Axle Reamer

[Slim Rail Mike]

    I’ve been tuning up my rolling stock. Checking that wheels and couplers are in gauge and cars are at least the nmra recommended weight. Part of the tuning process is making each of the cars as free rolling as I can. I’m using mostly metal wheels. Some cars roll at .5% grade or less, any car that won’t start rolling over 1.5% gets worked on. While reading on the web about free rolling cars, the HO folk have long touted an axle reamer. Such a tool I thought was not available in N-scale. Today I came upon an N-scale one from DCC concepts on the Iron Planet web site. I’ve ordered one.

 Has anyone used such a thing in our scale?
 Did it improve the roll-ablity of your cars?
 What are the downsides? Too loose an axle doesn’t seem much better than too tight. 

[NtheBasement]

I haven't used one.  I do find that I can wiggle the plastic axles on new MT trucks slightly back and forth, so they are already shorter than the socket space.  It seems like sharpening the points on my axles is just going to make them shorter so they will wiggle more.  YMMV.

[Jim Starbuck]

I have one of these from Iron Planet and it works reasonably well.
I’m glad to have it in the toolbox.

[peteski]

I bought that reamer set and it is very disappointing. The cutting edges are not very sharp and not symmetrical.  Originally I was planning on making a reamer from a pair of 1/8" 60 degree countersinks, and it looks like I'll still have do do this to get a decent reamer.  I was not looking to ream existing holes in trucks (I don't think N scale trucks have "bad" holes), but to make new ones or deepen  holes in some custom  modified trucks I want to make.

There was a discussion about this earlier: https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=55298.msg771321#msg771321

[MVW]

Axle Reamer? Porn star name. 

Jim

[Slim Rail Mike]

@peteski thax for the link, I did search bit must not have used the correct keywords. I've a few cars that fail my free rolling test. One wouldn't roll until at 2.75% grade. Haven't determined the the issues with the poor performance yet. They are on a todo list.

[davefoxx]

You can also hold the truck sans wheelsets by its corners in your pointer fingers and thumbs and slightly flex the sideframes in or out. You probably don’t want do this to make an 0.553” axle length fit a truck designed for a 0.540” axle or vice versa, but you can certainly tweak the fit of a proper axle to spin freely.

Hope this helps,
DFF

[mmagliaro]

I can see how a tool like that would help if the truck frame is actually just a hair too tight so that it binds the axle points.

But if they already fit such that there is a little wiggle in them, I don't see how that tool could do anything but
make things worse.  Delrin is awfully slippery stuff.  It would take an amazing cutter to be sharp enough to cut
into that cone hole and leave the surface as smooth as the originally molded Delrin, especially when you are rotating
that tool with your fingers.  Getting super smooth cutting surfaces requires high speed, like when you cut
something in a lathe.  You do the heavy "hogging"  with passes at lower speeds, but when you do the last pass to
take off that last thousandth of an inch at the very end, you run it at high speed to get the smoothest finish.

[Roger Holmes]

You don't want your wheelsets to be Too Loose, La Trek.  Sorry, bad Grandpa joke.   

[Lackawannae8]

Honestly I would bite the bullet and order ESM wheels... Brian did a wonderful job on making them, I probably converted 350+ cars at this point to them and havent looked back. its amazing how well they make the worst cars roll effortlessly.

[peteski]

But if they already fit such that there is a little wiggle in them, I don't see how that tool could do anything but
make things worse.  Delrin is awfully slippery stuff.  It would take an amazing cutter to be sharp enough to cut
into that cone hole and leave the surface as smooth as the originally molded Delrin, especially when you are rotating
that tool with your fingers. 

Excellent point Max.  The plan for my own home-made tool is to ream/enlarge the existing cup holes to accept the brass axle-point bearing cups for all-wheel electrical pickups on various trucks not originally designed for that.

Slightly spreading the truck sideframes like Mr. Foxx mentioned is also good idea, and so is using replacement wheelsets (with shorter axles if needed).  Tooloose is also not good. 

[nkalanaga]

Like Dave Foxx, I just bend the sideframes slightly.  In the rare case where that doesn't fix the problem, there's usually a very small bit of flash rubbing the wheel face.  Carving that off fixes it.

[Olivani]

Who's Alex Reamer ? Sounds like an adult movie star  I see myself out...

Edit:  Shoot, should have read all comments first, Jim beat me to it   

[garethashenden]

I bought that reamer set and it is very disappointing. The cutting edges are not very sharp and not symmetrical.  Originally I was planning on making a reamer from a pair of 1/8" 60 degree countersinks, and it looks like I'll still have do do this to get a decent reamer.  I was not looking to ream existing holes in trucks (I don't think N scale trucks have "bad" holes), but to make new ones or deepen  holes in some custom  modified trucks I want to make.

There was a discussion about this earlier: https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=55298.msg771321#msg771321

Looking at the images and the price, I'm not surprised you were disappointed. Getting a tool to really cut at the tip like that is really hard, from a tool geometry point of view. A simple gash like that isn't going to be that effective. If we're lucky there is some clearance around the cone from the cutting edge, but I wouldn't be surprised if its just a cone. What we need out of a tool like this is to make the tip pointier, not cut the sides of the cone.   

[lock4244]

I have had some success using an xacto blade to ream axle dibits on trucks. It is not precision, but neither am I.