 Hi I'm Daniel Coombs and the January's What's Neat starts right now. This is What's Neat for January 2017. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we've got a packed show. First our friend Michael Gross stops by and shares with us some of the hoops that he needs to jump through to create beautiful models out of his hotel room while he's on the road acting. For tool tips this month we build a track cleaner that's functional, it works, it's bullet proof and I tell you what it's nice looking, you're going to be proud to own the tool that we come up with this month on What's Neat. For airbrushing this month I show you some upgrades that I've made to my spray booth and my air supply system that helps facilitate airbrushing at a moment's notice. For scenery tips this month I show you a very easy way to refresh your scenery instantly, remove the dust, using a household product that you may already have on hand in your home. For indoor model photography this month I do an atherin photo shoot inside with lights and a blue backdrop which really illustrates that you don't have to go outside to get great model railroad photography shots. Jeff Meyer stops by and shows us a beautiful tangent freight car that he's recently weathered and finished and then at the end of the show I show you a little bit about what into creating the tsunami 2 steam video that I made for soundtracks, some of the props that I needed to build and I got to tell you what everything didn't go completely smooth, so this month I've included a few bloopers at the end of the show kind of just to see how that goes over and that's pretty much the line up for this January 2017 What's Neat. A few tips on What's Neat, I like to clean my garden railroad track using this drywall pole sander which is a great tool because it's got the flexible end on it, I put a green pad on the end for cleaning the track and push it right along, things great for reaching and extending it to get inside of tunnels on the garden railroad layout or it's really great for swinging and cleaning around the trestle or the deck, it's just a great way to clean track. So I was sitting here thinking the other day, why can't we build something like this to use on our HO scale, N scale or O scale layouts on the inside, something that would be functional, something that would work and maybe a tool that would actually look really nice and you'd be proud to own. So let's do this, let's go inside the shop and let's think this through and see if we can create a track cleaner that's perfect for use on an indoor HO scale layout that's got all the versatility that this pole sander has got on my garden railroad layout. So let's see how this turns out. One of the best kept secrets in Microengineering's catalog are these abrasive track cleaning pads. My favorite two sizes are the two and a half by two inch and the one inch by six inch cleaning pads, you can find these at your local hobby shop. These are nothing new as we have been using abrasive track cleaning erasers for over thirty five plus years and they work really well without scarring the top of the rail. They are easily cleaned with soap and water ready for more use. We will use these abrasive track cleaning pads as the basis for our track cleaning tool experiment. I will use oak for the foundation of the track cleaning tool. It's dense and very solid. I got these used oak floorboard planks from my neighbor's house as it was torn down this past summer. One man's trash is truly our treasure for this project. I cut the oak boards on a table saw making a block that measured one and a quarter by two and a half inches with about three quarters of an inch thick. I rounded the sharp edges of the wood block using a ten inch disc sander. This went quick and will give our tool smooth lines. I further finished the sanded wood by hand using one hundred and fifty grit sandpaper. Measuring from each corner I located the center of the block and marked this with an X. I then drew a one half inch square with a pencil centered on the block of wood. Using a drill press I drilled a one half inch hole through the exact center of the block of wood. I cut the corners of our pencil drawn square with hand files. This will ensure a perfect one half inch square hole in our block of wood which is very important for this project. Since I wanted our tool to look nice I stained it with red oak stain and let this dry overnight. I put a coat of polyurethane on the block of wood to give it some shine. Actually I applied five coats of polyurethane over a period of a few days to really make this tool pop. I cut the track cleaning pad to fit our block of wood using a razor saw. I drilled two holes through the track cleaner and the wood block using a five sixty fourth inch diameter drill bit. I then pulled a few one half inch wood screws from my scrap drawer and screwed these into the track cleaning pad and the wood. I tightened the screws so they would be embedded into the track pad about a sixteenth of an inch ensuring smooth clearance over turnouts and wood hand laid railroad crossings. Now with this done reach into your tool chest and pull out your one half inch breaker bar stored with all of your ratchets and sockets. This will act as a strong handle and a pivot point for our track cleaner. If I cut the square hole correct the breaker bar should fit perfect into the block of wood completing our new tool and just like that it's done. Upon testing it it worked smooth