I’m guessing this has been asked many times, but what adhesives can be used for gluing a cork roadbed to foam? Would Liquid Nails for Projects work?
Make sure it is the one that is foam compatible. I ended up with one that was not, as I didn’t realize there were two types before I bought it.
I use an inexpensive latex caulk and have had no problems. It costs less and works fine. It can also be used for attaching foam to foam, track to cork, foam to wood, plaster castings to foam or other type layout bases. I find it very useful. However, I do not use it to fill between rock castings, if I plan to have them look like rock. It does not accept stains. I guess if you paint your rocks it would work alright.
Have fun,
Richard
I second the latex caulk…it holds hard enough for this purpose and I also used it to glue my tracks down to the cork…holds fine and can be cleaned easily if you ever want to re-use your tracks in the future.
Latex caulk or dap(or off brand) elastomeric sealant is what I use. Got the dap from a video on mrr.com Cody did
Those products work well if you want plenty of time to tidy things up and adjust while they set up. Sometimes you have tighter radius curves or special work that requires things to stay put when put in place. For that I recommend one of the new nonflammable contact cements.
I used one that I can’t locate the can for right now. It was pretty good. Right now I’m using another Dap/Weldwood product Nonflammable Contact Cement (duh, not too inventive with the name, must’ve laid off the marketing dept?) Anyway, UPC 70798 25332 on my quart can. It does require a 30-40 minute dry time, but then you have 2.5 hours to assemble it and press to bond. I just paint it on both surfaces with a cheap brush, usually the subroadbed and with the cut-to-fit cork upside down in sequence on some newspaper.
A little different method, which I prefer, but for some things it just works better to have it stay in place without pins once you’ve bonded them.
I’ll second,the use of,Non-Flammable,contact cement, I believe Weldwood,may be the best…
Cheers,
Frank
Now that I have all of the cork laid, I have a couple gaps where the cork pieces meet on the inner loop of track on my plan. Could I use joint compound to fill in the gaps?
That would work. If you used caulk, you can fill the gaps with the caulk.
–Randy
If the gaps,are not too large,you can also wait until you Ballast,if you are and let it fill the gaps…
Cheers,
Frank
All of my cork is laid down and so are 2 of my turnouts (both #6). One of the #6 turnouts has ties on the diverging side that are a tiny bit off of the edge of the cork. Should this be filled in with something?
Maybe a rivet counter will bring it to your attention,as far as being reliable,I wouldn’t worry about it…As stated earlier,when you Ballast,if you do,you can have a build up of Ballast in that spot…
Cheers,
Frank
I was lucky and got a lot of assistance from a member of the n scale club I belong to…
He had me get the dap latex caulk that had no silicone, he’s built a lot of layouts and apparently if you have the silicone version it can make it really hard if you have to pull up a piece of track.
with the latex only and cork the track can be pulled up and just needs a bit of leftover latex to be removed from the ties.
matthew
I use hot glue for attaching the cork roadbed to the foam surface layers. The glue can be covered with ballast and should you want to move anything, melt the glue and it pulls off of the cork and foam easily.
interesting, what do you use to glue down the track?
matthew
PL300. A small bead flattened out works great; solid as a rock in 24 hours.