This one is getting a liitle more particular than usual. If anyone has ever made their own ground foam, I am in need of some advice. I can't seem to get the foam fine enough for what I want. I model in HO scale. I can get it to what I would call coarse but I want to get it to the fine grade. (Woodland Scenics fine if possible.) I don't know if I need a better blade on my chopping device or what I need to do. As usual, any assistance that anyone can provide would be most welcomed.
I had a friend try to make his own ground foam from floral foam blocks, the green type that indents easily when you touch it.
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The effect and result were terrible. The mess was massive. The effort required was tremendous.
Why do you want to do this?
Surely Woodland Sceneics and Scenic Express mush already make what you want. Is this an attempt to save money, work with materials on hand, or are you trying to do something special?
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Florist foam is the wrong stuff to use.
A coffee grinder would probbaly make fine enough foam. But in such small quantities at a time (not to mention the dying and drying) that it's probably just not wortht he time and effort. I suppose if you are retired and have nothing better to do, but otherwise at some point you have to draw the line with regards to time and effort. How much OTHER modeling could you be doing in the time it takes to process all that foam?
I did the old style dyed sawdust thing back when I was a kid. It was in several books, and I had a ready supply of sawdust. So I got some dye in green shades and went at it. Sifted out all the big chunks, mixed up a bucket of dye in the laundry sink, made a big mess, piles of sawdust on newspaper laid out to dry. I ended up with a few 5 pound coffee cans full. And I used - a small fraction of it. The rest hung out for a while and by the time I moved on to my next layout I had discovered ground foam and how much better it looked than the sawdust so it all got tossed.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Ground foam in bags from Scenic Express isn't all that expensive so I never felt like I needed to make my own, but...
there has been times I wanted to make the foam I bought more fine so I put it in a coffee grinder I have and it ground it up well. Try a hand held coffee grinder.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
I attended a clinic where the guy showed how to make your own ground foam. He had a blender or perhaps a food processor purchased at Goodwill or similar thrift shop. The raw material was the foam rubber found in old worn out pillows, likely also bought at Goodwill, and pulled off into small chunks. Then green dye and some liquid into the blender or food processor and away you go. I think he used an old towel to dry the stuff out on.
You can buy foam rubber new at a craft or fabric store but the old pillows are likely cheaper and already starting to crumble! The stiff plastic foam like florists use is not the same stuff.
Just as when grinding nuts or coffee beans etc. it takes a while to get the stuff into a very small size. Of course ground foam comes in various sizes. But what the guy showed at his clinic looked enough like Woodland Scenics ground foam to make me assume they use a somewhat similar process.
Dave Nelson
The foam I am using is from foam chair pads that I had purchased a few years ago. I have been around the green floral foam and I know that is the wrong stuff.
As for why, I already had the materials on hand. I just needed to buy some additional craft paints. (About $2 for the paints.) The area in question also prompted it: I have to cover a couple of areas: one is about 18' x 28" or so and the other is 48" x 63". The larger section will be an earth tone (railyard) and the smaller will be green (lake area) with the possibility of the earth tone as there are plans for a small yard on part of that as well.
have done this as wife use to make a lot of fome filled pillows an the like, leaving two garbage bage full of scraps . first cut or tore foam into small chunks then dyed it several shades of green , after drying out i put in okd junk blender from a yard sale for a dollar , then used a coffie grinder to make finer stuff, takes a bit of trial and error to get the size you want but in the end i had 6 one gallon jars of foam for under a dollar a jar , plus one garbage bag of colored foam chunks to use when needed.
I think chopping up old foam in an old blender is most definitely worth the hassle, just for the sake of not having to use up the WS; however, I'm not sure that the messiness of dying it and laying it out to dry makes the entire process worth it.
Could you simply spread the undyed foam onto the layout, then rattle can spray it green with a go-over of drybrushing various tones over it?
It would have to be for pastures or bare spots on the layout, or for trees that have not yet been placed.
- Douglas
Well, once you obtain that old blender to chop up the ground foam, you can then use it to chop up old dried leaves for leaf ground litter (this is a pretty common technique, with a number of tutorials from Luke Towan, Kathy Millett, Mel the Terrain Tutor guy and plenty of other YouTuber modelers). I recall some MR articles on this as well, including then advice to heat the leaf debris first in an oven to kill off any microcritters like bacteria (how you get rid of the millicritters like ants and worms that you wouldn't want chopped up into your model leaf litter, I don't recall)
Many years and several layouts ago, I picked up a used blender at a yard sale.
Foam scraps ground in water became ground foam. Different amount of grinding will give you different sizes.
I found after a lot of experimentation that it's best to add the paint after grinding, but while the foam is still wet. I use cheap (well, not as much as it used to be) craft paint. I grind up foam, sepatate it into small plastic bins, mix the paint and place it near the air return for the heating/air conditioning of the house.
If it still isn't fine enough, run it through a coffee grinder after it dries. Again, these are very cheap at yard sales/flea markets, and they are a lifetime investment. Once you have them, they're for all the layouts you ever build and in my case, gifts for my modelling friends.
The biggest reason to do this is not the savings, although there are over time, but the variety of colors you can make. In my case, no two batches ever the same, which helps the scenic effect. Whatever is left from a project gives put in the mixed container. The contents of that is used for all kinds of things and varies bases on what was put in.
I feel it's worth the effort, but like all things modelling, is time effort versus time spent. Sometimes buying is better, sometimes do it your self.
