Neat and timely

Thanks for the information. Timely as I need to start replacing molded on grabs on a some O-Scale boxcars.

Great tip

Great tip!  Thanks for sharing.

Thanks neighbor

This Is Great

This is genius!

Great idea, I would love to

Great idea, I would love to know how long your stick lasts, how many do you get before the edge gets chewed up by the wire.

Aluminium jig?

Might be more resistant to chewing up than popsicle stick. 

Duration

Generally enough for the car or cars I'm building.  Normally that's maybe a dozen or more grabirons.  Never really wore one out.  Its such a simple tool, if I need one I just drill a hole in something and make a new jig.  It can be a popsicle stick, a scrap of ,040 or .060 plastic, whatever.  If it does wear out, drill a new hole over a 1/4" or so.  If you are installing wire grabs, you are drilling dozens of little holes.  What's one more?

If I need custom grabs for a scratchbuilt car, its just as easy.

the jig

I've made similar for drop grabs by sawing a slot in the edge of the jig and moving the hole over a bit. However I usually just use a pair of needle nose pliers and clamp the wire at the spot along the jaws that give the desired width,after bending the wide down turn it 90 degrees and bend the drop grab with the edge of the pliers...DaveB

Great idea!

Great idea!

Love this!

Love this!

What a simple solution!

I am one that does not generally even think of making jigs for things. 

I think the only jig/pattern I have made in the past 20 years was for the handgrab drill holes for premade grabs for the rear of an SD40-2!

This is so easy.  Have lots of retrofitting to do, this will be MADE!

Pat Flynn
Leland, NC

Jigs

I am a bit of the opposite, I like jigs when I can use them, especially if I am going to make more than 3 or 4 of the item.  Most of the time the jigs are pretty simple and quick to make, so in the long run, I save more time than I spend making the jig.

Here's a jig I made for bridge trestle bents, I neded 6 to start and will need 3 or 4 more at least.

I made a jig to build bents for a coal trestle:

On the other side of that jig is a jig to make the racks for "boat plate" for my steel mill:

I use jigs to cut the pieces for my switches when I handlay them.  A simple wood jig makes sure all the pieces are the same length. One method I used, involved making the frogs on the bench and then laying them much like the prototype does, using a "kit" of prefabbed pieces.  For that I had a real simple jig to make the frogs, both #5 and #6.  The wood block is used with virtually every switch to cut the pieces, so I have used it for almost 100 switches.  It is also the most expensive jig I have since I spent about $2 on a basswood strip to make the stops.

Grab irons

GRAB IRONS

How easy is that?!?   A really beaut tip!   Thanks Mate!

Aussie48er

Thank you

Dave, 

I have to thank you sincerely for the grab iron and the bent templates. I never think of things like that. I lay them off with a straight edge and place, bend and cut. In N scale it usually looks pretty rough. But no more! Now I can follow the one, true Dave Way! I’m a convert. I have seen the light. Thank you for this.

wire jig

Great,  thank you

do a lot of car building for my R.R.

Boudreaux

What goes around

Ah, youth!

I bet that if we started with the 1934 Vol 1, No. 1 issue of Model Railroader, this hint would appear within the first year.  

And jigs were pretty much universal in early modeling.  I think it's because everybody used to take shop, and in some places they took metal shop as well as wood shop.  All this stuff was just ingrained.  

I am really glad to see someone like Dave, who has been around the block a few times, reintroduce it.  Now, if someone can just tell me what a "bank pin", I can squash a couple of split shot and combine the two to make caboose markers. ????

Bank pin

If you are modeling TT&TO pre-1950's "faithfully" you'll probably be using bank pins too.

A bank pin is a heavy duty straight pin that was used before staples to attach pieces of paper together.   When an operator completed the clearance and orders for a train, they would use the pin to attach the paperwork together. Rooting around in old desks and store rooms in railroad offices back in the early 1980's one could still find boxes of bank pins.

What gauge of wire would one

What gauge of wire would one use for HO grab irons? I would imagine it can't be too soft either. Suggestions? Great idea!

Wire

I use brass wire, something in the .010-.015 diameter.    Real grab irons are in the 3/4-1" diameter range, that's .008-.011 size.  A little heavier is easier to handle, bend and resists damage.  I generally buy Detail Associates wire.  

Wire gauge would be somewhere between 32 (.008") and 25 (.018").

Tichy Train

I use the phosphor bronze in the .0125 size.