What is the best type of glue to use between balsa wood and sheet foam material?
Cedarwoodron
The Woodland Scenics Foam Tack glue works for me.
Dave Nelson
I guess maybe Iw ould need to know what type of foam your talking about and I would likely try alphetic resin (White or carpenter’s glue).
I have used Yellow carpenter’s glue with good results. If it is thin Balsa…weight it or clamp, the balsa will warp if not.
In the pic’. is a piece of Balsa, used as a guard rail on my make-shift drying shelf on my work bench. You can’t see it, but behind the Mack truck is a metal screw eye, also glued in the foam with carpenter’s glue, so I can remove the shelf, when I want to. Just something I slapped together, didn’t care what it looked like, as long as it worked and was strong.
Take Care! [:D]
Frank
like others, i’ve uses titebond, yellow carpenters glue to laminate 2’x8’ sheets of foam and luan. The problem I had was quickly spreading the glue and then finding enough weights.
when i built the curved RC airplane wing using balsa sheeting, i was told to glue both side and let the glue dry partially. Then use an iron to heat the glue through the thin balsa. The two sides are glued once the glue cools (which is does quickly).
have you considered double sided tape?
The medium balsa ties under the rails of my hand-built specialwork are anchored to the underlying extruded foam with Dap latex caulk - the same material I use to bond the foam to the plywood subgrade, the cardstock track templates to the foam and the flex track ties to the cardstock. I have also used it to laminate cardstock when tie height + rail height mismatch across a rail end.
I don’t doubt that all those more aggressive adhesives will work. IMHO, they work too well. I want to be able to disassemble the structure (if required by modification or repair/corrective action) without resorting to drills and dynamite.
Chuck (Modeing Central Japan in September, 1964 - with latex caulk)
3M 77 works well for me in laminating basswood (I use it because its cheaper than balsa and finer grained) to various textured and plain styrene sheeting. In fact, got just such a project in front of me. I haven’t use it much with extruded foam, which I think is what you’re indicating, but I have bonded styrene to it without any issues with 77. Spray it, position, press. Easy peasy.