Hey Louis,

Good to see you in action again. I'll be looking in on any new activity. Your creations give me inspiration.

Bernd

Louis, this looks like another interesting project from you. I'll enjoy watching you moove along with this one.

Greg Shinnie

Thanks Bernd & Greg for always following along with advice and support.

Turning these great "G" scale models, into HO scale models, is also the most fun for me with these type of projects.

Louis, I see you’re breaking free from the yoke of conventionality once again. Excellent.

I imagine the puns will be flying like turds from a manure spreader. Your readers have very fertile imaginations.

Mike

Lou,

Looking forward to another of your creative builds and the beastly comments.

Watch out for those Rocky Mountain Oysters.

Jim

It looks like you have assembled most of the materials needed, Louis. I'll be following along. :up:

Thanks Mike, Jim and Bruce for your comments.

The first idea and change I’m going to make is that two of my Oxen will be wearing a yoke, and become a team. So after tossing around some ideas on how to build it, I put together some parts to use. See picture for yoke parts.

For those of you that like research and prototype information read here;

https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...+TechGuide.pdf





Basically find a hardwood beam approximately 50 to 80 inches long and about 6 to 10 inches across/deep. The size of the beam will depend a lot on the ultimate size of the oxen. Cut neck areas and smooth out the edges until they are fairly smooth and round out the depressions where the necks of the oxen will go. Use a drill to puncture four holes through the yoke. Near each edge, above the area where you've grooved out the neck depressions, drill two holes right through. Base their width on the width of your oxen's neck. Do likewise above the other neck depression. You want these holes to be about 1.5 to 2 inches wide. Cut two lengths of bow stock for the neck braces. These will be 50 to 70 inches long and rounded. You want these two lengths to be about 1.5 to 2 inches wide. Steam heat them, and then bend them both into a U shape. Bend them so they correspond to the width of the spaces between each pair of holes on each end of the yoke. Drill a horizontal hole into one end of each of the U shaped bow stock pieces. Carve a wooden peg which will slide through this hole and snugly fit within it. Insert the bow stock pieces into paired holes on each end of the yoke and notch them so they stay in place. The yoke is basically done.

As seen in the picture below, I’m going to use a match stick (scale measurement for HO scale) for the yoke top beam depth, and another piece of the match stick glued to the first to build up for the yoke width, where I cut out the neck depressions to form the yoke shape. Also, a jump ring for yoke, and pieces of floral wire to form the two Ox neck bows will be used.

Another cool Louis project to follow. Watching too.....

Thanks Carl! :up:

I scaled down the Yoke drawing template to HO scale, and printed three copies so I could make up a couple of extra yokes for the logging company. A template will be cut out, and glued with white glue to a piece of the matchstick as a guide to form the yoke. The yoke is small enough you could use styrene, cardboard, balsa wood, or even paper stock. I’m just one of those modelers that like to go just short of insanity when detail making.

I think you have some competition from Tony Burgess. [)] And that's no bull!

Bernd

That's a fact Bernd, Tony is another, one of many members of this great Forum's modeling obsessions.

Here's an update; I took the match stick and cut it in half, gluing the two pieces together to make up the wood width needed for the yoke. After gluing the yoke paper templates to the wooden matchstick, cutout the front yoke shape with modeling tools of your choice as I did. Then cut around the top template for the final shape of the yoke. Now you just have to sand lightly the yoke edges and around the neck areas. Pictures below show where I am at for the moment. Test fit (and camera shots that bring out what else is needed) shows a little more sanding and shaping is needed. Than onto drilling the neck bow holes into the yoke. After drilling the holes for the neck bows from the top template, sand the paper template remains from the wood and stain, paint or just leave it a natural wood look. I believe I’ll be staining mine with a brown leather dye mixture.

More update: Below is the finished Oxen Yoke. The 4mm jump ring that I was going to use for the center hitch point ring was too large, so I substituted that ring using a link from a piece of chain I had, and attached it to the yoke using a Diesel Details #2206 wire eye bolt. Shown in the picture below. I scraped the green cloth off of the 24 Ga. Floral wire and formed two yoke neck bows to slide into the yoke where the holes were drilled out on each side for the Oxen necks. The wooden yoke was stained using a brown leather dye stain mixture. The wire neck bows will be painted brown to look like wood once the yoke is placed onto the Oxen. The wire neck bows are a secure sprung fit into the yoke, so the yoke can be removable from the Oxen team.

Looking good Louis. Geez...you can almost smell the aroma from Lothar Gauf's G scale build!

Looking forward to your build…

Bob

Louis, nice work on piecing that all together!

I'm not yoking either.


Greg Shinnie