Speaking of Cabeese Part 4 - Good Idea - B-a-a-a-d Execution

I decided to use materials that I had on hand for forming the grabs. Found an old feeder wire, stripped the insulation. Voila! Stranded copper. The copper was easy to form into the semi-circular shape needed. They looked pretty good I thought! Got the flat white spray out. Gave them a coating - All of a sudden these dorn't look so good. Stranded wire is twisted during the assembly and guess what...And that shows after painting. Looks all beaded and twisted up. Copper wire turned out to be: A BAD IDEA! Posed a query on trainboard: Grab Irons - A Problem Turns out copper is not a good metal to work with for this type of application. It's too soft, for one thing.(guess I should have known that!) Stranded copper is even worse. (and that, too!) Couple of suggestions were: Music Wire Phosphor-bronze Wire Gold Medal Models supposedly makes them - Although I did not see them on their webpages Craig Martyn of BLMA Models says they will be offering them soon Don't forget to Clean the wire before painting I've got some music wire in my Materials Stash. I'll have to see if it looks to be any where near the right size. Hopefully I can dig that out in the next day or two.