the internal structure and salvaged the side rails. I glued it all back together. I also needed to make a new stair stringer since the original got lost.

After a quick air brush job I put it back onto the layout to see how it looks. I still have to reinstall one of the porch posts on the street side since that was ripped out along with the loading dock during the collision. This post was entrapped by the floor boards. I may have problems re-installing that unless I remove the station and bring it back to the shop. All I have to do is disconnect the lighting wiring to remove it. I no longer glue building into the layout just for this reason.

I'm sure that loading dock now has sufficient clearance. I will have to re-touch the paint job on the base board and I still have to add ballast up to the station's edge (also the parking lot).

I still have more shop cleaning to do, but at least I got this little fix-it job done.

It's an occupational hazard, by the way: you get to where you automatically notice things - a span of wire gone slack due to leaning poles, leaking transformer, etc., even if you aren't looking.  

Utilities are becoming very wary of people stopping for pictures.  There have been several "physical security" incidents lately to warrant their concerns.  Fortunately the internet is full of posted photos sufficient for any modeler . . . 

Lee is so right.  Now that I have worked for both, I notice items like that for both electric utilities and telephone.  

I also don't take pictures of much of anything anymore-trains, utilities, public buildings, etcetera.  If I want a photo, I usually just look online.

This entire thread has been a joy!  You are doing such a great job on all aspects of your layout...  AND...I love the transformer...WOW!

Alan

Thanks again!

For anyone who wants to tackle a large transformer I just discovered another source for radiator detailing. Detail Master makes photo-etched radiator core material for 1/24 scale cars. It would work great for transformer radiator faces. And they make a nice automotive electric radiator fan photo-etch that would also scale nicely for an O'Scale transformer build. It's too late for me, but it's good to know. It's why I subscribe to Scale Auto Modeling and Fine Scale Modeling magazines. It's good cross-fertilization.

Today, I finished cleaning up the workshop and finished the repair to the Victorian Station. It was no problem to slip the porch post back into position and gluing it there. I re-glued the loading dock back to the base board and touched up the ground cover paint where it was damaged. I did remove the station from the layout to affect the repairs and then replaced it.

I then cut out a piece of 1/4 plywood for the transformer's "concrete" base. It was a little warped so I wet the high side and put some weight on it. I'll leave it overnight and see if it flattens out. If it doesn't, I'll cut another piece from a flatter piece of stock.

On Thursday, I'm going to start working on the Hybrid Breaker/Switch.

That's nice looking!.  Tell us if the wet-it-and-leave-it method of flattening the board works.  I know it does not with poplar, but thats not plywood.  

The wet method might work for balsa wood, but it didn't work so well for ply. Now to be specific, I really didn't do it correctly. To pre-bend skins for RC air planes, you need to use vinegar and water. I used alcohol and water. But it didn't flatten it enough for the purpose so I found a substitute. I cut two pieces of 1/8" Masonite and laminated them. This produced a perfectly flat base for the transformer. This was German pressed board left over from our living there. It's finished on both sides and is wonderful stuff. I've said it before, but as expected, German wood products are superior to ours.

I also finished basement straightening with the clean out of the store room space. I filled two contractor-sized trash bags full of stuff and opened up some shelf space. today it's back to model building.

Basement cleaning is officially done! (for now).

I sanded the edges of the new Xfrmr foundation and then created the entire substation foundation. I wanted this to match the train station's elevation. To do this I first started with a piece of 3/16" Masonite, a couple of pieces of some approx. 3/8" foam core I had leftover from some training display posters I brought back from Germany, and another piece of 3/16" foam core from Michael's Crafts. These were laminated together with Liquid Nails panel adhesive. The height is now correct.

I put it on the layout and plopped the transformer on it (just to see what it looked like). The transformer is not sitting on it's faux concrete base.

I had to modify my site plan to update it and then print it out. I printed it "tiled" so it outputs on six, 8-1/2 x 11 sheets that get taped together.

