On 11/17/2011 4:58 PM, Erik wrote:
In ,
Tim wrote:

I'm building model airplanes. Nearly everyone bends up their landing
gear out of music wire (0.9% carbon, low alloy, hard drawn wire), and
either holds the wheels on with these really ugly collars, or they epoxy
on washers.

The washers won't come off when you want them to, and do come off when
you don't. I'm thinking up a few schemes to do a nicer job, some of
which would go a lot nicer if the steel were drawn a lot more than it
is. I don't want to go using my nice 5-44 die on hard steel, nor do I
want to try drilling .050" holes.

So: how to anneal, and how to just draw the temper a bit more? For
annealing I expect that I can just clamp the thing in my vise (both to
hold and to limit heat travel), get the end as hot as it'll get with a
propane torch, and let it cool. To just draw it, should I do something
like filing a spot shiny, then heating it to blue or purple, then letting
it cool? Or is there a better way to do this by eyeball methods?

Comments appreciated. I know how to make it work with rocks and sticks,
I'd just like pointers on using hammers and screwdrivers for the job...

Way back in my model airplane days (c. early/mid 60's)... seems like we
would find (or make) a brass washer that fit snug over the end of the
axel; put on the wheel, a thin 'shirtboard' type cardboard 'washer' to
act as a spacer, then solder the on the washer with the soldering gun.
Once cool, the cardboard spacer was torn out. If one were to mess with
the axle length, find the right washer and really get everything super
clean before soldering, they'd look very professional with the end of
the axle not even visible. Last for eons too. You could even R&R the
wheel assy without much trouble.

These were large control line models, and the axle's were probably on
the order of at least .125"; maybe even a little larger in some cases.
Wheel hubs were aluminum. I recall never having any solder other than
60/40, and a little white metal tub of that 'no-corrode' (sp?) rosin
flux (which I really haven't made a good dent in to this day).

I recall neither collars or epoxy... well, some people might have been
using epoxy back then, but certainly not for wheel retention. (Ambroid
and white glue were the adhesives of the day, neither of which bonded
well to metals.)

IIRC, some axel/wheel assy's required both inboard, and outboard washers.

Practice with some scrap first.

Good luck!

Erik
I soldered them on back in the 50 & 60's too.