Making ground foam

[foxtrackin]

Has anybody here ever try to make their own ground foam. I am builting a large basement size ho layout and need alot of ground foam for landscraping grass and trees and was looking for a low cost way to do it. Thanks

[hminky]

Everyone will ask you why, but it is not hard. There are several ways:
Hand Meat grinder
Wire brush in an electric drill, shredding it off
In a blender while wet
I have dyed it with Rit but am experimenting with a dye called Dyn-a-flow that dyes synthetic. I made ground foam before it was commercially available everywhere, and those were methods found in magazines. If you need a lot to it is worth the time and effort, I know I will need a lot. The Dye-na-flow will also color poly-fil.
Hope that helps
Harold

[foxtrackin]

what kind of foam do you use? thanks

[Javern]

buy sponges at Wal mart. I buy those jumbo ones., or an old foam cushion from a sofa. Tear it up in chunks and feed into a old blender or one of those electric mini food choppers. Add a bit of water also. Experiment with your chunks in dixie cups and Rit dye until you get your recipes correct for the colors you want. Once you get good at it you can add the dye as you chop in the blender.

[Anonymous]

I'm an el cheapo modeler. I buy the cheap foam pillows($5) at Walmart & grind up the foam in my rr blender. I also have a blender in the kitchen. I add water while I dump in the foam. Sometimes I have to grind it up 2 or 3 times to get the sizes down to whatever
I'm using it for. Then I take a med. sized plastic container( 3 or 4 gal.) & put the foam into a premixed water/color solution. I buy the water mixed paints at Walmart(U can also use latex) like the larger $1.67 colors. I mix a color at 60% color to 40% water.
Dump in the color & mix it up real good & let it sit for about a week. Then I spread the colored foam out on about 3 layers of newspapers & let it dry for about a week.
I've timed myself at blender grinding pillow foam. It takes about 2 hrs. to do the first
grade & then about an hr. to do each grade of foam after that. You can get it pretty fine
if you work at it.
If I could figure out how to get photo's on here I would post a few. Otherwise email me & I will send you a few photo's of foam ground cover.

Larry

[Anonymous]

My layout is large also but to do it right you better buy Woodland Scenics in the shaker bottles. Try buying it from Standard Hobby Supply and you can save about a buck a bottle. Its well worth the cost to have it done correctly the first time.