rustyrails wrote: Don,Do you feel strongly that should scrap homasote in favor of 1" foam with cork roadbed?No. Since your modules will be fixed in place you do not have the same issues as a layout that must be light enough to be picked-up frequently and stored.I have Homasote on part of my layout and Homabed over foam on the rest. This is the first time I have used foam and actually I wish I had not - for the flat areas anyway. I have found out that foam dents easily. At my age I need a little support as I bend over to work on the rear of my layout (and my width is only 24 inches). If you put the heel of your hand directly down on the foam and apply even a little weight you leave a dent. I now use a scrap of masonite where I need to put my hand. This spreads out the weight and reduces denting.Good luck,-John
Don,
Do you feel strongly that should scrap homasote in favor of 1" foam with cork roadbed?
No. Since your modules will be fixed in place you do not have the same issues as a layout that must be light enough to be picked-up frequently and stored.
I have Homasote on part of my layout and Homabed over foam on the rest. This is the first time I have used foam and actually I wish I had not - for the flat areas anyway. I have found out that foam dents easily. At my age I need a little support as I bend over to work on the rear of my layout (and my width is only 24 inches).
If you put the heel of your hand directly down on the foam and apply even a little weight you leave a dent. I now use a scrap of masonite where I need to put my hand. This spreads out the weight and reduces denting.
Good luck,-John
John: Thanks for reply, big help, homasote it is.
If I'm not mistaken, Homosote is a fiberboard and is suseptible to sucking up moisture. I don't know many modelers that use Homosote, but that may have to do with my geographical location. In northern Michigan, there seems to be an abundance of foamboard (DowFoam) available for home insulation uses. Since I am modeling south Florida, I wish I would have used 1" foam instead of 2". I need to add canals to my layout, but I have to cut down to the lauan and then build back about an inch with Gator board
Larry
I used homasote over 1/2" ply on one layout and I liked it a lot. No problems with moisture, and it holds spikes really well (and they are easy to push in). I really think it's ideal for our purposes, but it can be a little hard to find.
On my latest layout, I gave up looking for homasote and I use cork roadbed on OSB. I'm pretty happy with it, too, but I would have preferred homasote. The OSB requires the use of power tools for contouring the stuff - I use a laminate trimmer and an assortment of small router bits for this. My die grinder with wood carving bits is useful, too.
Phil, I'm not a rocket scientist; they are my students.
Thats funny, because I used Homosote for years and then switched to foam. You couldn't pay me to go back!
pcarrell wrote: Zandoz wrote:The worst trait as far as I could see from the brief time I ran test oval on it years ago was sound...the luan acted as a drumhead.The foam layer counteracts that.
Zandoz wrote:The worst trait as far as I could see from the brief time I ran test oval on it years ago was sound...the luan acted as a drumhead.
The foam layer counteracts that.
No doubt...but I never got that far. I moved into an overgrown closet of an apartment, and had no room for it's intended use.
Reality...an interesting concept with no successful applications, that should always be accompanied by a "Do not try this at home" warning.
Hundreds of years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...But the world may be different because I did something so bafflingly crazy that my ruins become a tourist attraction.
"Oooh...ahhhh...that's how this all starts...but then there's running...and screaming..."