After seeing many demos and articles in passing about sculpting landscape scenery with a hot wire tool I’m finally getting ready to do this on my own, but I guess I just didn’t take a close enough look at those resources and now have a question.
As I’m building up pink/blue foam layers to rough-out a landscape feature, I’ll need to glue it all together of course. But when the time comes to use the hot wire tool to sculpt the surface, I’ll need to cut through the foam and whatever glue holds the layers together. Are there certain glues that cut/sculpt better with a hot wire tool? I thought at first just using hot glue would work but then if the seam between layers is not tight, it seems that I’ll see gaps between the layers which somewhat implies that I’ll need a glue that can be spread uniformly over the surface, like a wood or white glue that can be spread evenly. Since white glue is somewhat stiff, I’m not all that sure it will cut/sculpt cleanly.
But then again maybe none of this is all that critical and I’m over thinking it.
I would use the hot wire tool to cut the individual pieces. Then, glue them one on top of the other. Then, you can use a rasp or other course tool to rough up the viewable edge. You don’t want the whole thing looking completely uniform. As to the glue, I use “Liquid Nails” that is specific for projects and foam (it will say so on the label).
I used wood glue to layer 2" thick pink foam boards together and it worked fine. I used an electric carving knife, files, and sandpaper to mold/cut the shapes I wanted. If memory serves me correct, do not use hot glue with the boards. Its quite aggressive and will melt the foam. Now my layout is a tinplate toy train layout, so I wasn’t going for scale-perfection, but here are two photos of my efforts. The first is after an initial base coat and then of the overall look on the layout.
Tom, Do a search for postings by Perry1060, he has done some fantastic scenicing with the foam boards. On a couple of the posts I believe he gave some of his methods of carving etc.
Gentlemen - Thanks for the advice! RJ the layout looks great. Thanks for going to the extra trouble to post the pics. I’ll take a few pictures when I’m finished to show the results. Hope to make good progress this weekend.
One note of caution. If you glue a large area with wood glue, it will work but it takes a long time to dry as the air can not get to it. It took my project about a week to dry. So if you want to do it this weekend, don’t use wood glue.
