What is the best adhesive of a wood building to styrene?
I wouldn’t glue buildings to styrene or any base unless they won’t sit still on their own. Your scenery material around their base fixed with diluted white glue will hold them in place.
Yes the foam board will warp if it gets too much moisture.
Pictured below is what I named my asphalt jungle. The piece in the foreground warped and I glude it down with latex caulk and a lot of weight, The one in the background didn’t have a problem.
If you decide to use styrene (I highly recommend) the following tool from Micro Mart is very handy for cutting the styrene. Just score it a couple of times and it will snap apart.
Good to see your photos, and your gas station signs.
If the foam board has paper on either side it WILL WARP, not the foam but the paper. So a latex caulk is definitely OUT when working with a paper product. Use pure silicone caulk instead.
LION did try modeling with corrugated cardboard, and of course it does warp when painted, (LIONS ONLY use latex paints). When him wanted to make platform shelters from corrugated cardboard him clamped them to a heavy sheet of wood before painting, and that seemed to work well enough.
Corrugated cardboard is a great construction material because that is what I can best afford. I lined some subway tunnels with the stuff. I painted it before I mounted it and did not worry about the warp since it was inside of a curved tunnel anyway.
For sealing, any cheap spray can that gives good coverage will work. A color close to what you want is a bonus. I usually apply a fairly wet coat on what will be a parking lot surface and sprinkle with very fine sand, then mist more color over.
For gluing down, Aleene’s tacky glue is good if used sparingly for areas that are on the small side so they dry quickly; I weight them down to dry flat. More typically, I just use a spray of 3M #77 spray-on adhesive and position it carefully before applying pressure. Quick and painless.
I’ve done this on a number of structures, mostly the more delicate ones. The thing is, the flat bottom may not like the uneven layout base, so you have to build around it. Of course, that’s what ground cover is for.
I tend to use the thinnest I have that gives the structure reasonable support. Sooo, small structures get minimal thickness, larger structures get thicker.
looks an awful lot like the cut-out pattern I drew up in Photoshop and posted here once-upon-a-time.
I assume you “kitbashed” the printed cardstock building picture file in Photoshop or some other image editing program. And blew it up to HO. Mine was for N.
Good to see somebody using it. I never used mine on a layout. Just a mockup diorama for a photo. I drew it up for a teenager for whom I was designing a layout over the internet, and I wanted a building I could email to him. I don’t know if the teen ever built or used it, but looks like you did.
I’m pretty sure I got it from here. I have a bunch of Tomkat13’s old buildings on the harddrive , but there’s a few others I grabbed in the file, too. It worked pretty well for the stand-in until I get a flat built of the actual Silverton plant. I always thought the roll up door was oddly place in respect to the rest of the building, but now that I see how it was supposed to fold and be an entry like that, it makes more sense to me. With my CRS these days and it being years ago when I grabbed some of these, I’m glad you spoke up – and liked it.[Y]
I like the idea of placing buildings each on it’s own board, especially when I get back to building one again, and not being “locked in” to one position, blocks is good, for lighting. Maybe my painting skills will improve, so can do a better repaint job later after removing it. Tkx. -tomcat
I use .80 and gave not had a problem. I use either tacky glue or rubber cement for the scenery material to bond to. Put that down the cover all the non hardscape areas with dirt. The hardscape areas get a water base tacky glue so it holds the plaster or Portland. Which ever you use. Have not had any thing break off. And it has had many many trips from bench to layout.
The thinnest plywood you will be able to find would be sold at a model airplane store, and is called aircraft plywood.
We had very poor results with Masonite warping when water-based scenery was applied. Any thin wood material is going to warp if too much water is used when applying scenery.
When I said I left about 2" around each building, with the building boundaries glued down, there isn’t much "flex’ to those 2 " around the structure! Gluing with a “flexible” glue or any glue also “stiffens up” the flex in the plastic.
A cheap building and a $1 store “for sale” sign and some glue, cut out around the building to be sure only about 2" and try it, you won’t loose much money if you don’t like it. A LOT of stuff in MRRing is “trial and error”,and the “which do you like best”…
Now I cannot speak to what happens over say 30 years, as mine is only about 7 years old. THe glue could crumble after that many years, dunno.
Just some info for your post. In the September/October N Scale Magazine there is a great article with plenty of pictures of how Bob Ferguson uses Midwest Products Company 1/4 inch Birch plywood for all of his mini modules on his shelf layout. Without getting myself in trouble here he makes them all the same size so he can set in or change scenes as he wants. It is a must read article, at least for my ideas and he seals with earth tone latex paint on all edges and surfaces. I subscribe to most of the magazines and I have been N Scale for almost 30 years. What a ride it has been from junk to fantastic running models. Doug