Just thought I would let you guys know that the homade ground foam thing doesnt work out too well. I tried it, ended up spending 20 bucks, which would have been better spent on woodland scenics stuff. It looks OK, but not good enough for my taste.
I used Rit dye, and dyed some hot water with it, very, very concentrated. I then used urethane foam, like in seat cushions, cut up into chunks, and dumped the foam/dye mix into a blender and let it rip. Its too bad it didnt work, I ended up with a 13 gallon trashbag full for 20 bucks.
It just doenst look convincing enoughfor me, but some of you might like it.
One of the members here made a great post on home making ground foam. I think it was jon grant or danpik. Check out my ‘Compilation of useful threads’ thread. Its should be in there.
Same thing happened to me years ago, and my attempt also made the blender pretty ineffective for anything else. The blades were dulled, I think. Thanks, at least, for making me feel a little better, but I’m sorry to hear it didn’t work for you.
I’ve made boxes and boxes of ground foam that has turned out really nice. Mind you, it took a lot of experimenting to “get it right”. Two things you did are two things I learned don’t work - the blender idea won’t shred the foam fine enough and Rit dye isn’t color-fast on the foam.
To make the foam, I chuck a 6 inch brass wire wheel in my drill which I clamp in my Work-mate so the wheel is off the side. I then place a LARGE box under the wire wheel. Carefully feed the foam into the spinning wheel and the foam will shred off and be thrown into the box. Don’t be forceful, it will snag and rip the whole chunk out of your hands !!! This will net you a whole box of nice fine foam in no time.
Foam breaks down over time. Notice how brand new foam is almost white, and the older it gets, the browner it becomes ? You need to seal the foam in order to prevent this aging due to air exposure. Rit dye doesn’t seal the foam so it continues to break down. The first experiment I did was with Rit dye - within one year, the fine foam had deteriorated quite rapidly turning the once bright green foliage to late fall blight !!! Interesting effect if you wanted to model the actual transition from summer to fall !!!
What I ended up using was latex paint. Go to the store and pick a color you like - a thousand different greens, not to mention any fall colr you could imagine. I then take a large kettle and mix one gallon of paint with 1-1/2 to 2 gallons of water, then throw in your ground foam. Using rubber gloves, remove the foam, squeeze out lightly ( not so much to squeeze out all the color ) and spread out on newspapers to dry - a warm sunny day is ideal. This is usually a summer project for me, how-ever I have done it indoors in the winter, it just took a LOT longer to dry.
I personnally have had great success with this method, and the ground foam on my layout still looks as good as the day it was installed seven years ago … aside from the house-hold dust highlights !!!
I’ve done it before. It helps to use as dense a foam as you can find, and break it into chunks about the size of a baseball, maybe a little smaller, nothing fancy. As was mentioned in the other post, latex paint is the key. Using a bucket and rubber gloves, soak and wring out the chunks. I used the paint full strength, beside, latex is just another form of rubber.
You could let this sit and dry, depending on what tool you plan to use for the grinding. My tool of choice is an old fashioned hand cranked meat grinder. They can often be found cheaply at garage sales, or granny may not use her’s anymore. It is a little more manual labor, but you get good control, without the danger of things flying. This process also allows any interior bits of foam that the paint may have missed, to get coated by the still wet paint due to the pressure of the grinder.
Let dry, then sift into various sizes. If you need it finer, run it through the grinder again.
I make ground foam for use here at work. I’ve always used several blenders. I first take open cell foam from the upolstrey shop and cut it into chunks about 1to 2 inches. The smaller the better. Next I place an amount in the blender to fill about 1/2 of the blender. I add water to cover the foam. I use Rite dye and put in a 1/2 teaspoon or so. I also will mix colors to get what I want. Then I blend for a 5 to 10 minutes. Once the foam stops bouncing in the blender I let it run for another couple of minutes. Pour the mix onto a screen wire strainer and set aside to dry. I reuse the colored water in the next batch adding a dash of dye. The longer it’s blended the smaller the result. I also screen the product to get the smaller stuff. Rubbing the foam on a screen wire also gets smaller pieces. I’ve had no problem with the dye not standing up to being out doors and loosing it’s color. What ground foam does not meet my needs is stored for the time I will need it.