The foundation pad's pretty large, but I wanted a person to be able to walk around the transformer without have to step off the "concrete". I'm also going put a similar pad under the control room building. Its pad will intersect with the transformer. There's really only an 8 foot cartway to enable vehicles to get into the property, but hey... this is O'scale and we just don't have real spaces on which to erect things. Besides, there's a rumor that a huge giant lives in the same region as the railroad and whenever something needs to be picked up and moved, a giant arm comes down and does it for the towns folk.

Terrain will be formed up to the site on the three sides. I think the access to the site will actually be from the opposite end since a truck couldn't make the tight turn into the gate from the station's drive. I'm probably going to make some light poles that will have LEDs in them so this will be illuminated like the rest of the layout. I should have put a red pilot light on the transformer to show that it was "on". 

I totally agree, the pad should be large enough to walk around.  I don't know how many times I tripped on a pad or tower support.  We had some substations that only had about that much access.  One night we had a failed transformer, and they tore down the fence to get at it to hook up the portable sub-station, then had to build a temporary fence around the portable sub-station.  An all niter, just to check out the protective relaying (including SPR) as the sun was coming up.  Yes, red means good, green means bad.  Some guys have a hard time figuring that out.  

Started attempting to make the hybrid breaker/switch. I use the word "attempting" to signify that the first go was not successful. I tried to machine the complex contours of the breaker's body from a single piece of aluminum bar stock. While I DID make a contoured piece, it does not resemble the prototype in any way. It is too long, and not correct. 

As a refresher, here's the drawing of the actual breaker.

I was machining this between a dead tailstock center and the 3-jaw chuck. It did solve the chattering problem when I, at first, tried to machine it with the work in the chuck and the long end sticking out from a steady rest. The piece sang like a tuning fork and produced a horrible finish. 

My next attempt will be to machine each lobe, the ends and center as separate pieces and then tie them all together. I'll drill them on the lathe and either machine a matching lug on one end of each piece, or—and I think this is the best approach—through drill each segment to support a brass rod that will align all the pieces. Since these pieces will be aluminum for ease of machining, I'll use epoxy or CA to hold them all together. Probably won't be for a couple of days before I can determine if this is going to work. 

My fall back position will be to choose a different breaker style...one that has a straight profile if this one proves too difficult to replicate. 

I also did some work with #2 grandson on Saturday which I added to the Sunday Showcase.

Just fantastic!

Peter

Not only will it be a work of art, but it'll be the heaviest accessory on the layout!

Thanks GunRunner!

Today was a good work day in that I had almost 4 hours in the shop, but it wasn't very productive. I will illustrate.

Before I started cutting anything today I used CorelDraw and determined a) the approximate radius of the concave surface and b) the approximate center point of this arc. With these two pieces of data I was able to set up the ball-turned and swing the curve. It came out well.

As I machined the second right-side lobe of the breaker and the work piece in the collet got shorter, I ran into trouble. I was unable to swing the ball-turning attachment far enough to the left to complete the concave profile on the left side of the part. The curve was to lie between the two lines marked on the work piece. I was able to do the first piece since the work stuck out far enough, but when trying to do the second, it wouldn't make it. The yellow line shows the interference between the collet closer and the ball-turner.

I thought (incorrectly) that if I made a holding fixture to extend the work piece further out of the lathe collet that the ball-turner could swing clear. I used the slug that was the mandrel for winding the corona rings and machined the other end. I needed a nice fitting 5/16" hole which I had to bore with a boring bar since my lathe chuck could hold nothing larger than a 1/4" drill.  

I was having trouble with the boring. It wasn't cutting when it was getting deeper into the hole. I realized that the bottom of the boring bar was rubbing on the hole and forcing the cutter away from the surface. With a little touch up on the grinder, the boring bar cut nicely and finished the hole to a good fit.

I then drilled and tapped into the bore for two 10-32 NC set screws. 

I then re-chucked it in the lathe and continued to turn down the o.d. of the fixture until it was a smaller diameter than the collet holder. But I needed enough "meat" in the walls to provide enough threads for a good grip on the work piece. Looked great! Didn't work! It was still too large and blocked the ball-turner from swinging left enough to complete the concave turning.

Plan B: Instead of trying to duplicate a mild curve that no one will ever notice or even see, I just set the compound feed to an approximate angle and machined a straight cut down to the finished diameter on the left end. This did work, but not after I spent over an hour messing with the fixture.

