I am experimenting with the virtues of “pink foam” for backdrop scenery in one section of the new layout. As per the article in the March MR issue titled "Add Broad Backdrop Hills to a Narrow Space” I was wondering if anyone has constructed rock outcroppings using pink foam? It seems to be a very popular medium for some obvious reasons but unfortunately for me I’m an old school scenery guy which has taken me over thirty years to get to where I’m not embarrassed to show it to people so new methods as cool as they may seem are approached with extreme caution because I have made some monumental messes in my day and am not looking to break any of my old records.
Your thoughts/opinions are greatly appreciated as always.
As many know, I am a fan of foam everything, but then after 40 years of plaster, none of which was very good, I was open to something that works. Being a tree fan, I also like the way you can plant trees in foam. My first foam scenery is not as good as my later work, but all was better than my best plaster so I may be a poor reference on this subject.
I am using extruded dense foam board for scenery including shallow depth rock faces. Lite weight, rigid, and easily shaped.
Related to foam scenery is the gluing of the pieces to one another. Some adhesives will melt the foam but has anyone experimented with painting the foam first? I spent this afternoon removing about 24 feet of double track WS road bed because water had weakened the bond of the Loctite foamboard adhesive to the foam. It is an outdoor layout and it rained all day in the desert yesterday.
Before I invest more time, I was wondering if a water proof adhesive such as one of the silicone products would work?
I have sucessfully been able to use pink/blue extruded foam as outcroppings. There are two ways that you can go about this. First while planning the cut of the foam for the space you can leave an area for you to hand carve the outcropping away from the the other terrain. This is the way I would recommend, it provides more realisim, and it makes the transition from outroping to terrain easier during the scenic process. Secondly, you can take a scrap piece of foam, hand carve the detail and glue to the terrain.This may seem easier, but in the long run the first option looks much better.
I am a custom model builder and perfer this method over plaster rock outcropping molds. This way the the layout is more custom. I would recommend looking at real rocks silimar to those you wish to model, before carving.
i am experimenting with pink foam right now on a shelf diaroma.
Here are some pics. I recommend that the foam in attached to the layout securely before carving it. It can be pretty tough to shape it if it is just sitting on your bench. This is a work in progress mind you.
Since the pics were taken more light brown wash was added to lighten the color of the rock faces. Right now I think I am up to 6 colors all washed on in various thicknesses. This piece was a test bed on how easy it was to carve, how much got wasted and how to paint it.
Oh also go to you tube. I found a guy that has an 8 part series on pink foam carving. Type in carving pink foam scenery and he should come up. He takes you from stacking the foam to final landscaping. He also does a montage of background painting that is kinda cool. If you can’t find it I will send you the link.
I am making my own foam risers from some old gray extruded foamboard I had laying around.
WS has nice sets, but just didn’t quite fit into what I wanted to do, so I have a 1 3/4% grade I am making from foam.
I also build and fly RC airplanes and use foam extensively, and so I have learned to use foam on my train layout also (HO)
I have a foam cutter called a "feather Cut gravity system made by an outfit called Tekoa , at www.tekoa.com
They make foam cutting accesories that you can make just about anything or any shape out of foam with!
I had success painting foam with a latex paint, protecting it from “foam eating” paint. Not sure how it would work with glue. I would think the better adhesives, Liquid Nails for Projects, etc, might be better than cheap latex caulk in such a case. Give it a try on a small piece.
It`s been quite awhile ago,but I had good results using Elmers yellow capenters glue to attach blocks of blue foam together.
Another trick that can be used on the thin pieces is to glue them and press toothpicks into the joints of two pieces of foam to add some grip to the combination.
I haven’t tried it myself yet but a friend at the local train club says he uses the foam and then puts the plaster strips over it. He finds it easier and less messy I guess to shape and it still has the advantage of being quite easy to “plant” trees because the foam is right under the plaster.
A heat gun, or very carefully handled propane torch, will texture the face of a foam cliff face either before or after carving. But it takes a bit of practice and good ventilation.
When I worked for a layout building company, we used just about every tool in the carpentry shop and then some! Sawsall for general shaping, grinders with wire wheels, wire brushes, hotknives, rasps and surforms, assorted knives, especially filleting knives (long narrow curved blade) and both the narrow and wider box cutters (cheap). When using knives keep a sharpening stone handy and sharpen the blades often, foam dulls blades fast.
Don’t forget about spray foam! the kind you use for insulating windows,etc. It’s good for filling in gaps and and cracks and is actually the best “glue” to stick foam together (although not the cheapest); foam + foam = foam. When glueing sheets together.we used a latex contact cement for most of the area, but for six inches along the facing edge we would run a couple of beads of spray foam, press the sheets together and secure the sheets together with skewers or 3" sheetrock screws, (they can be removed after a couple of hours or just left in place if they’re not going to interfere with anything. The result is that the seams between layers are eliminated and the sheets become one mono block.
The sprayfoam is not as dense as the pink & blue stuff, so when you carve it you expose the air cells, which is not a texture you want to end up with. We used the lightweight vinyl spackling or patching plaster thinned to a consistency of pancake batter and painted it over the foam with a brush. This lightweight plaster works great with foam, it sticks really well, and doesn’t crack.
To finish off the carved foam we used latex paint in the base rock color, usually a shade of grey. We added some “fine” texture to the paint, (the sand like texture for walls and ceilings). "Fine " is good for H0, use “extra fine” for N scale. You don’t use much, just enough to leave a little texture for the subsequent washes to grab on to. The texture makes the rocks look a little rougher and more natural
