Ballast
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Selector
Well-Known Member
I have an empty Elmer's wood glue bottle, rinsed out thoroughly, and filled with the standard drug store mix of isopropyl alcohol and water at about 70%. The lid is a small screw on with the slotted orifice in a pull-out nib. I cover the bottle neck with plastic sandwich wrap to control loss through evaporation when I am storing the bottle. The sandwich wrap goes around the threads and over the larger orifice, and the cap is screwed down over that.
At the business end of the nib, I wrapped painter's masking tape securely and then drove a pin into the part over the orifice below the tape. When I invert the bottle, sandwhich wrap having been removed, the solution dribbles out through the pinhole and gives me a lot of control...but it's still quit fast and effective at wetting a good chunk of groomed ballast at once.
I would typically only wet about a foot of ballast at a time because you don't want it drying while I dribble the glue.
Some people spray, I dribble. Some say to have the alcohol running out the bottom edge of the ballast, I only add enough to know that it has penetrated well..making two passes.
Then, with a similar setup, often with a screw up pointed nib on some Elmer's Wood Glue bottles, I then dribble a weak solution of wood glue. Some say to use as much water as glue, but I water mine down to about six to one because I like to be able to break up my ballast if I find that I have to shim rails in places where several items want to derail. A solid block of ballast is hard to break up without breaking other things. I still add the two drops of liquid dish detergent to my glue mixture, by the way.
As soon as I have glued each section previously wetted the alcohol, and put the bottle of glue solution aside, the very next thing I do is reach for a clean rag and wipe the rail tops. Even if you can't spot any inadvertent drips of the glue solution on the rails, it takes 15 seconds or less to wrap the rag around an index finger and wipe the two rails....twice.
That is what works for me.
At the business end of the nib, I wrapped painter's masking tape securely and then drove a pin into the part over the orifice below the tape. When I invert the bottle, sandwhich wrap having been removed, the solution dribbles out through the pinhole and gives me a lot of control...but it's still quit fast and effective at wetting a good chunk of groomed ballast at once.
I would typically only wet about a foot of ballast at a time because you don't want it drying while I dribble the glue.
Some people spray, I dribble. Some say to have the alcohol running out the bottom edge of the ballast, I only add enough to know that it has penetrated well..making two passes.
Then, with a similar setup, often with a screw up pointed nib on some Elmer's Wood Glue bottles, I then dribble a weak solution of wood glue. Some say to use as much water as glue, but I water mine down to about six to one because I like to be able to break up my ballast if I find that I have to shim rails in places where several items want to derail. A solid block of ballast is hard to break up without breaking other things. I still add the two drops of liquid dish detergent to my glue mixture, by the way.
As soon as I have glued each section previously wetted the alcohol, and put the bottle of glue solution aside, the very next thing I do is reach for a clean rag and wipe the rail tops. Even if you can't spot any inadvertent drips of the glue solution on the rails, it takes 15 seconds or less to wrap the rag around an index finger and wipe the two rails....twice.
That is what works for me.
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