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                           The versatile Wire Twisting Tool & Small Parts Holder

 

Over the years we've found many, many uses for these small tools. Here are just some of the ways they have helped:

Wire twisting  (The twisting procedure can be found here)

There are many instances where wire that is being used for powering lights can also be visually attractive in a modeling environment. A couple of examples are shown below:

 

The N scale loading dock above has a flood light mounted up in the roof that is powered by the twisted black wires seen running through the insulators (drilled segments of styrene rod) mounted to the main roof I-beam. The twisted wires were painted black (Poly Scale acrylic) prior to threading them through the insulators. They go through the junction box in the upper-left corner and outside this little diorama to battery power inside a pill bottle the whole thing is mounted on. Many early-era shops and buildings had exposed wires like this before modern building codes outlawed such potentially dangerous wiring hazards.

 

 

Here we have an N scale 4-way intersection with flashing yield and stop lights hanging from a cable suspended between two poles. The signal is 4 LEDs wired in series powered by two #38 magnet wires. To give the overhead cable some appearance of realism we twisted each of the two #38 wires along a segment of our N2104 (0.004") straightened stainless steel wire. The #38 wires are insulated copper and are too soft to hold the shape of the "droop" that is so typical of cables between poles. We used one of our twister tools to hold the two wires where they meet the stainless steel wire, they hand wound each wire along the steel wire, forced a droop between the poles and glued them at each end. The poles are slotted down the outside length (using our N4300 Saw) and the #38 wires are glued into the slots and the poles painted. It's a tiny scene, but it gets a lot of comments at train shows.

 

 

Parts Holder

The possibilities here are almost limitless. We've used them to hold parts for painting, threading wire into tubing, holding gooseneck tubing while lampshade epoxy is drying, They can be clamped in a bench vise or held by a clothespin and set aside for parts curing or paint drying. The padded tips provide cushion but the spring in the clip is strong enough to firmly hold parts. Shown below is a construction light we built using two of our N1021 2x3mm white LEDs. The clip helped us hold the tube during assembly, wiring and painting the LEDs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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