Sn3 Boxcar Build (Part 4)

There's no better way to start your morning than drilling 30+ micro-sized holes in a plastic boxcar body.

Step 2 is finally done.  Rote drilling isn't fun, but it was a necessary step to continue.

Up next is forming all the grabs.  PBL includes a nice tool to complete this task which makes it easy to consistently form the grabs.

You can see there are numbers on it.  These represent the width in scale inches.  According to the instructions, I have about 40 grabs to form.

To keep things in order, I decided to make up some small bags that I could store these things in so I can keep track of their size later on.  This is actually something that annoys me about kits that include pre-formed grabs, is I can never tell the difference between the end grabs and the side grabs and end up installing the wrong ones.

Having these little bags around is super handy.  I bought 1000 of this small size and 1000 of the next size up almost 10 years ago at a grand total cost of about $6.  I've barely made it through that supply.

Forming the grabs, I was a little worried I was leaving too little on the "leg" part of the grab, so I dry fit the first two.

The spacer is a piece of 0.040 x 0.188 styrene to keep things nice and straight.  The step after forming the grab irons is installing them, so I figured why not install one side to see how things are looking?  With a small drop of AC on the end of each grab iron leg, I carefully fit them into place with the spacer, then slid the spacer out.  Looks good!