Although I’ve been in the hobby for over 50 years, the current HO layout that I’m building is the first with ground foam as ground cover. Have used other scenery techniques in the past. I started out using wet water and WS scenic cement. When I ran out of sc I made up a mix of Elmer’s white glue and water and used 70% alcohol as my wetting fluid. I wasn’t satisfied with the soaking I was getting with the adhesive mix so I added a few drops of liquid dish detergent.
Went down to do a little more work on the layout. I noticed (by feel) that the previous work I had done a couple of days ago was dry, which is okay. What I didn’t expect was that the ground foam had gotten extremely hard, almost like a sponge that has totally dried out. I checked another part of the layout where I had used the wet water/WS process and that too was hard. Is this normal or did a really mess things up? Like I said I’ve used other scenery techniques. zip texturing amongst them, and remember that those gave a hard finished feel to them. Now I know it’s not going to be soft as Charmin toilet paper (and won’t be used for the same use 
), but still…I dunno.
What happened is normal. The trick is to put more WS foam on top so the adhesive doesn’t soak through it all. Come back later when it’s dry and remove the excess. What you have left is a soft surface with a hard foundation.
Hi jack: I agree with Jeffrey. Something else you might want to try is spread staight white glue on the surface to be sceniced then sprinkle foam on the glue. When dry, vacuum up the excess.
Mine dried hard too so I guess it’s normal.
Unless you’re doing your model railroad in Braille, it’s not how it feels, it’s how it looks.
'Way back when Linn Westcott was first describing zip-texturing, one comment was that his green plaster ‘grass’ looked soft and fluffy. Given the materials used, it was about as soft as any other gypsum casting…
If you use glue that gets hard and soak the ground foam, it WILL end up hard…
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
That was some quick replies. As I originally mentioned, I’d never used ground foam as ground cover so I had no idea of what the end product would feel like. Whether it’s hard or soft I don’t care, as long as it looks okay (which it does) and doesn’t come off (which it won’t). I was just worried that I’d messed up, and I want to do this layout up right.
Thanks all and have a good weekend.
BTW, I discovered another hobby no-no while doing scenery: don’t use alcohol as a wetting fluid in a room with no air movement; it will make you goofy.