Started laying down roadways tonight,question


D

dekker

Member
After several months of deciding what I was going to use for making my roadways I went with 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper. Love the look and by taking a foam brush and brushing it longways it adds that faded blacktop look. Here is my question,what do you use to hold it down. I started with white glue(elmers) but I have not had alot of luck keeping the edges from curling up. What should I do? Thanks
 
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I used Elmers glue & spread the glue all the way out to the edges of my sandpaper roads w/a small brush. use it full strength. I also use a small roller to push out the bubbles & kinks & then I paint it after the glue has dried for a cpl. days. Forgot; Don't use wet or dry, it's to thin. Use the cheap Dollar Tree stuff.
 
roadway

Thanks for the advice. I did all that except for going to Dollar Tree. I bought the 3m brand from Autozone.I went to Lowes,Menards,Ace looking for 400 grit. Autozone was the only place that had it. Never thought that Dollar Tree had sandpaper. Thanks for the tip.
 
As long as you can do it outside and carry the roadway pieces to your layout, spray adhesive works really well. It sticks almost instantly and you don't need any weights to hold it down. You really need to be able to spray the bottom of the road material outside though. The fumes from the spray adhesive are pretty bad.
 
Well I discovered something on Saturday.

What I find is great for pavement that you can put lines on ?
The back of asphalt shingles.

I picked up some throw-away shingle pieces from a job site here in town Saturday.

If you wish to grey them some, use some cement powder (the stuff you make concrete out of) with brush to get it in the little crevices.

The coloured side of the shingle (depending on color) has a great surface for cobblestone streets if you brush off the little particles with a small brush.
 
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for mine I mostly used carpenter's glue (yellow). It doesn't soak thru (= less curling and such). I've also use simple latex caulk but it takes a while to secure the paper.

The best results were with rubber cement: it grabs and holds quickly and won't soak. You can use 3M spray adhesive, which is simply rubber cement thinned enough to spray but the fumes can get intense!

Some various tips on using w/d as asphalt: make sure to pre-curve it to get some crown (the center of the road is higher than the edges). fold it a few times, and unevenly, so that you add some 'wrinkles" that look like cracks. Rip/remove some of the edges as asphalt often crumbles at the edges and it never is exactly straight along the edges anyway. When finished, add a few mist-coats of various greys to knock down the shiney bits and to soften up the grit texture.
 
Dollar Tree has EVERYTHING. ;-)

(I use 1/8 - inch thick "fun foam" rubber sheets from Michael's. Gray for cement, black for fresh asphalt. I glue it down with whatever is handy that's not a foam solvent.)
 
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