and had a strong well balanced feel to it. It made reaching hard spots easy like the inside of my BLMA 200 foot long brass bridge. It made cleaning the track between the buildings on my warf scene easy without having to move the structures and with no damage to any of the details. It worked great when cleaning the rail on my delicate wood trestle bridges. I cleaned the track without any damage to my hand laid wood railroad crossings. I also tested it between trains in my switch yard where space is tight. It worked good here too. Using an extended length 25 inch breaker bar handle I found I could clean the main line behind my river without having to stand on a stool. Experimenting with various breaker bars from various different manufacturers I noticed some had a higher pivot point than others. This high pivot point from the rails caused wood head to tip and it didn't work very well at all. The solution to this was to make a longer track cleaning head using the microengineering 6 inch by 1 inch track pad. Attach this to a 6 inch long piece of oak and now you've got a perfect structure that works good with the higher extended heads. Being satisfied with the first breaker bar tool that we made, the track cleaner, and it's just beautiful, what a great tool. I ended up making more because I went to Harbor Freight and I found additional models of breaker bars, this 25 inch one which is really my favorite to use on the layout because this one will reach completely through the 200 foot long BLMA bridge and it feels right, it just feels balanced and you don't have to push down on it because it's got enough weight. A breaker bar like this runs about $19 at Harbor Freight and of course our track cleaner whatever the cost is for that so you're in this one for about 25 bucks. These other units aren't finished yet, I haven't put the abrasive bottom on them but they're both inexpensive models from Harbor Freight. I think one of them is an 18 inch and the other one is a 17 inch and one of these is three-eighths just to try a smaller diameter than the half inch to see how it would work. Both of them, I don't know how they work yet, I haven't actually used them on the layout and the one that seems the most versatile and functional is the first one that we made for the video. This is a 15 inch Husky from the Home Depot so this one will set you back $19. These two were $9 a piece so really you could build this track cleaner for under when you figure the track cleaner cost for microengineering you're probably going to be in this at $15 complete. What a nice gift to actually make for somebody and give to somebody because this is something they can really use. So this was a great experiment trying to copy the drywall sanding pole out on the garden railroad and creating a very nice functional tool for the inside layout. HO scale, N scale, it doesn't matter, O scale you can use this for anything. It's versatile, it's cheap, it works and I think that's a pretty good tip on this what's neat tool tips for the month. Hey Ken, what are you doing? I'll tell you what, Dirk. I moved my spray booth motor from my painting system outside and I built this cabinet for it which I just now put a roof on to keep the rain off of it and what I've done here is I've moved my 500 cubic feet per minute blower that was attached to the back of the spray booth. Now this is a subject that we've covered in a previous what's neat video where I showed you my spray booth a few years back and I showed you how the motor was connected to the back of it and we talked about it. By moving the motor outside it no longer blows air out so if I've got a hole in the pipe it's not blowing fumes into the room it's now sucking the air out and plus because it's outside it makes it a lot quieter on the inside when you're trying to talk, watch TV while you're painting or having a conversation with somebody in the room. So I really like it being moved out here, it's weather proof, I can get to the motor to oil it, everything works but let's go inside and let me show you some improvements that I've also made to my air brushing capabilities on the inside. Now for years I've used this old compressor that I picked up at the Home Depot I want to say 25 years ago and I've used it for my air brushing and my painting. The problem with the unit I've always had was it's so loud that when I work at night down here on projects it wakes up the family so you've got to make sure you've got a full tank of air and usually I can go through this tank pretty quickly because it's not that large of a tank. Well recently one of my neighbors had moved out of the neighborhood and during an estate sale that they were having on the property one of the sons asked me if I'd be as so kind as to share a little love with their father's compressor that he used in his shop. This is a machine that was built from parts and the tank has got a date on it, I think this is an old welding tank that would hold gases and it's got a date on it of 1943 so this is just right after or during the World War II era of this country so how interesting is it that they had the foresight to weld the tank with a base here to hold a compressor motor that they pulled out of a junkyard they rebuilt the inside cylinders out of a solid block of aluminum so it's got brand new inner workings lines and a nice good motor I don't know how many gallons this tank is I want to guess it is probably 45 to 50 gallons and I've discovered that I can paint