With the little bit of stock remaining in the collet, I was unable to get another fat component so I proceeded to make the next piece in the puzzle, the middle transition piece.

Here are the pieces completed so far assembled on the 3/32" rod that will support them.

So far I have 3 right ends, 2 large right side lobes, and 2 transitions pieces. Another good work session should have the body parts finished. I will then have to put them into the milling vice and machine flats to support the bushings, observation windows and rupture disks. 

You can be sure you'll be the only person with something like this, nobody else could afford all the hand work that goes into something like this!  I'm always envious of people with a metal lathe, I've always wanted to tinker with one of those, just not enough hours in the day.

I look forward to the progress and the finished product.

I hear you!   I'm a tool junkie, and I have a lot of tools I've used once or twice.  OTOH, sometimes I buy something just because it catches my eye, and it suddenly becomes the indispensable tool, so you never know.

Definitely! But sometimes, I actually forget that I have those "impulse buy" tools. That was the case for the hollow punches. I was making the little circles using my "poor man's punch press" method, only to realize that I have sized hollow punches that would do it quicker.

Finished machining the breaker's body parts. They came out reasonably well.

I figured a good way to produce the back taper. Instead of switching tools I simply went straight in with the parting tool to the finished small diameter, and then use the same parting tool to very gently cut the taper. The parting tool has a little side relief allowing it to cut sideways as long as the depth of cut is very light.

When I was machining the last main segment and parted it off, I found out that the drilled hole didn't go all the way through. Since I want the brass rod to extend out both ends to install the other parts that hang on each end, I needed to finish that hole. I try to drill the hole as far into the work piece as possible, but the drill is a #41 and isn't that long. I made one part from it and then produced the other one before re-drilling the hole deeper.

I had to hold it by the little lip on the back end in the collet and hope that it held well enough to support the drilling operation. It held and I was able to not only finish the hole, but also true up the facing since the parting tool had left a little crown in the middle.

With all those pieces down, I threaded them all on the brass rod for this picture.

Clearly, machining the parts separately instead of trying to machine all these contours in one piece was a much better way to go.

Now it was time to machine the recesses for the bushings. The one in the larger piece goes in square, but the one in the smaller piece goes in at a 30º angle. I should have done a practice piece first as you'll see in a moment.

For the straight recess, I set the milling vise up connected to the cross slide 90º to the lathe axis. I used a 3/16" end mill which by luck happened to be the right size. The first one I made the mistake of moving the cross slide hand wheel and made the cut the right depth, but also across the piece. I can probably work with this.

The next two machined much better where I just plunge cut the recess. The pieces I talking about are the three larger ones in the middle. You can see the one on right next to the end with the cut all the way across.

To cut the 30º recess, I now had to mount the milling attachment onto the compound top slide. I set the slide at 30º and tightened everything as much as possible.

As you can see in the picture, the mill is going to come at the work piece with the flutes hitting on only one side and this creates a ton of vibration, and this is a very insubstantial setup. This is the piece where I should have used a piece of scrap as a trial. I did just about everything wrong on the first piece. I was moving the wrong handles in the wrong direction and made a total mess of the piece. The next one came out a bit better and is usable. The last one came out perfect. This is illustrated completely below.

I have enough 1/2" aluminum stock left to machine a new part. It only takes about 10 minutes to machine one now that I know I'm doing. Tomorrow I'll start machining the bushing bases that will set into these recesses. Believe it or not, this is actually the first major job I did with the milling attachment. The vertical Z Axis lead screw is very stiff and it has limited capacity on the lathe, so it's not as useful as a real milling machine would be, but for a special job like this one, it works. I don't know of any other way to bore a hole into aluminum at a 30º angle. Using an end mill in a drill press might work, but I could also lead to a broken end mill and a wrecked job. 

Before I get a 3-D printer, maybe I should get a milling machine. If I ever want to make a working model engine, I will need a mill. To make buildings for a model railroad, I can get away without one. After all, I've made it this far without one.

