Brand new this year, a Jig designed to make removing O gauge pins a piece of cake.
Why? Necessity is the mother of invention, The story:
In our commitment to provide the very finest quality
reconditioned track that your great great grandchildren will be able to open a
box of our track and run trains on it, we were being hampered by a surprise.
The original Lionel style steel pins are rusting away even on the inside of the
track tubes. Soooo to fulfill on the promise we purchased huge quantities of no
rust, no rot, 17/7 stainless steel pins. Starting
this season, all of our tracks, switches, crosses, X's, and uncoupler tracks
will be delivered with the stainless steel pins. Great idea right? After all we
have all had experience at one time or other of needing to remove pins from
either O or O27 tracks. No big deal right? I always liked my 8" heavy duty
long nose for that job. Of course in the process yes i would bend the tubes,
and sometimes enlarge them to the point where a new pin could not without
treating the end with our track pliers, which yes do work great. So what's the
big deal? Try doing that for over 39,000 pins! One of our guys figured out that
the process of pulling the pins, you would put pressure on the ends of the
tracks often making them swell the holes, or even bend the ends. HE came up
with the idea of making a jig where all the grunt effort is expended on a piece
of 1/8" steel plate, and not the track. It worked. Not a big deal at all,
grab a piece of flat stock, bend it 90 degrees, drill it out exactly the right
spacing height and width, and you have a jig. Screw it down on a table or
board, and off you go. These first "homemade " jigs definitely
helped, but was tough to get the holes just so. We finally ending up going into
production with them and now are offering them to all. This jig will work
perfectly for both O and O27 tracks, although I prefer to put a piece of 1/4"
hardboard under the O27 tracks first.
I still prefer using my 8" long nose pliers, but
the ladies in our bunch came up with the idea of using a low angle claw hammer
which requires a lot less effort. So here it is! ready for your use. For just
an occasional pin change out, don't bother. On the other hand we have many
customers who want to change out all their old pins with the new stainless
steel ones. This tool is designed for them!