The College Kid Layout Building Saga - End?

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catnippertom said:
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Light update today. I have been trying to get some carving on the mountain. I have been using my small hand saw and seraded kitchen knife😅. I feel like it has been going well. I have glued all of the die down but they don't seem to want to stick too well. I used some Loctite after the first round of gluing didn't go so well but they still aren't sticking that well. If you guys have any ideas regarding how to tack down the die best I would love to hear it.
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"Dad i cant find my play dice"...
:rolleyes:💨🎵🎶

That is a great idea though.. off to toyshop tomorrow !
PS i have found "No More Nails' from Pattex works but only use;
A) 'all material high tack' stodgy with high tack grip but takes a long time to dry, allowing movenment and mind change
B) 'all material quick dry'"which is a bit more fluid and drys quick. So be sure when using it.
I think both cure to some sort of latex bond.
Both work well on XPS, but their normal (cheaper) one is not suitable (not tried it but it says not to use it on the tube).
Wood glue is a mixed bag. The solvent free stuff is useless unless gluing to wood as it needs an air porous contact to cure, but i read that aparently the gorrilla version (containing solvent) will work.
 
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dgrafix said:
"Dad i cant find my play dice"...
:rolleyes:💨🎵🎶

That is a great idea though.. off to toyshop tomorrow !
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I do have to say that the dice are pretty hard to carve. I bought a hot wire cutter that had a tough time getting through them. I assume that there is an overlap point where the cost of each 4 pack of dice could equal just purchasing a huge board of pink stuff foam or something similar. It worked for me in this case but I don't know if I can entirely recommend it for large stuff.
 
catnippertom said:
I do have to say that the dice are pretty hard to carve. I bought a hot wire cutter that had a tough time getting through them. I assume that there is an overlap point where the cost of each 4 pack of dice could equal just purchasing a huge board of pink stuff foam or something similar. It worked for me in this case but I don't know if I can entirely recommend it for large stuff.
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True although it depends where you live. Over here insulation would be the cheapest volume -if- you can buy what you need. My local hardware store sells it in large sheets with varying thickness up to 10cm thick, but ONLY in stacks of 6 or 8 to the tune of roughly 100 dollars a pack. The upside is you have a ton of XPS 300 foam. But it is overkill and unless you have a place to store it, or way of using it then its either waste, or becomes yet another thing for your storage.
But yes if you can afford it, have a place to store it and will eventually use it up, then insulation foam would be a lot cheaper in the long run. But if you just want "a bit" then it a bit more of an issue.
 


catnippertom said:
I do have to say that the dice are pretty hard to carve. I bought a hot wire cutter that had a tough time getting through them. I assume that there is an overlap point where the cost of each 4 pack of dice could equal just purchasing a huge board of pink stuff foam or something similar. It worked for me in this case but I don't know if I can entirely recommend it for large stuff.
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Any building going on in your area, might have some off cuts you could use.
 
Smudge617 said:
Any building going on in your area, might have some off cuts you could use.
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That's a thought, maybe I can go "skip diving" although most construction sites are like fortresses with coded gates. I suppose I could ask one of the workers if it's possible 🤔
The local dump might have some cutoffs too can't believe I didn't think of that before 😳
 


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The Brillo Branchline is being revamped! I am back down at school again and getting to work on the layout. I decided the warped poster boards were not cutting it so I went out and got some fiber board cut. Same size as the original layout but I might do it a little different than last time. I have a whole school year to work on it so this should be fun. Updates coming soon!
 
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The previous cork roadbed has been sliced out of the old layout and I bought some of the pink insulation foam from Home Depot to use as a base. I made some decent money over the summer and I want to turn this into a layout that I can be proud of. It still is going to be 2 pieces but I have a crazy Idea that might work down the line if I get ambitious. But so far the budget cap has been hit. Gotta stop on the big purchases and get working on the layout.
 
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I have all of the pink foam down on the base boards and now I am doing the outside trim. I am using some wooden rulers from the Dollar Tree around the outside. It has a nice face to it and I had a bunch of them around. The cheap aspect of the layout is still alive and I still want to use things like the Brillo Pads and the foam dice just to keep it having that same OG Brillo Branchline feel to it even though the budget had gone up slightly. Also the latches are in place as well. I need to figure out a clever way of making them hide since I have the depth now.
 
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catnippertom said:
Update:

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I have all of the pink foam down on the base boards and now I am doing the outside trim. I am using some wooden rulers from the Dollar Tree around the outside. It has a nice face to it and I had a bunch of them around. The cheap aspect of the layout is still alive and I still want to use things like the Brillo Pads and the foam dice just to keep it having that same OG Brillo Branchline feel to it even though the budget had gone up slightly. Also the latches are in place as well. I need to figure out a clever way of making them hide since I have the depth now.
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That's coming along quite nicely, you've done some good work with this.
 
Smudge617 said:
That's coming along quite nicely, you've done some good work with this.
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Thanks. I learned a lot from the OG layout and want to make improvements. One major thing is to not go cheap on everything. Sometimes it adds up. I am also able to take a bit more time this time around which has been very nice. I have been way less rushed since the OG was built in like a month.
 
Update:
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I have started cleaning up the first half of the layout since the Loctite has been setting for 24 hrs. I took off all the tape and it looks like most of it is still in good shape. I spackled all of the cracks to make the surface all smooth and have been sanding everything down. The whole top surface is smooth and the edges are smoothed out as well. I think I am going to do a base layer of paint and let it dry then switch to the other board to do it all over again tomorrow.
 
catnippertom said:
Update:
View attachment 173530
I have started cleaning up the first half of the layout since the Loctite has been setting for 24 hrs. I took off all the tape and it looks like most of it is still in good shape. I spackled all of the cracks to make the surface all smooth and have been sanding everything down. The whole top surface is smooth and the edges are smoothed out as well. I think I am going to do a base layer of paint and let it dry then switch to the other board to do it all over again tomorrow.
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Looks good, and I agree, taking your time to do the prep work now will save a lot of time later on having to re-do stuff.
 
I just changed the name of the thread since it no longer follows the construction of my first layout but has now become more of a documentation of the building of the Brillo Branch Line. There may be a bit less Brillo on the layout this time around so I don't know if the layout will retain the original nomenclature but for now it feels as if it should. I will see if a new name comes to mind while I am working everything out.
 


Update:
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Just a light update at the moment. I have everything sanded down and together. I have my old mountains cut out from the old layout ready to use later. I'm planning on adding on to them to make them larger. The base is also painted now. I am letting it dry. It has 2 coats of acrylic. I plan on tidying up the edges and laying down the old roadbed soon.
 
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