I am about to start ballasting my layout and was all set to go with PVA for bonding the ballast, but reading older MR over the last few days, all suggestions seemed to point to matte medium. More current MR seem to use PVA. After discussions at my LHS last night, I was steered in the direction of matte medium and warned off PVA. Accept as a given that the LHS doesn’t care what I use (profit is not an issue to him or me).
What are the pros and cons of both products, given that matte medium is extremely expensive versus PVA in Australia (5 times the price)?
Price triumphs over all. PVA and matte medium do the same job. The two biggest differences are:
PVA (white glue) is water soluble when dry, MM is waterproof
PVA can dry slightly glossy (which I’ve never seen yet), and MM dries perfectly flat, although cheap brands can dry with a slightly hazy finish.
I use PVA, because a gallon costs less then MM and I like the fact that it can be resoftened with water. (I’ve glued a couple turnouts shut before).
I have used only PVA and have never ran into a problem with it drying to a glossy finish. I dilute the glue to a 50/50 mix of glue and water with a couple of drops of liquid dishwashing detergent added. After spreading the dry ballast, I pre-wet it with a spray of Isopropyl Alcohol, dribble on the glue/water mixture, and then spray again with alcohol to insure that the glue is evenly distributed.
I think Nick’s comments above are very important. I had started using matte medium until I heard that it is waterproof. I may be moving to a new house next year and would like to be able to loosen the ballast before I pull up track and turnouts. The last layout I built had ballast fastened with white glue and it was easy to just put my turnouts in a bucket of water and all the ballast floated off.
I’m going to use the white glue for the rest of my layout. I never really don’t see much difference in appearance between the two.
I have never used matte medium but have been told that it is a little softer and doesn’t create as much noise as the white glue which dries much harder.
In another thread one person found great success in a one-step process. No pre-wetting. Then gluing with Matte Medium and alcohol. 8 alcohol: 1 MM. Made sense to me. But, considering the negatives of MM ( cost,waterproof,cloudy), I am going to attempt one-step using Elmetr’s White and alcohol inte 8:1 mix. Has any one experoienced doing this? BTW, Elmer’s ProBond (yellow) is what I have used for roadbed and track gluing. It seems to “tack” a little quicker and set more firmly. Yet, it is still relatively easy to break the seal when a move is required. I blew the lineup on the second line of a double track. I put it down and got called away before I couild align. Didn’t get back for a couple of days. 10 minutes and no broken roadbed ( I use Vinylbed) and I was regluing in the correct position. I am going to use the white glue for ballast. Probond dries very orangish-yellow.
Fiatfan is very correct. White glue(PVA) will work just fine, but dries very hard. You will notice the noise level of you trains increase! Matte Medium dries to a softer consistancy and is motre sound absorbant. I use Matte Medium - you can get it at Micheal’s, Hobby Lobby or most any arts/craft store…
Thanks guys, your opinions are duly noted. I guess it is another one of those issues that there is no answer to until I try it for myself. Being Aussie, I don’t have access to your “chain” stores, but it is easy enough to obtain…
Cost is not really an issue for ballasting, surely one bottle of either product will work for the entire layout…
I use white glue thinned with water 50/50 or so.My club lost its room and we just srayed water with a little detergent and it all lifted easy. To reposition track in the future the PVA/white glue works great.
I use Matte Medium. I have been happy with it, but I do find it noisy, so I think white glue would be too much. I have had success moving and repositioning ballasted track. I use 99% isopropyl alcohol to dissolve the matte medium. Usually I just spread it on the ballasted track with an eye dropper, let it soak, and pull it up. It takes some work to remove all the little bits of ballast, but I have reclaimed a number of switches and changed the track arrangement using this method.
I like Matte Medium because it’s real artist stuff!
We used both matte medium and white glue on portions of our 30’ x35’ layout and were happy with both for 10 years. Then the layout had to move and we easily salvaged all of the switches fastened down with white glue by simply soaking the areas for a short time before removal, but ended up damaging beyond use most of the turnouts (peco and shinohara) that were fastened by matte medium. Impossible to remove without something to soften the matte medium, but never could find anything to loosen the matte medium that didn’t damage the plastic turnouts. No more matte medium on ballast for us.
I use Mod Podge Matte. It does dry hard and is noisy, but it is cheaper than matte medium. I use it to glue everything including my scenery. I thin it 3parts water to 1 part Mod Podge, and add isopropyl alchohol to the mix.
I do some furniture restoration work occasionally and I use a mixture of distilled white vinegar and water to loosen PVA and/or hide glue. I have never tried this mixture on MM, but it might be worth a try. Just keep increasing the percentage of vinegar until you get the desired results or it becomes obvious that this isn’t going to do the job. I use about 20% vinegar to start and increase as necessary. Distilled white vinegar is available at any grocery store and it’s inexpensive too!
I have used PVA and matt medium and I would never go back to PVA on account of noise. PVA dries hard, matt medium dries resilient and significantly quieter.
I wonder if those who talk of PVA being soluble in water are up to date as a lot of the newer PVAs claim to be waterproof.
Apart from the waterproof issue (if it is one, how many of us do lift our track and expect to use it again?), there is much less uniformity in the strengths of different matt mediums, so you need a little trial and error to establi***he dilution rate.
As to cost, in New Zealand we have a product called Resene Multishield, which is much cheaper than matt medium from art supply stores (but still dearer than PVA). Paint stores sell it as a water-based varnish. I’m not an industrial chemist, but it seems to be unpigmented acrylic paint.
If you want to dissolve it later, alcohol will probably work, just as it does with acrylic paint.
Someone mentioned cloudiness with matt medium, this is only when not mixed properly. The component that makes it matt tends to settle out and if you use the concentrated sludge you can get milkiness occurring.
I use only PVA for setting ballast. It’s cheap and easy to use and can be mixed in different proportions with water to give slightly different strengths. I use a weaker mixture around switches so that they are easily reclaimable later. Do I ever have to lift track.? Yes I have used some of it several times over and I often modify areas ot track when I have a moment of inspiration. Sure the track is a little noisy but I am running DCC sounded locos and the track sound fits in real well. If you are still unsure why not ballast a test section and see how it suits you.
Kind regards from Downunder.
I’ve always used Elmers white glue & water (50-50)…and have reclaimed
both track and switches 6 times as I moved state to state… Never had gloss
to be a problem.