all night long with this device and it's added greatly to the hours that I can work around the clock I added a few clock gauges to it which gives me air pressure in the line, tank pressure and I've added another clock gauge that I have in the spray booth so I can have airbrush pressure they're easy to see, you don't even need glasses or optics to see these gauges also something else to consider for your shop which I have found to be very handy is I've added this 50 foot pull out hose so I can reach all corners of my layout now with an airbrush without having to unroll hoses on the floor and have them rolled back up and where do you store those this just stores right into some spot and then rolls right back up so this is really a handy thing for you to think about for your shop is just this hose reel in itself it's made airbrushing again on all corners of the layout much easier for me another thing that I want to talk about in addition to this is this dryer that I picked up from Harbor Freight this is a very inexpensive commercial duty looking dryer and what it does is it takes the moisture out of that comes from inside the compressor there's always moisture trapped and it dries it out so that you don't get your airbrush spitting water on your model another thing I want to talk about is in order to get rid of the water out of the compressor I've got this black hose here and it's got garden hose disconnect connectors on it so that I can quickly connect it to the bottom of the compressor run the hose along and outside the door with it connected I open up the valve and then I'm able to blow the air out of the compressor getting the moisture out without making a rusty mess in the room I scrub the unit clean, clean with a toothbrush and then I painted various parts of it the motor, the wheel I put a nice filter on it from the auto parts store which allows clean air to suck into the unit then I literally wax the entire unit with car wax just to make it shine and look good in the shop add to that the really nice background that I found some plating this tread plating at the Home Depot just to brighten it up in the rear also I put some LED lights underneath the Kimswick diorama just to light up the compressor area to make it easy to see it's more like I've preserved an antique compressor and I'm so proud of it it's just very beautiful it's nice to hear it operate and it's extremely functional for the shop when it comes to airbrushing and working with our models also I put a piece of carpet underneath the machine and a piece of plywood as a base so that it doesn't vibrate, it doesn't have any sound it kind of absorbs the room sound when it's running I want to say I've got about $450 in the install on this but it's well worth it here let me let you hear it run the compressor loads up you hear the valves release the air is going into the tank and this compressor will do it's set for 100 pounds and you know when we're airbrushing we're only using about 25 or 30 pounds depending on what it is you're spraying the only last thing is the air booth itself I've got an 8 foot hose on it now so that I can pull it out roll it anywhere in the room that I need to if I'm airbrushing a project up to 8 feet and without the motor here and it's running right now it's a lot quieter I really like the quietness of this the way it's set up the inside of the spray booth is pretty much the same as the last video that we've made in that I've got it set up here where I put down a piece of copper plating on the bottom to protect the wood that's new I used to use aluminum foil for that and I put a charcoal filter in it the only disadvantage that I have found so far into moving the spray booth motor outside is that my 500 cubic feet per minute of air flow has been reduced a little bit but smoke and paint fumes still evacuate the room so it's not enough where I've got to really go out and replace the motor so that's just a few suggestions on improvements that you could make to your spray booth area it's quiet, it's convenient and it's set up so that you can just light up the airbrush immediately upon meeting it and not have to have any downtime or setup time so that's an argument of shop tools for what's neat this week it drives me crazy to think about it but I'm working down here in my studio all the time and it's laid out efficiently where I know how to build models I know where all the supplies are but you're modeling and you're acting and you're on the road all the time how do you go about modeling? you're right I envy you the fact that you have a place to work and you know just what that workspace is going to be and where the tools are on the road I like to take miniature tools and I'd pick a job for myself something that's not going to be too difficult something to be accomplished in a hotel room so like a building or a structure? a lot of times I'll take I'll tell you one of the things I like doing is I do I work on the under body detail of a freight car for example I can bring my phosphor bronze wire my some brass shapes things like that a little glue the tiny drills and things like that start to lay out under body you know it sounds so hard to follow is this something where we can go on the road with you sometime and actually watch you modeling your room? I think that could be arranged you know what that's it this isn't going to be a what's neat field trip but we're going to go hang out with Michael Gross at his hotel and model with him so