LOL
I will offer this defense. Most of my ballasting with Woodland Scenics Ballast was done when I was a newbie to HO scale modeling. Back then, I used a spoon to apply the glue mix after spraying the ballast with isopropyl alcohol.
On my new layout, I use Scenic Express rock ballast and I apply the glue mix with an eye dropper. That likely makes all the difference.
Rich
That’s what I do, too. I bought some eye droppers at Walgreens for $2.00 for three of them.
It is slow, but I had no experience when I began and I tried spraying – I made a mess. I decided that slow would have to be what I lived with.
AN eye dropper seemed too tedious for me. There is ont brand of mustard we get around here that comes in a bottle with a twist open spoint that is TINY, not like most brands. It only lets a very thin trickle of mustard out when wide open - nearly closed, it drips out the thinned glue like an eye dropper, except it’s a 16 oz container. I use straight 70% isopropyl in a misting sprayer to wet it, then I apply the glue (also thinned with alocohol, I have NEVER gotten the dish soap in water method to work) like Cody Grivno shows in several videos - along the outside, and I let it wich in to the center. That way I am not dribbling glue on the ties which gives tham a pasty white finish when it dries. If the ballast is sufficiently wetted with the alcohol, the glue mix sucks right in. Diluting the glue with alocohol makes it dry to a sort of rubbery consistency, not solid, which seems to avoid the “now that I ballasted, the track is loud” issues.
–Randy
You got that right, Randy. It can be quite tedious. But it depends upon the size of the eye dropper. I started out with a relatively tiny one, then moved up to a larger dispenser, sort of a large eye dropper. You could also use a turkey baster, larger still.
Rich
A turkey baster will probably make a big puddle. I tried looking for a smilar bottle without the mustard, but all of them seem to have too big (and not adjustable) opening - not to mention an empty bottle costs more than one full of mustard, so it would be even cheaper to just buy the bnustard and dump all the mustard out if you don’t like mustard.
Likely available anywhere - the mustard company is located in Chicago. But, it appears they have changed their plastic bottles and they no longer have the fine tip on them. Guess I will need to try some alternative if I can’t find the one I have.
More change for the sake of change. The old ones were just fine, and kept you from puting giant globs of mustard on things when you didn’t intend to. The new one looks like it might be slightly adjustable, but overall much larger than before, so even barely cracking it will probably result in more glue mix coming out than the old bottle. It’s Plochman’s mustard, BTW.
These look like they might work:
An old Elmer’s glu bottle would work too, the ones with the round twist cap. They close down pretty small. Buy the glue by the gallo
It is late, and I am not going to get out of my comfy den chair to shoot a photo of my glue applicators tonight, but if I remember, I will do so tomorrow. I use the standard small eye dropper and also a small baster. Neither applicator makes puddles.
Rich
C’mon, Rich, it wasn’t really late when you wrote that, and now, two hours later, it’s still not anywhere near late. My interpretation of late is when daytime office drones are getting up to go to work for 9:00AM…by then, I’m almost ready for bedtime.
I mix the white glue with water in a gallon jug, then pour some of it into the larger container shown below (it originally contained matte medium)…
The flip-up top and smaller opening makes it ideal for filling the small dropper bottle shown alongside. The dropper container’s screw-on top also has a lift-up feature to allow drop-by-drop application, or, with a light squeeze, faster application when doing deep ballast or if you’re doing simple stuff like mainlines or double track with no turnouts.
It would be nice if it were bigger, but it’s very easy to handle and to control, and re-filling it takes only a few seconds.
The time-consuming part of ballasting is the grooming, but once that’s done, wetting the ballast takes only a minute or two, and the glue application is fun and easy. Depending on how deep the ballast is, drying may take up to a week. For most layouts, that’s the time you can use for other model railroading chores.
Wayne
OK, Wayne, the real reason that I haven’t gotten up from my chair is that I am enjoying a glass of 10 year old Tawny Port…and dreaming of Bertram’s on my layout after I open your Christmas gift to me. [G]
Rich
Amen to that. Grooming is, indeed, tedious, but it is all so worth the effort.
Rich
Or not. The lightweight particles in WS ballast seem sensitive to everything from the hardness of the water to how much static is in the air (which affects how it cooperates when brushing it into place before gluing). No matter how much or what type of wetting agent I tried, I never got results from WS ballast that I found to be satisfactory, so I now exclusively use real rock. Given how many hobbyists have problems using WS ballast, I steer people away from it unless they absolutely insist on using it.
Lakeview Structures 1 by wp8thsub, on Flickr
I certainly won’t argue with you, Rob, as your trackwork always looks great.
I’ve never had the floating issue with Woodland Scenics ballast, but I learned that if you try to brush it into place, it usually takes off for parts unknown. I do use a brush for grooming it prior to wetting, but use it with the handle almost parallel to the track, dragging the particles along. The trick of laying the brush handle across the rails and movng it along while rapidly tapping the handle does a good job of bouncing the stray pieces off the ties, but only if you’ve not overfilled the spaces between the ties.
I found real rock to have its own quirks, too, one of them being its tendency to lock together, much like real ballast does. In that case using the brush to actual brush the pieces works fairly well.
I’ve always enjoyed ballasting track. For the minimal skill and cost of the materials required, it’s right up there with brush-painting rail when it comes to getting “bang-for-your-buck”.
It also, almost instantly, makes a layout look a lot better, even if the rest of it is still a “Plywood Pacific”
As for hard water, I once ballasted track using well-water that was really hard. How hard was it? It was so hard that I didn’t even use glue or ballast. When the water part evapourated, all that was left was ballast, from the hard part of the water. [:P] Budda-boom!
Wayne
Which one, you lucky dog!
Randy, is this Plochman’s with the red tip that looks the same as a Weldbond bottle?
I go back and forth between Graham’s and Dow, depending upon the price at our local liquor store. You can spend nearly double on 20 year tawny port, but honestly the 10 year port is “good enough”.
Rich