Excellent job!  Especially since you said you don't use the lathe that often.  I remember making a center punch in high school metal shop, but that was 45 years ago.  I remember I had issues with it, and had to get another piece of stock from the teacher and start over.  He wasn't happy.  

I guess that's why I thought I was a very different Industrial Arts Teacher. To illustrate this point I will regale you a (long) story.

For most of the time I was a metal shop teacher, the projects kids were building were mostly what I would call "artistic metal work". I define that as items that didn't have to function after they were created. I quote an old Bill Cosby line about shop, "We just put two grooves in it and call it an ashtray". Things like log tongs, plumb bobs, didn't have absolute measurements or fits that needed to be minded. A plumb bob worked as long as it was heavy, had a string on one end and a point on the other. It didn't matter if the diameter was 0.030" larger than it should be. The usual answer from the kid was, "That's the way I wanted it to look."

Meanwhile, I was getting very interested in model engineering. I got a set of plans for a vertical, single cylinder, double-acting, slide valve, steam engine and thought it would be a great project for the kids. I had my classes take a look at it and asked for volunteers. It was a much more complex project than any we had ever attempted and I only wanted kids working on it that wanted to.

I got 15 volunteers. Some of the kids had wood shop also so they were tasked with making the patterns (and getting wood shop credit) for the base, and cylinder block. I was also the Power Technology teacher in the next classroom so we had a nice supply of old lawnmower engine pistons to be melted down for casting metal.

So for the first time in my classes, Kids had to pay attention to tolerances. If something was too big or too small it wouldn't fit or the machine wouldn't function. We began to explore the entire concept of "quality" being defined as "fit for use". This was almost a decade before the quality movement took hold in the USA.

The kids poured their hearts and souls into the project. The casting patterns were terrific. We used every tool and every technique in the shop. It was a very complete shop with full-sized vertical mill, surface grinder, and an electric discharge machine. (EDM) We actually used the EDM to open up the oval steam ports in the valve face of the cylinder block. Before that time, the EDM was only used for demonstration purposes. The kids learned about lapping, brazing, fits and finishes. It was the quintessential project combining all of the skills in one beautiful thing. Most people build these things from kits containing the casting. We started with nothing.

I knew I arrived at nirvana when one of the kids brought the valve body to me and said it didn't meet the specs and he wanted to make it over again. It was the first time a kid had asked to make something again because the dimensions were wrong. It was amazing! In that instance, there was a huge difference between your teacher and me. Good enough wasn't good enough. It had to be right.

I was already working at Fischer and Porter after school and was training people in their manufacturing facility. I was able to scrounge great metals from their scrap bin, and had become friendly with chief inspector Clarence Jones. We made a field trip to the plant, brought our subassemblies and had Clarence inspect them. The kids had the chance to view some of the critical parts displayed a very big, very sophisticated optical comparator. They also saw some of the most sophisticated machinery available in 1974.

After final assembly we attached compressed air and it RAN! It ran perfectly. The kids were ecstatic. It was the center piece for the industrial arts fair that year along with some pretty cool projects from the power tech lab including a functioning tesla coil and a cutaway model of a hydro-electric dam. Both of those were also multi-media projects combining work in metal and power shop. 

That was my last year in public education. Fischer and Porter gave me an offer I couldn't refuse and I went to work for them as their only technical trainer. The kids presented the steam engine to me as a going away present. I ended my public school teaching career on a high point. 

That is a great story!  1974, the year I graduated from high school.  That certainly is different from what we were doing.  Yes, most of our wood and metal shop projects were artistic, as you say.  The center punch and a small tool box were the only ones that had a use.  I still have them.  We had drafting too, and that was what I liked best.  I would have taken a third year of it, if I had been allowed.

I had 9 years of drafting including junior high, high school and college. I could have been a drafting teacher. I fell into the Power tech thing.

It pains me that most Industrial Arts shops in schools are gone. I visited the high school in which I taught in 1995 (20 years after leaving) and was very disappointed. The metal shop was still there, but un-used, the power lab had been converted to a weight room for the football team. It was a joke! The same textbooks that I used in 1974 were sitting on a shelf at the back of the room. When I was arrived there in '71 all they had were lawn mower engines. That was the entire program. They had a hydraulics training unit, but it had never been used.