let's see what there is to doing something like that I just bring the essentials to doing something that will fit neatly into like an atherin blue box not much bigger than that I bring the models themselves and sometimes instead of having to bring a foam cradle or something I'll use the packaging of the model itself how about glues? do you have to go through airports with glues? that's all packed inside the check on luggage and just the minimum tools needed to do a very specific job and usually in this case it will be detailing work obviously I'm not going to bring paints and the compressor no that would be Bellman would you bring up a compressor to room 708 please Home Depot Rebel yeah right so you know it's the minimum and I turn the desk every hotel has a desk and it's got outlets and things like that and I just get the light arranged the way I want to set everything up move everything else off the desk all the unnecessaries like the telephone and stuff like that and set up the modeling when I'm on the road for any length of time I will occasionally turn my hotel room desk into a temporary workshop in this case I brought along several models with the intention to modify the underframe and the brake piping I installed some stirrup steps and if they do not exist some coupler cut bars and things like that and these are the few tools I brought along to help with this as you can see I'm also replacing air hoses with rubber hoses getting rid of the plastic which break easily I've got a selection of coupler cut bars and eye bolts for that a selection of stirrup steps in a small box something of every design to fit various cars and the usual tools some wire cutters and long nose pliers I use phosphor bronze wire which bends very easily without breaking seems to hold its shape and it's a nice compromise between steel and brass I've got a few knives a screwdriver here that has many extra tips so I don't have to bring seven screwdrivers and the usual set of tweezers I've got some drills the pin vice wet and dry sandpaper files and most of it fits into a box about the size of an athron blue box the kits themselves in this case I brought four four on the road the compartment in my carry on luggage so there you have it I usually plop down one of the white hotel hand towels so I can find any little pieces I need to should I drop something and of course I suppose I should say that the only additional tools I use are the ever important Optivizer which you see here and some selections of glues adhesives which are not shown in this picture but that's pretty much it I can get most of it on a small desk in the hotel and with some decent lighting I can turn my little hotel room into a portable on the road modelers workshop I take an old US post office priority mailbox pack it with as many as four freight car kits and there's still room in the box for detail parts not bolt washer castings grab irons that sort of thing I close up the box pack it into this carry on duffel bag and I'm ready for my flight you know it's amazing to me what a hassle it is and how much you really do have to think about everything so that you can't finish a product modeling the way you do is this something in the future I guess maybe we'll see some of your finished models maybe you'll show them on what's neat I could do that there are various stages I do what I can when I'm on the road and when I take some time off I try to finish them at home like you do when I've got all the stuff in the right place I'd love to bring them by sometime we look forward to hearing and seeing what you've got coming in the future good to be with you back to run eight a construction tip on what's neat I've got this module here that's a good ten years old and the trees on it they were made I want to say a good seven years ago and they started to look a little grey and dusty and naturally what you would do is you would vacuum it and take a small brush and artist brush and try to get a little bit of the dust out but I'm ready to shoot video on this diorama and I need it to look fresh right now so just like you're getting ready for an open house what do you do well my solution that works very well is you take Aquanet hairspray and you simply spray the trees a good, thorough soaking on the diorama and what happens is the dust literally looks like it just disappears as the hairspray dries the ground foam and the trees look fresh all over again now these are sagebrush trees with polyfiber on them and then ground foam sprinkled on top of that and another thing that you can do is take the same ground foams that you used when you made the tree and as before the hairspray dries and it looks like this on tops of the trees and it'll give a fresh coating just a fresh look, not too heavy very light and it'll give a distinctive fresh look as the hairspray dries and it wouldn't hurt as after you've put that on to go ahead and put a little bit more spray on it just to glue it into place and that makes the scenery look fresh all over again very quickly so I can shoot video or you could actually have an open house so that's this modeling tip on what's neat it's a beautiful day Jeff Meyer and I see you're out here doing some more photography tell us what are you shooting on this gorgeous afternoon Jeff it's a tangent 2 bay air slide General American 4180 I'm trying to capture the same shot the exact same number of the car and the model it's a Davelebach photograph from the tangent scale website I'm