Sat 4 Feb 2006
Fast Tracks PointForm Filing Jig
Posted by Daniel Swearingen under Product Review , Track[2] comments / Leave a comment
WOW. This is a gorgeous and effective tool.
I saw a blurb about Fast Tracks products in Model Railroader and thought I’d take a look. I’m using Central Valley Model Works CVT Turnouts which require a lot of hand assembly and you have to file rails to shape for the frogs. I was worried about this so I was looking for something to make good repeatable frog rails.
Fast Tracks makes a complete line of track building and especially turnout building tools for hand laid track. I thought the PointForm Filing Jig looked good and the website has a video of how it is used. That is very cool and sold me. They are a small operation and sometimes get swamped with orders. In my case my order arrived in about three weeks.
The fit and finish of the tools are fantastic and they work perfectly the first time. Highly recommended.
I also bought their Rail Roller and I’ll describe that soon in another post.
September 10th, 2006 at 9:50 am
FastTracks jigs are great. With my pointform tool, instead of filing, I use my bench sander to file to rail. Takes 2 or 3 passes, but it works great and makes a very sharp point! And it’s less work and much faster than hand filing.
September 10th, 2006 at 10:50 am
I’ve experimented successfully with using a large grinding stone in my Dremel tool and I tend to agree with you that power grinding seems like the way to go.
My only worry with a power tool is ensuring even wear of the tooling itself. The good news is that the steel of the tool is much harder than the rails.