Well, on my new layout I thought I’d go with with foam this time for the mountains, rather than the cardboard stripping technique. Went to Home Depot and found the pink insulation, but also saw 2" thick boards of “styrene insulation”, which looked pretty clean and neat. Kinda like styrofoam, but obviously it must have different properties. But it kinda looked like the WS foam stuff, in appearance.
Question: Has anyone used this stuff before, can you glue it to foam with liquid nails, is there any downside or upside to using it?
If this is the stuff that looks like white bead foam, it can be used, but it can be a real mess if you need to do alot of shaping and is not very good for more fine shaping. I used a lot of white bead foam in my layout, but mainly as a space filler, covering it with a layer of the more expensive blue-board. I used regular packing materials that cost me nothing. You can see in these pictures how plenty of free old PC packing material found its way into hills and mountains.
As for Liquid nails, make sure you use the Liquid Nails for projects that specifically mentions Foam board. The other stuff will melt the foam. There are other brands of construction adhesive as well. Also you can use inexpensive caulk to glue the stuff together. I like to use one of those grooved trowels for tiling to get good coverage and not too thick a layer of adhesive.
If you use thin blue foam like I did, remember to peel off the plastic sheeting before gluing. Leaving it on caused me some problems when the plastic later delaminated on its own.
Yes you can use it, but be aware that it is hard to cut cleanly. It makes a real mess when trying to cut or shape it due to the little white beads and the static that builds up making them stick to everything. Personally, I would not use it except like I did where re-cycled packing materials cost me nothing and saved me some blue foam (Which also cost nothing as I found a siding contractor that let me have the larger leftover scraps from a siding job[:D] )
If you accept the mess issues of the white foam, then once you have got a rough shape formed, I would them cover it with some sort of plaster mix. There are many choices of this stuff including several home-brews and mixtures that modellers swear by.
Simon, cool…I think I’ll just stick to the regular foam then…probably not worth the extra hassle. I have some white bead stuff laying around that I got with appliances that I’ll use for filler, though.
The white beadboard isn’t bad if you cut it with a hot wire cutter. Otherwise it’s little statically charged beads everywhere. It’s also not as tough as the blue or pink foam even with a plaster coating. I would use it only in out of the way places where it won’t be damaged.
Good point Jim about the hot wire cutter. I never considered using one of these due to the enclosed nature of my train room in the basement, not having any decent ventilation.
You may also want to consider the technique used to lay down the foam. Most layouts lay the foam down in layers like a cake… one flat piece on top of another. The way I plan to go is to take that piece of styrafoam and flip it on edge, then cut a profile into the edge. This way they are stacked side-by-side and if you use say 4-6" wide strips layed out on an angle with the profile cut into one edge, you then effectively have a more hollow mountain cutting down on the amount of styrafoam used. I hope my picture helps explain what I am trying to put into words.[:)] I should mention that I got this idea from Pelle Soeborg’s most recent book.
Right oh. Be advised that the white stuff may be more of a fire hazard than the pink/blue stuff.
I haven’t done this test myself, but someone told me he had tried to set fire to both a small piece of white and a small piece of pink/blue - the white caught fire quickly from a match and gave off large amounts of toxic smoke, the blue merely melted where exposed to heat from the match, but did not catch fire.
Could be a factor if you have your layout inside your home - you may not want to save a few dollars on foam at the potensial cost of having an electrical short on the layout start a fire that takes off quickly and gives off a lot of toxic fumes.
But don’t take my word for it - what I am reporting here is hearsay - do a quick test yourself. And let us know if the white stuff really seems to be more of a fire hazard than the pink/blue stuff.
I found it in one of the threads on this forum a few weeks ago and it is very enlightening.
Personally I use blue foam, but well use pink foam if I need to.
I agree with those who say they only use the white foam for filler etc.
Years ago (I am getting really old[|(]), when I was in college preparing to teach industrial arts, I specialized in the areas of electricity, electronics, and technical plastics.
For your information styrene of which white foam beads are a version of, is basically made of the element carbon. That is why when it burns it puts out such a black smoke. It is soot.
I’m sure that over the years, plastic manufactures have added a lot of other chemicals to the mix so I don’t know what the white foam has in it today, but I venture to say it is still basically carbon and still burns quickly and creates lots of soot and may have a lot of other toxic chemicals released.
I used some styrene insulation for some backdrop cliffs and it was messy, but result was good. After rough carving, I coated with texture ceiling paint. Applied with a putty knife. Also soaked some paper towels and applied over the insulation and then finessed with putty knife application of more texture paint.
Texture paint comes in different forms (popcorn, sand etc). I was pleased with the results.
Mmm - depends on what you mean by “no worse”. Obviously paper will catch fire easier than beadboard and paper will burn more quickly.
On the other hand the smoke from white beadboard may contain chemicals you probably wouldn’t get from burning cardboard. One way of testing that - which I do not recommend, incidentally - would be to try to inhale the smoke from a pile of paper and the smoke from a pile of beadboard.
But the comparison wasn’t between paper and beadboard, it was between white beadboard and pink/blue styrofoam.
Your observation was that white beadbord “caught fire like plastic” (ie giving off foul smelling fumes ?), while the pink/blue styrofoam just melted slowly.
If you are going to have a lot of foam, it might be smarter to have a lot of pink/blue styrofoam rather than to have a lot of white beadboard, from a purely fire safety viewpoint.
OTOH, a train layout probably isn’t going to be big enough to be the make or break of fire safety in your house.
If you have a garage attached to your house, you probably could do a heck of a lot more for fire safety by getting yourself a few airtight metal cupboard to store all those cans of oils and paints and other flammables most of us routinely leave piled high on shelves in our garages, and a few airtight metal bins for throwing oil soaked rags and such stuff in.
The relative flammability of Beadboard vs blue/pink styrofoam is not a big issue. But it
Stein, I think you’ve hit it spot on, and you are correct.
And yes, the fumes from the white beadboard were what I would call “noxious”. [;)]
It was a little disconcerting to see how fast the white beadboard went up in flames. But then again, as you said, if you exposed an open flame to a lot of stuff in the basement, kaboom!
I’m going to make open flames NOT part of my layout. [swg]
One other thing. Leaving the fumes hazards aside, the chances are good that at several instances you will find the need to shape the contours and to perhaps carve small rock-like surfaces out of the foam. Some folks have no qualms about carving their foam roughly and then layering plaster or hydrocal atop it in a layer thick enough to permit detailed carving. No problem. On the other hand, if you are an impatient modeler such as I, there is no reason not to spend a bit of time with a sharp fine blade and whittle very nice rock faces out of the foam and save yourself the extra step of the plaster with its associated messes…or likelihood of it.
Bead-type foam will not sand easily, and the mess will be a factor. Extruded foam, though, will take sanding and finer carving very nicely. You will find, too, that when you have already placed a section of the layered extruded foam, and discover that you need to pare it somewhat, a quick swipe of a sharp blade across the affected area will net you a clean shard that is easily removed. It will be a longer and messier task with the beaded stuff, and there are many times when you will still tear off more than you had intended; it doesn’t cut as well.
Since I once had a fire by my layout [when it was in the garage], I am more concerned. My son was home from work with a toothache or the whole house could have gone up. As it was, he heard the combustion explosion and went to the garage, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and put it out with a minimum of damage. The culprit was paint-cleaner soaked paper towels in an open wastebasket on a hot day. Glad I had the fire extinguisher on hand. Went out and bought two more right after the fire, along with a metal covered waste container. Do you have an extinguisher by your layout?