When I left we had a diesel, gas turbine (from a Naval engine start cart), 3 V-8s, and a Mercedes straight 6. We took field trips, learned about jet engines, and on and on. When I left the program died and then became a weight room. What a waste. The minds of people in administration were much too small.

The world needs engineers and people conversant with technology as much today as they did in 1974. Today, when kids study technology it's basically robotics; Lego robotics, as if that's the only kind of machinery in use on this planet. It's the reason we're falling behind in manufacturing...there's no one that knows how to do it coming up through the ranks.

It is a travesty.  When people speak of working in technology today, they are referring to computer use.  Many have forgotten that the mechanical, electrical, civil engineering world is also technology.  We need engineers, mechanics, electricians, etcetera.  My high school was a small rural one, so we didn't have much.  At least now we have a county wide vo-tech school which has a lot of good industrial arts programs.  That is good to see.

The problem I see with Vo-Tech is that they're in lieu of college. They're meant to train skilled workers—which we still need—but aren't addressing the fact that engineers need a blend of practical and theoretical skills. In my experience, the engineers who performed the best, and I define "best" as those that developed solutions that were readily integrated into the real world processes and products, were those that had sufficient practical experience to understand how things actually worked, and the theoretical training to do things based on reason as well as intuition. 

How many people don't even understand how a simple home thermostat works? Not enough! With cars and every other appliance we touch having digital controls, most people are at the mercy of repair technicians whom themselves may not fully understand what's going on, but simply replace components until they fix it.

There's a similar challenge in medical education where doctors learn all about "doctoring", but nothing about how to run a medical business. Running a medical practice is hugely complicated and most young doctors are ill-equipped to do it. Hospitals then are ruled by accountants and lawyers and they aren't helping improve health care in this country, but this is a topic for another thread not in the Scenery and Structures forum on OGRR.

i couldn't agree with you more, especially that we have gotten off topic.  Back to O gauge railroading.

Thanks for the photo of the master at work!  You look like a real live shop teacher there, although as I recall ours wore a dull gray coat.

Always a pleasure to watch the progress!  Wonderful.

Continued great work!  

Who makes that breaker you are modeling?  Does it use SF6 as an arc suppression agent?  That was what all the ones our company was buying used when I was laid off in '95.  I then ended up in telecom where I had started back in '76, so I haven't kept up with the latest like Lee has.

What a build and what a builder...

Alan

I strive to not disappoint.

Today was an exercise day so I didn't have as much time in the shop... got down there about 3:00 p.m. But I still got some stuff done. I may lugs where the diagonal bracing will attach to the posts, I then made a fixture of sorts to hold the posts at the correct distance apart so I could measure the distance between the lugs for the braces.

But that's not how I spent most of the time. I'll get into that in a moment.

To make lugs, I simply crush a piece of 1/16" brass round rod in the jaws of a Vise Grip, steadily tightening the clamp force until it flattens to thickness I want.

When it's first crushed it doesn't look this good. I put the Dremel flex-shaft hand piece in my Panavise and use a diamond coated cut off wheel to shape the edges and faces of the lug. I use the side of the wheel very lightly.

I use a scratch awl to make a indentation where the hole should go and tap it a couple of times with a jeweler's hammer, and then drill with a #75 (0.021"). I just bought a bunch of new miniature drills to replace all of those that I've broken. But the new drill didn't seem to be cutting at all. To view the point of a #75 drill isn't easy, and sharpening one is even more difficult. To sharpen micro-drills I again use the side of the diamond coated wheel. The hardest part is to find just where the edge needs to go since the flutes are so tiny. And it requires almost no pressure on the wheel to cut the edge. Getting both cutting edges equal is just a guess.

After sharpening the drill cut nicely. I located the holes on the posts the same way and used a divider to make sure that the distance between the holes is equal on both posts. I used a #75 drill as a pilot, and then followed up with a 1/16" drill. The lugs were inserted and soldered with the RSU and TIX solder.