Don
I purchased the suggested coffee grinder last night and used it this morning. I think that it going to work. It will take awhile to get all the foam I have chopped down. (Small capacity of the grinder and large quantity of foam to chop. I have two shoe boxes full of foam as well as a small quantity of foam in another color.)
To formally close out this thread, the suggested coffee grinder is working perfectly for the task. As previously stated, it is taking awhile to get everything ground. (I can only do about three or four batches before the grinder gets quite warm.) The two colors aren't quite showing the way I had originally in mind, so I might end up making more of the lighter color to get the mix the way I want it.
While more expensive, I think the commercial route provides more variety than anything homemade. The idea of using real anything (e.g., rocks, soil, leaves, etc.) on the layout is an inviation for bugs or anything to grow inside. No thanks!
My friend made his own ground foam. He had an old meat grinder, some old yard sale blenders, and an old coffee grinder. I believe we had upholstery foam that was starting to fall apart, but we ran it through the meat grinder, then the blenders and coffee grinder, depending on how fine we wanted it. He used Rit dye in a variety of colors, and he got a lot of ground foam out of it.
Just be careful you don't burn up the motors in the blenders or coffee grinders.
Gary
Hi!
I've been playing with trains since the mid 1950s. There have been times when - mainly to save money - I did my own ground covers. I've dyed sawdust (still have some), dyed and "refreshed" lichen, and did a bit of foam shredding.
My results have been mixed, with the only thread being "it was more trouble/mess than it was worth.
The dyed sawdust yielded the best results. I used Rit dyes and made a mess out of a couple of pieces of cookware (I was single at the time).
The refreshed and dyed lichen was a mess. The glycerine didn't seem to help much (to soften the lichen) and the Rit dyes were OK, but not great. Again, I made a mess out of some cookware (still single).......
I attempted the foam shredding with some carpentry files and an electric blender or grinder. Yikes, what a mess that was. And I never even got to adding color.
So while I realize that money is a major factor in building a layout, I would definitely buy commercial even if it means I have to wait to accumulate the funds.
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
garya Just be careful you don't burn up the motors in the blenders or coffee grinders.
I actually have burned out a few blenders in my time, mostly from making what I call "mush". All it is is ground up newsprint. The grinder I am being very careful with. When it or the foam gets warm, I stop and let the grinder cool off.
Whatever you do just be sure you unplug the blender before you clean it. I nearly chopped the top of my finger off ouch.
Joe Staten Island West
Youtube has several good tutorials on how to make this. It does not look that difficult, although I've never tried doing it myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW6n4-e-V5Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLaTyE1eHVo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHo0M7b0Eyk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G290IeDW0ig
Mark
M. Gilger - President and Chief Engineer MM&G web
Web Site: http://mmg-garden-rr.webs.com/
I never had much luck using the blender method.
I ended up using a large brass wire wheel (8 inch) chucked into my drill and clamped to the edge of my WorkMate. I placed a large box under the wheel to catch the foam.
My foam source was old seat cushions from a local upholsterer.
By carefully feeding the foam into the underside of the spinning wire wheel, the foam was shredded off and thrown into the box. A light feed into the wheel creates fine foam particles and a more forceful feed produces larger pieces. You can fill the box in no time.
For coloring the foam, you need to seal the foam and typical seat cushion foam degrades and turns brown over time, so regular dyes like Rit Dye are not permanent over the years (I have a bunch of brown dead foam from early attempts with Rit dye).
I found latex paint worked the best for coloring the foam. One part paint and two parts water worked the best. The best part of using latex paint is you can get exactly the color you want (I wanted to match the greenery in my backdrop photos).
Por your paint mix in a bucket and start adding the ground foam until it is fully saturated. Squeeze out the excess paint (use gloves !) and spread it out to dry on some newspapers. Once dry, roll the clumps between your hands to break it up and you're ready to use.
I required hundreds (if not a couple thousand) trees for my layout, so buying all the ground foam required would have been rather expensive. I filled seven large boxes of finished ground foam for only the cost of a gallon of paint and an afternoon of grinding and coloring.
Mark.
¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ
don't know if this is applicable or not ...
anyways, a while ago i made enough ground cover for a 15' x 16' layout, but there was no foam involved ...
it was about 3/4 dried moss or lichen [from walmart, 2.00 /bag], with some woodland scenics grass, and the rest was sand, ordinary multi colored sand blasting sand ...
and it worked very well, size was accomplished by running it through an ordinary manual meat grinder...
adjusting the amount of sand gave various textures / ground cover options
I just put fine sawdust in boiling water and put green food coloring in. Then I dry it. Green food coloring yeilds suprisingly realistic shades.
I'm beginning to realize that Windows 10 and sound decoders have a lot in common. There are so many things you have to change in order to get them to work the way you want.
Mark R. For coloring the foam, you need to seal the foam and typical seat cushion foam degrades and turns brown over time, so regular dyes like Rit Dye are not permanent over the years (I have a bunch of brown dead foam from early attempts with Rit dye). I found latex paint worked the best for coloring the foam. One part paint and two parts water worked the best. The best part of using latex paint is you can get exactly the color you want (I wanted to match the greenery in my backdrop photos).
I had tons of foam that was packing foam, and I used a blender, with different shades of craft paint, water, and a bit of alcohol. When dry, I ground it finer with a coffee grinder: