Vol. 65, No. 1 spring 2020 90 Tips & Techniques


Making pipe fi ttings by Steve Wheeler


Sometimes we are faced with making odd pieces of hardware. Models containing exposed plumbing or fuel lines sometimes need elbows or other fi ttings where the pipes change direction. Occasionally these things may be available commercially (Plastruct has a series of plastic ones) but those may be the wrong size or shape. It can be fairly easy to make your own, though.


A simple elbow can be fabricated by simply sliding small washers onto a piece of bent brass rod (Figure 1) and coating the space between them with 5-minute epoxy. T e washers can be anything: metal or plastic and can be made by slicing thin rings off of suitably sized tubing; Model Motorcars Ltd (www.modelmotorcars.com) now sells the products formerly off ered by Scale Hardware and, along with scale machine screws, has a line of chemically-etched washers down to 0.5-millimeter inside diameter. T ose will work for the fl anges on smaller fi ttings. T e epoxy will build up the intervening space and the result will look like a cast fi tting. Epoxy is self-leveling and will smooth itself out between the washers, and a coat of paint will fi nish the look. T e fi nal appearance can be seen in Figures 2 and 3.


A muffl er assembly may need a slightly diff erent approach. Here, a jacket of larger diameter aluminum tubing is joined at the bends with brass elbows that have been bent to the necessary angles. If you are able to drill out holes in the ends of aluminum bar the elbows can be made like the simple ones in Figure 1; if not they can be machined to fi t as in Figure 4. An assembled muffl er is shown being test fi tted in a hull in Figure 5.


T e process can be adapted to many sizes of pipe.


5. Test fi tting the muffl er assembly. T ere are several other pipes with elbows in the photograph, but they may be hard to see .


1. Brass washers and epoxy on a piece of bent brass rod.


2. Plastic washers and epoxy fi ll on a pair of “pipes”.


3. A pair of pipes with fi ttings, painted.


4. Parts of a muffl er assembly.


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