And that's when the fun began. When soldering the top lug on the second post, the heat caused the channel beam to separate from the post top block. No big deal, I just reheat it and put it back. When I went to do this, the heat traveled through the part and de-soldered the mounting blocks. Things were getting out hand quickly. 

When the mounting blocks fell off, two of them did a disappearing act. I found one, but lost one to the quantum rift. So I had to reshape and cut a new one. I decided to use a higher temp solder for this since I didn't want them falling off again. But then the angle bracket let go. When I put that back it wasn't centered properly and was tilted. I got it on and soldered the beam back on. Then I find that the beam was not square with the post. I had to remelt it, but it wasn't staying put. I again had to change solders and finally got it right. This consumed almost an hour.

When all was okay, I set the pieces up on a piece of paper and marked the front edges of the post bases. I then traced around the base, sprayed the back of the paper with 3M77, and then stuck it to a piece of 1/8" ply. I used a tungsten router to cut out the square holes, and then put the finished posts into the holes and taped them on the bottom to stabilize them.

Using the divider, I measured the diagonal hole distance and marked that distance on the small channel. Here again I used a #75 drill and cut some 0.021" brass rod and soldered it into the channel. I tried them on to see how they fit. Nicely! But I now need to machine another small part for each breaker on the breaker end to provide more mounting surface and a place for the breaker operating mechanism.

I will probably solder the pins and channel or maybe CA them to ensure that nothing else de-solders.

Tomorrow, I'll machine those additional breaker parts and hopefully start assembling this thing. I think I have enough plastic auto screws to not have to go out and buy more.

I spent another hour today re-doing what came undone... Even with the RSU, it's quite easy to overheat a larger area than intended and bad things happen. I soldered the diagonal braces so the stand was structurally sound. I was fitting the breakers onto the stand for a test and noticed that one of the channel arms was no longer at 90º to the post and was out of parallel with the other side. It occurred when I re-soldered it yesterday. So I thought (incorrectly, very incorrectly) that I could heat that joint, rotate it a couple of degrees clockwise and let it cool. I heated up and by the time enough heat was there to melt the channel joint. Instead of the channel coming loose, the top plate on the post came undone. 

To get this back on, I had to use a the mini-torch to heat the large post. I had to de-solder the plate from the channel first and all of the brackets started coming off. I got the plate back on the post and then had to add back all the brackets before putting the channel back on. 

This nonsense repeated itself more than one, plus I lost several brackets on the floor and had to remake these too. Eventually, I got the whole thing back together. 

I then measured, cut and soldered small angle stock for the top cross pieces that keep the stand from twisting. These went on pretty trouble free since very little heat was needed to get them on.

This picture shows the cross members in place. I then wrapped Tamiya masking tape around the mounting shoes in preparation for filling them with J-B Weld.

Here's the stand with the J-B Weld in place. When cured next session, I'll re-grind the curve into the filler as close to level and parallel as I can to set up a good base for gluing on the breakers.

Speaking of breakers. I machined a little extension for the ends so they'll make good contact with the mounting shoes. I glued these on and masked the bushing base tops to keep paint of there. The first is so snug between these bases and the current transformer rings that any paint would be an assembly problem. I primed them with Krylon Primer Gray.

All of the other attachments on the breaker assembly will be made from styrene. 

I mentioned the Dremel in the Panavise yesterday, so I thought a picture would be descriptive. The bit in the Dremel is a diamond coated wheel available from MicroMark. They nice to use with brass since they don't load up like a aluminum oxide wheel would.

Myles,

the breaker is really shaping up!  Looking like the real thing!

Just better and better Trainman2001.  The whole substation will be a work or art!

Just amazing craftsmanship.

Thank you!

Continued work today, but got a late start. I cleaned up the J-B Weld that filled the mounting blocks and realized I had to remove some material down the middle of the breaker's flanged end to give relief so the flange will settle down into the shoe. Of course when I was using the Dremel cutter it grabbed one of them and popped off the solder joint. I didn't re-solder it, I used CA since I didn't want any more heat in the piece.

I then CA'd the three breaker units onto their respective mounts. I just held the side units at the 30º angle by hand until they cured. I also gave it a shot of accelerator after adding some more medium CA to fill the gaps more.

