More fettling this evening. I have seen other build blogs where cleaning up the wheels for painting has seemed a never ending challenge. I now know why!
I have tried files of all shapes and a Dremel tool which is now very smooth – unlike the wheels.
I have also had a good debate on Facebook on the 5″ Gauge Group about how to paint them and how much of them to paint.
Polly propose something like this.
But others suggest, with some reason, to paint the rims. My concern with that is that these wheels are quite chunky and to paint the rims black as well might make them look even more so.
I have a few days to decide anyway as I continue to prep the wheels. I have some more Dremel burrs coming tomorrow which might help.
Building Molly Ann 
Hi there RICHARD, Tony Schu again wanting to thank you for your advice on the marmots in your emails. Also want to ask you about headphones I could use when listening to steam engine YouTube videos?
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What about chemical blacking? Lots of O gauge modellers do this.
For smoothing, maybe you should be using bigger de-burring tools like 6mm shank tungsten carbide burrs.
Often the pound shops sell sets of grinding stones but these wear out very fast.
So maybe a 3” grinding wheel would be good.
These can all be used with a regular household drill. Lots of torque.
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Thanks for the ideas. The burrs I have coming are more sturdy carbide ones. I went through one grinding stone on one wheel! I had some left over from a cheapo Maplin version of the Dremel. It needs to be a small tool as the wholes are c. 1cm in dimension so that rules out my bigger drills. In the meantime I find the needle file approach quite therapeutic! The connecting rods are the next challenge – I need to recap the draw filing that I was taught at school and buy a flapper wheel.
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