Wood and water for my Bachmann 4-4-0

[Terry Toenges]

I don't plan on making a flat car tender but you never know.
I tried removing the wood load from My SF tender this morn and screwed up my tender. I was using my battery powered Dremel on the load and the collet got the front lip part on the body. I put that away and started with the Exacto knife. I slipped with that and got a nick out of one of the tool boxes.
I knew I shouldn't have tried it because I knew I would screw something up. Bachmann's website doesn't have any SF tender bodies. You can buy whole tenders but they don't have an SF one. I wouldn't want to pay that much anyway when I just want a new body.
Maybe I'll call them. It's not real noticeable unless you look close but I know it's there.
Anyone have a spare SF tender body for 4-4-0?

[Trainman203]

Put up a photo of the damage.  There may be a way to cover it up or detail around it.

[Terry Toenges]

Once I took off my magnifier and looked at it, it's not that bad. From the distance that people will be seeing it, they probably won't even notice. I just cut a small piece of styrene and covered the hole and glued it. Th mad eit black.
The back -

You can barely see the nick in lip and the tool box here.

[Trainman203]

Those tender top lips got bent up all the time. Clean up with files and sanding sticks, touch up paint, weather , and pile on more wood!

[Terry Toenges]

I toasted the brake wheel too I can scrounge one of those off something else. It just bummed me because it was new. If it would have been an old thing I was working on, it wouldn't have mattered so much. I know things got messed up in real life, too. It could have been worse so I'll just, as they say "Chalk it up to experience."

[Terry Toenges]

I put it all back together for a run around the track. Now, I can barely even hear the sound. I guess the plastic wood load was acting like the back of a speaker cabinet. The plastic was pretty thick. I just put a thin sheet of styrene over the hole when I cut the load off. The pcb board was on top of the speaker so I don't think it should have made that much difference should it?
I didn't want to mess with a new speaker like in the video. I might have to now.  
My first thought before I started on this was to shave off pieces of match stick and glue them over the plastic load. I guess that's what I should have done.  

[Terry Toenges]

I took the body off again to check it out underneath. There's a spot on that black thing on the right. Would that affect the sound? Maybe super glue leaked on it? That's the only thing I can see. I don't even know if it looked like that before. I unscrewed the pcb board and didn't see anything wrong under there. I had never unscrewed it before now.

[Trainman203]

It's holes in the sound chamber that weaken the volume.

[Terry Toenges]

So I Googled "What is a sound chamber?" before asking here. This is what showed up.
A: A sound chamber is a hollow rim with 10 large holes all round the inside of the rim. This helps to give more resonance and volume. ... A grooved rim is not available with sound chamber.
What is considered the sound chamber on the tender? The speaker itself? The bottom of the tender has holes for the sound.
I never did anything at all to the tender other than remove the body until earlier today when I unscrewed the pcb board to look at the speaker. That was only after I ran it and the sound was barely audible.
The pcb board is flat against the speaker so the area above the board (under the wood load) shouldn't have any effect on the sound. The speaker is flat against the frame.
I just don't understand what could have happened. The sound worked right and it was loud before I took the body off and now it doesn't and I didn't mess with any of the electric stuff. I took the body back off and ran it and still almost no sound. I unplugged it from the loco and replugged it to make sure the plug was seated all the way. I can still barely hear it. Just the noise of it traveling on the track pretty much drowns out the sound all together.

[Terry Toenges]

Len-  I got the grinding wheel with crank from Best Trains but I don't know if I can figure out a way to use it. The crank is cast as a part of the wheel. Trying to cut it away might be a problem. It will some pondering as to how I want to do it. On the plus side, it was a pack of three. If I screw one up, I have two more.

[Len]

Terry - The painted up picture on their site faked me out. I thought the handle was seperate. It looks like some careful work with a razor saw should seperate the handle from the main casting. The a little touch up with a file and it should be good to go.

Len

[Terry Toenges]

It wasn't what I thought either. I thought about drilling holes in both sides and plug a hose in each side. Maybe it would look like some kind of pump that way. It's awful small though to do that because the hose is big.

[bbmiroku]

As always... work slow, check your work often, and give it some rust.  You'll do fine as long as the magnifying glass doesn't break.

[Terry Toenges]

I have the crank ground down some but I haven't attached it yet. I post another pic when I do. I haven't done anything with it lately. Sometimes, I just back from the train stuff for a while.