Can a vinegar car tank wrapper be bought ?

[up1950s]

And who makes it .

I have a few Atlas ones but every one only has the metal hardware molded on and none have the flat wood planks when looking sideways .I was thinking of sanding them smooth , wrapping with scribed siding and adding metal rings and braces . If I use real wood Krazy glue would screw up any post staining , so maybe plastic might be better . The siding to work well should only bend at the joints so the planks remain flat . If not it would be a waste of effort , and scribes in the round OEM smoothed tank would be easier , and with the equal or better results . Along with the vinegar I plan on making one hauling piss . Thoughts ?

[DKS]

It is easy enough to make wooden tanks from individual boards. I made this water tank by applying stripwood with thick CA to a piece of PVC tubing, then cutting the ends of the tube to make everything flush. Took maybe a half-hour.

[JMaurer1]

I wish. Pickle tank, yes. Vinegar, no.

[thomasjmdavis]

"If I use real wood Krazy glue would screw up any post staining , so maybe plastic might be better."

Not to be old fashioned, but why not use scribed wood siding over a wood dowel.  Glue with Tightbond and clamp for an hour with a bunch of rubber bands?

[nkalanaga]

If you don't want scribed siding, an easy way to use individual boards would be to glue them to a piece of paper, then cut out the section you need.  I've long made flatcar decks and running boards that way.  It's much easier than trying to keep the boards straight on a model, and if you do ruin the piece, it's just boards and paper.

[Chris333]

I would just slowly scribe board lines into the original car.

[peteski]

With all the straps and other hardware molded-on on the Atlas car I wouldn't even bother to scribe the board gaps. That would be like putting lipstick on a pig. 
Also, to me, the gaps between the boards of that larger-scale car look way too wide and deep. Shades of the Rapido Meat Reefers, right up1950s? 

If you look at the prototype car's photos, are the gaps really that visible?  If you really want to have the gaps visible, make a decal with parallel lines and apply it to the car to simulate the gaps.  At least that will be close to scale.

[OldEastRR]

With all the straps and other hardware molded-on on the Atlas car I wouldn't even bother to scribe the board gaps. That would be like putting lipstick on a pig. 
Also, to me, the gaps between the boards of that larger-scale car look way too wide and deep. Shades of the Rapido Meat Reefers, right up950s? 

If you look at the prototype car's photos, are the gaps really that visible?  If you really want to have the gaps visible, make a decal with parallel lines and apply it to the car to simulate the gaps.  At least that will be close to scale.

I was wondering when peteski would start in on those too-wide board gaps. 

[peteski]

I was wondering when peteski would start in on those too-wide board gaps. 

Did you really, or you just made that up on the spot after you saw my post? 
I only mentioned that "problem"since IIRC up1950s was one of few people besides me who called Rapido out on their meat reefers.

[JMaurer1]

With all the straps and other hardware molded-on on the Atlas car I wouldn't even bother to scribe the board gaps. That would be like putting lipstick on a pig. 

Something I learned the hard way is even after you put lipstick on a pig is the pig really doesn't like it and it does nothing to improve the looks.

[up1950s]

Thanks for all the responses , all are valid points and appreciated very much . I still am up in the air on which method to use but Mrs Porky will go to make up , probably look like it's worse off and unprototypical to everything .

[mmagliaro]

If you are going to re-sheatch that car with some sort of scribed boards, then I wouldn't even bother with that car body at all.  I'd just use a cardboard tube wrapped with scribed siding.  A dowel would be awfully heavy.
You could use wood scribed siding, but another option is Evergreen styrene scribed siding, which will
have scribes that are shallower than the wood siding sheets (to somewhat address Peteski's concern about oversized scribes).  The freight car scribed Evergreen stuff looks about like a MT boxcar scribing.
I'd wrap it on a cardboard tube and use Walthers Goo to hold it, except along the seam where it joins back to itself, where some liquid styrene cement ought to do the trick. 

[thomasjmdavis]

"A dowel would be awfully heavy."

I was thinking Balsa, not Ironwood.    But whatever they are using for dowel at my local Walmart might work ok. The 7/8" x3' piece I bought the other day weighs in at 6.2 ounces (for 3 feet) on our fancy kitchen scale- or one ounce per 6" (I don't know how long those cars are, but not over 80', are they?).  5/8" diameter would weigh just a bit more than 1/2 that- something like 5/8 of an ounce for a 6" piece.  Balsa would be much less.

[peteski]

The problem with a dowel is that at that point you might as well scratchbuild a new car since all the hardware (straps, etc.) are molded onto the plastic tank on the Atlas car.  Richie was looking for something that can be fit to the existing plastic tank. That is why I proposed decal depicting boards.

[thomasjmdavis]

The problem with a dowel is that at that point you might as well scratchbuild a new car since all the hardware (straps, etc.) are molded onto the plastic tank on the Atlas car.  Richie was looking for something that can be fit to the existing plastic tank. That is why I proposed decal depicting boards.

You are probably right, I am just not "seeing" the decal job in my head as a solution but I may not be envisioning it the right way. I confess, I am a woodworker by nature.  I would have an easier time making new hardware bits than trying to decal in between all the braces and strapping around the tank- so maybe I am making your decal idea more complicated than it needs to be.  I am envisioning a couple dozen strips of decal film, each fitting between 2 of the straps around the tank, and trying to line up the boards of each section with the boards of the next section.
And given picture #2, I thought he was open to a fairly major rebuild of the car.