Re: How to Make a Cow Catcher

The steel is off to the welders. The plan is to bolt the steel mounting bracket to the wooden cow catcher. Both of the top mount brackets will have 3 bolts each, and two through pins. You can see the locations on the steel pictures.

Now comes the deceptions. In trying to keep the the "New" CC like the typical mountings on a locomotive and for most old rail cars, I needed to use square headed bolts, or at least make them look like the original would have been. To actually attach the pieces together, typically when attaching metal to wood one used LAG bolts. Seen any 5/16 x 3" with 3/4" square head, lag bolts lately ? NOPE, Not Made. So I had to make my own. In the steel photos, I took 3/4" bar stock, cut into 1/2" slugs, to replicate the original bolts.

Purchased common 5/16 x3" Lag bolts and cut the hex heads off.


I then drilled a thru hole in the 3/4" slugs. The hole was drilled .007" undersized, of the shank of the lag screws, for a pressed interference fit.


Onto the forge and heated a bit, and then just driven into the slug on the anvil.


And a finished fit. These will never have a lot of torque on the bolts, so good enough.


And I did the same for the 3/8" Pins.


These will be drilled for a "R" clip retainer, to make the removal and instillation easy.

4 Days till it's hung on 425.
Stay tuned



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/2018 08:35PM by dave2-8-0.