There are some added details that need to be built and attached, two of them—the junction boxes on the current transformers and the observation ports on the breakers themselves—have to conform to the curvature of the mating surfaces. Both of these objects are 0.450" diameter. I needed to be able to put that curve onto a piece of plastic.

I have adhesive sand paper that I bought at the hobby shop to mount onto the Precision Sander's block. It's 0.010" thick. So if I made a mandrel that was .450" minus 2X the thickness of the sand paper, I could attach the sand paper to that and use it to shape an exact curvature that will match the curve on the breakers.

I used a piece of brass, turned it to .430" and cut a piece of tape that was .430 X pi and stick it to the mandrel. This worked out well... that is until I attempted to use it to shape some plastic.

As soon I turned on the lathe and tried to sand a piece of styrene, it caught the edge of the paper, and the paper flew off the mandrel. I tried this twice and realized it wasn't going to work, BUT it did work great when I just held the mandrel and rubbed the plastic back and forth across it.

The picture show an end that I sanded and two current transformers with their "junction boxes" attached with CA.

After making all six I painted each box with Tamiya chrome silver.

While these were drying I primer painted the entire assembly. It may need a touch of tomorrow since some spots came out a bit thin.

I'll make the observation ports out of styrene rod, again with their ends shaped to conform to the breaker's curvature. I think I have rod I can use. If not, I'll have to buy some. When I finish these I'll construct the disconnect and breaker side actuating mechanisms that will go onto the brass rod protruding from both ends. In some cases the rod will have to be clipped a bit shorter. I also have to build the control cabinet that attaches to the breaker-side leg. When that's done, I give it a finish paint job and turn my attention to finishing up the bushings by turning bottom and top caps for the plastic screw insulators. And with those, this phase will be complete. This phase should be complete some time next week.

Man, you are a master with that lathe!  They look beautiful.

And yes, it never hurts to put on a second coat of primer.  I tried to find a youtube video to post here, of the scene in PT 109 where James Gregory, as the Commander, uses his knife to test John Kennedy's claim that yes, he had put two coats of primer on the boat, as ordered.  I just could not find a video clip of it.  For some reason that scene impressed me enough even back 51 years ago that I have always remembered: two primer coats are better than one.  

Well... Lee... it did get a second coat. Then the unit toppled over and the middle breaker popped off. I don't think the CA worked well. So I mixed up some 45 minute epoxy. It isn't coming off now. I then machined 6 bases and 6 top fittings for the insulators and also prepared the insulators to accept them.

I placed them all in place for a status shot. They're not going to be formally glued in until after all the rest is painted. 

All it takes is to hang some insulators on it and it look "very High-voltage-ish". 

The top fittings were a pain in the butt. Not machining them. That was easy! Holding onto them once they were finished. I lost at least two of them. One popped off during the cutoff operation and disappeared. The other disappeared after I was disassembling the status shot. I stand by my theory that small parts enter an alternative universe if they are under the required number of atoms that govern quantum mechanics. They simply pop in and out of existence.

I started making the observation ports. The body is a 1/4"styrene tube with an end shaped on the sanding mandrel I made yesterday that will conform with the breaker's curve radius. Attached to this are perforated plastic discs made by using two different size hollow punches that captures a clear styrene "window" made from a single hollow punched disc.

Using liquid solvent cement I glued the three pieces together and started final shaping. I still have more work to do tomorrow after this dries solid.

It was difficult getting the holes punched in the center of the disc. The hollow punches are Chinese from Harbor Freight, and frankly, they're crap, but they're all I've got. If there were some US made punches I'd like to know about it.

I'm going to mask the center window either by liquid mask or disk of masking tape cut from the same punch. I'll glue them onto the model before painting.

Tomorrow, I'll start building the breaker and disconnect control boxes and links. This shouldn't be problematic (famous last words), so this project's really coming along. I printed some ABB logos that I add to it after painting. Unlike the transformer, this project was an attempt to actually make a real machine so the logo will be appropriate.

Are you sure this is not going to interfere with your TMCC?    Great job, very well done and described.  Thank you.  Russ

This is getting better and better.  Fantastic!