trying to capture the exact same image so far it looks like it might be turning out pretty good now a tangent makes some beautiful fray cars absolutely now this looks fantastic good luck on your afternoon shooting Jeff thanks for sharing that really nice model with us on what's neat this photography segment of what's neat I'm doing an indoor photo shoot today not outside in the real sunlight out in the wind with bugs and insects but more of a controlled environment inside I'm using the ather and switch yard diorama that we built earlier in one episode of the show and I've got some beautiful bicentennial units set up and my instructions are to shoot a vertical cover photograph where I'd leave plenty of room on the sides for bleed and plenty of room on the bottom and the top of the photographs for them to put their words now I'm using a backdrop simply made of foam it's 8 feet by 4 feet it's painted blue and then I just took a spray can and sprayed just a little bit of white clouds just to make a background subliminal more than anything else I'm lighting the scene inside with total lights and I've got two lights here that are a thousand watts a piece that I use for my key lights and then I'm using this rear light for fill back here which works really well to light up the sky and all the background buildings and I'm using a total of three lights total I've got one more key light here which I had to move out of the way because of the camera position for this video all three lights together give me even shadows on the scene let me show you what the photograph looks like here's the photograph that I did for them you've got plenty of sky for the words plenty of ballast area down below to put words and there's plenty of side bleed for each side of the locomotives so that they can use this in their brochure so this is just a quick sample of how to do an indoor photo shoot get a very clean professional looking cover shot and you don't have to go outside for great model railroad photographs so that's this segment of what's neat photography for the new tsunami 2 steam decoder that has just come out today I am filming the video for soundtracks and I've got my hill test set up here so you can get an inside look at how I'm actually making the soundtracks video this hill is a 3% grade that goes up and back down over a length of 16 feet and I've got it set up here in the middle of the room to demonstrate the steam locomotives dynamic digital exhaust it's a magnificent chuff system that senses the load and increases the chuff and decreases the chuff as it goes up and down hills even to the point of coasting back down the hill so I've got a steam locomotive set up here to do the filming with for the video clips that I need to make but the video clips are going to be kind of broken up and here I can just little process from start to finish without any breaking of clips so let's do this I'm going to start up the headlight on the locomotive you'll hear the dynamo start spinning and I am ready to move forward so let this do this automatically to the screws at the end of the diorama and you can hear clearly the breaking sound as the train stops so that's this quick little demo tell you what I'm doing right now is I'm putting just a little more extra effort into the soundtracks sound video because now that I've found out what the steam engine can do the hard part is over so now I really want to set up a really cool scene to exemplify simple things like stopping the train and using the brakes I can do it on the indoor layout but I set up a scene out here that I think will look absolutely dramatic and fit the air up pretty alright and it didn't take all that long and set up I've got DCC out here and I've got the locomot out here hardwired instead of using radio this time so I have absolute response but all I have to do is I'm just going to make a few more clips here maybe a segue for the show but certainly a stopping clip, a starting clip using the multiple types of brakes that these decoders have got so I kind of wanted to share the scene with you because once it's gone, it's gone but I've got every building off the shelf out here right now and I kind of like how it looks it's just one of those cool scenes you only get to look at one time that's kind of cool well here's one I didn't see coming one of the lines, one of the instructional lines or paragraphs the video says that I've got to have an ash pit with a steam locomotive of course the rails in the air and the ashes dumping out of the locomotive so I've quickly built the scene to do a quick ash pit shoot I simply took a few pieces of track I've got my cooling facility I've got black ballast but the reason I'm recording this is I can't even believe what I'm doing here the best ash that I have found is straight from the cigarette ash tray it's the right color and it looks absolutely just right sprinkled in and rubbed in with your finger it looks like ash so out of the necessity of need I'm sure somebody's discovered this or tried that before but if you're making an ash pit use cigarette or cigar boats it appears it works really well so there's a quick tip that's just come out of this photo shoot setup music music discuss the new tsunami 2 these are whoa hey dude where are you at hey mick videotaping oh is that a spider can I get the whole tower in here track or dirty track we're done oh no seriously this is chef auto and this is the what's neat take 2 hey auto this is what's neat this