Love this forum and again needing advice.
Building my layout with tounge and grove wall timber about 1" by 5" using mdf board 25mm thick. These materials were left over from renovations and our old water bed.
My question is will this be to heavy and will the board eventually pull away from its framework?
God bless, Alan
Alan,
Just make sure that your MDF board is well-supported underneath. Although it can be milled very flat, it’s susceptible to warping and needs more support than plywood.
Someone can correct me if I’m way off base. I would guess a minimum of 12" centers between support beams for MDF.
Tom
I agree with that. I know that a two foot span in a cabinet, even with nothing on it sags visibly pretty quickly. Given a choice I would not use it, though I have read of successful applications, so I can’t totally reject it.
Shouldn’t that be maximum? I don’t think you’d want to gor MORE than 12".
That was the maximum minimum…at a minimum the maximum spacing should be…oh heck…at least we know what he meant!
Thanks for your advice.
God bless, Alan.
Just use a decent 3/4 ply or pine and run the supports at 16" on center. To trying to use such an inferior product like MDF for the subroadbed will cause you nothing but grief down the road. And having to place supports at 10-12" will no doubt cause major troubles when placing switch machines, wiring etc.
I think MDF has a lot of problems with changes in humidity. It’s certainly not something you would want to use in a basement or garage where you’re not controlling that at all, and even in a “living space,” the humidity can fluctuate a lot over the course of a year.
Find another use for the MDF.
I have 1/4" MDF splines for my roadbed. It is wonderful, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it again. I am not sure I’d use it as a single flat layer 1" thick, but if you anchor it well and keep the humidity controlled to between 40-70%, as I do, you should be fine.
What I would do is to lay it as you need it, and then use only acrlyic latex caulking to adhere the track sections to it so that the MDF can do what it needs to, while the tracks are allowed to budge a tiny bit with the give afforded by the caulking.
Note that MDF is hard and it doesn’t like tiny track nails.
I vote for firewood[:D]