Foam, glueing foam, painting foam


rgeiter

Conrail Quality
I am going to try to, for the first time ever, use foam for my embankments and small hills. I’ve found some blue 2 inch foam that I will be using. What would be the best glue to use when stacking the pieces to be molded. (hot melt glue?)

Carving the foam won’t be an issue. I have the Woodland Scenics hot wire tool.

What would you guys recommend for paint? I’m guessing latex paint will stick?

This all new to me. I’m an old school cardboard weave, paper ball and hydrocal, plaster cloth mountain building guy. No mountains on this layout. Only large embankments that have to be removable.
 
The foam will be filling in the areas to the left of the autorack train.

A31215DB-09D1-438A-956B-EF287F26DEF1.jpeg
 
Hmmmm. So far so good. Way cleaner than then hydrocal. Can’t wait to see how this eventually turns out.
B4D40BBF-355B-4593-BE50-4F200857FA5A.jpeg
6D8F054E-4791-4054-A232-1695E9A297B3.jpeg
 
That looks good. I also used latex paint and foam approved caulk. More pictures when you can.

TomO
 
rg ........ that looks really good. If you find that you need to make hills on the layout for which the 2 inch foam is to thick.... I used Lowes green construction foam (3/4 inch?) to make the hill pictured below. Two things I learned the hard way on various scratch builds using this foam on the layout; 1. This foam does not play well with model glue. 2 Be careful choosing your paint. I have disintegrated scratch builds with this foam depending on what paint I used. The safest I have found is Walmart/Hobby Lobby craft paints. I used dry wall mud to fill in the layers of foam. I used Elmer's glue all for the three layers of foam.

Hill 1.jpeg


Hill 2.jpeg


Hill 3.jpeg


Hill 4.jpeg
 
For glue, I like Loctite PL300 foamboard glue, found in most home improvement stores. Works well both foam to foam, and when attaching to plywood. I also use foam roadbed, and it use it there too.

The foam panels you can see in the background, next to the tunnel portal, were cut with a long serrated bread knife. I was going for more of a ragged rock look there.

index.php
 
For glue, I like Loctite PL300 foamboard glue, found in most home improvement stores. Works well both foam to foam, and when attaching to plywood. I also use foam roadbed, and it use it there too.

The foam panels you can see in the background, next to the tunnel portal, were cut with a long serrated bread knife. I was going for more of a ragged rock look there.

index.php
I was never planning on using foam for this layout, so I really never did explore what glues to use. Now I know for the next time. Thanks for the info everyone.
 



Back
Top