I recently fihnished a yard scene and a stretch of track. I first sprayed everything wiht water, then mixed aprox. 50/50 white school glue and water, and applied it wiht a pipette. I came back twelve hours later and it had barely worked at all.
Does anyone have any idea what I did wrong?
Thanks.
Did you use “wet water”? How heavy is the application. What instructions did you use?
Rich
Your water/glue mix is too thick. I suggest at least 1 glue to 4 water with a splash of alchohol. Also, it’s much easier to use pre-mixed matte medium from Scenic Express: http://www.sceneryexpress.com/prodinfo.asp?number=EX0020 instead of mixing glue and water.
spray your dry ballast first with a mix of water and rubbing alchol
spray on the matte medium with a mister bottle instead of the pipette
Lance
Did you use “wet warwe?” That is, did you put a few drops of dish detergent in the water?
Also, I have heard that “school” glue is different than “white” glue, though they both look very similar. Don’t know the difference, but the inference in the post was that it was not as good.
Good luck,
Richard
Thanks everyone. Instructions, i didn’t use any. My dad dug up an article in MR, and he taught me using that. I’ve always done fine with a pipette, but in the past I’ve used wood glue instead of school glue. I’m wondering if maybe the school glue is too weak. What do any of you thing?
When I was in grade school back in the fiftys in New York City there were kids who would eat the Elmers paste that the school provided. I don’t know if the kids were hungry or just freaking pigs, but they ate quite a bit of it. Elmers makes school glue probably for that reason.
I no longer use wet water to get the ballast to accept the glue. I now use 70% isopropal alcohol with a drop of detergent. Alcohol evaporates faster and the glue dries up overnight. Using too much water will make the glue take longer to set up and I do use a 50% X 50% mix of glue and water.
Another step I use is to brush white glue on the shoulders of the roadbed and then sprinkle on the ballast and let it set for several hours before adding more ballast and the alcohol wetting agent then glue. Works every time.
How high is the ambient humidity in the space? How deep is the ballast? How saturated/deep is the glue solution? If I had to guess, I’d say another 48 hours may see your ballast hard, or close to it, because you have lots of humidity in the air already…?
Crandell
The method I use is easy. I pre-wet the ballast with 70% rubbing alcohol then drip on a 50/50 mix of water and white glue. Not school glue as it breaks down and becomes crumbly.
I have used both the White Glue and the School Glue and have seen no differences - YET!
I pre-wet the Ballast with Winter Blend Windshield Washer Fluid
The Summer Blend - has Glycerin in it and can cause the Glue to not adhere to the Ballast.
I have a super fine pump type mister (The type that Hair Salons use for Hair Spray) that I really wet down the Ballast
Then I flood the Ballast with the Glue Mix (4 to1)
Let dry & clean the Rail Heads - You are set to go!
BOB H - Clarion, PA
You’ve gotten a lot of advice, and most of it is good. The one thing I would take exception to is using a spray bottle to apply matte medium. That may be fine for gluing large areas of scenery, but not for ballasting. It just gets all over everything. And don’t do it anywhere near a turnout, it’ll glue them into place. I use those small bottles that mom and pop burger joints put their condiments in (they’re like $1 each at Wal-Mart). T
I would say that nothing went wrong. 12 hours is not enough time. It takes 24 to 48 hours to firm up.
if the ballast isn’t held firm after 48 hours, then you didn’t apply enough of the mix with the pipette. A 50/50 mix is a good strong mix, but did you apply enough to a given area?
Rich
The school glue is fine. It should work.
I never tried wood glue. Gasp. I doubt that you could ever remove wood glue like you can with white glue or matte medium.
Rich
Instead of using so much water for wet water and 50/50 water to dilute, dilute w/ 91% alcohol. You don’t nec have to use the alcohol straight, I perfer to apply wet water, 50-50 water alcohol and then apply “regular” white glue thined to 1:1 or 1:2 (water: glue) Since less water was allowed to saturate, the use of alcohol helps break the surface tension and allow great penetratation as well as much faster drying from alcohol evaporation.
KBC, yes, wait, wait, wait. I took home a sample from one of Paul Scoles’ scenicing clinics. Although he was using pavers sand it took about 5 days for everything to truly harden up. I thought that the fact that guests were applying some of the glue/water mix and perhaps hadn’t truly penetrated/saturated all the way to the bottom that it might never dry/harden but it did. I can hammer on it now if I wanted to.
Try blowing a fan across your work to see if you can speed things up a bit with air movement. Although the glue/wet water method did work I am thinking of trying alcolhol to see if things will speed up.
Only after a week, would I feel pretty sure that you might have done something wrong. It can all be re-wetted later though and tried again. Let us know how it works out?