Well, I think it has worked ok for me. I have used an old blender, foam rubber, water, and acrylic craft paint. I start with the blender about 1/4 full of water then start throwing small chunks of foam in, slowly. The blender is running on high speed. Make sure the foam is circulating, if it is not add some water or poke it down. If you poke it make sure not to pu***he stick into the blades or you will be picking slivers out of your ground foam. When the blender is about 2/3 full of foam I squirt acrylic paint into the running blender till it looks right. Grind a little more and strain out the liquid as a base for a new batch (saves paint). Dump the wet foam on a big chunk of cardboard and set aside, stir a day or so later and it will dry out eventually. Here is the page I found this info on:
My biggest challenge has been getting it fine enough to have what Woodland Scenics calls the “fine turf”. I have overcome this by sifting it through a strainer basket made for kitchen use. What is left I will run through the blender again, dry, and re-sift. I find that mixing different shades of green together looks more realistic. I also find that the fine ground foam is far and away the most useful to me. Maybe I just don’t understand the proper use of the stuff.
I am not sure that I save much money if I put any value on my time but I enjoy using foam I have ground myself. There is less cash out of my pocket. I find this is a relaxing thing to do on a Saturday afternoon when I don’t feel like doing anything more complex, and I can store it a long time and in large quantities. I almost always have the color or fineness I want.
I attach it to the layout using matte medium thinned with three parts water. For broad areas I bru***his on and sprinkle the fine foam and it looks good to me. I will try and take some photos this weekend.
If I had two tips for people trying this I would say first, grind l
Wish I could help you out with photos Josh, but I did that almost 25 years ago. I’d like to pick up a grinder for future use, but first I have to use up all the Woodland Scenics I have stored away. I bought it in bulk for a commercial venture which eventually failed. I’m building a large layout, so it will be interesting to see if I can use it all up.
If you would like to know more about my past and present, check out this link.
Im re-blending as we speak… If I leave it in for 5 minutes or so I get a vert fine blend, perfect for my N scale mountains… I gotta run to walmart and get some paint now!! Thanks for saving my project guys!
I’ve used foam(old car seats) and ground it in a blender and used tube oil based paint, pour it thru old seive and squeeze out in old towel or tee shirt, worked fine.
Making your own ground foam takes a lot of time effectively per the amount that you produce.
Also using old car seat foam is not the type to use as stated (it breaks down and will form a goo if given enough time).
The type I found to use is the rug underlayment foam. But do not use the type of underlayment foam that is made up of shredded foam. This stuff is junk and is not any good for rug underlayment. The type I am talking about is all one color and can usually be found at the rug supply stores. (Although I guess they now have to recycle the foam pieces) You can still check as I used to be able to get the foam pieces from the rug stores.
This foam is a little stiffer than seat foam and with it only being ½” to 5/8” thick it is easier to handle when using the bench grinder with the wire wheel.
I would attach the shop vac to the outlet of the bench grinder and would be able to make 5 gal of foam in about an hour or less. Be sure and wear leather gloves as the wheel will grab the foam right out of your hands and guess where your fingers end up?
I then would use RIT dye to color the foam. Now the rug foam (at least the type I made years ago) would take the dye very easily and would keep the color.
I would just mix up a 5 gal pail with about 3 gal of dye color and dump in the foam and mix it with a big stick (later I modified a hand held cake mixer. Then let is set for a day and drain off the liquid. Spread it out on newspaper in the sun to dry. If the foam clumped together just drop the clumps into the blender!
I then had wood boxes made with different size screens to sift it into different grades.
I made a lot of this stuff. I even had color charts made as to the dye colors to use for different colors of rug foam (as this stuff came in greens, yellows, pink/red and blues – for different thicknesses and quality).
Oh by the way – I was doing this on a commercial basis! But found that it ju
Im only covering a 3’X6’ layout, and I suppose I could just break down and buy it, but for me, the added challenge of trying to make my own is whats driving this.
Not a chance. If you can’t squish it, and have it bounce back, it’s no good for this application. The kind you want is sponge rubber, as dense as you can get it.