scenic cement for ballasting

[bluedepot]

hi

what method do you use to ballast track with scenic cement?

do you need to apply some first directly to the board then sprinkle on the ballast, arrange it, then use a dropper to apply the cement on the top?

do you need to spray the ballast with water / washing up liquid or alcohol first?


cheers


tim

[rg1]

The way I did mine was to sprinkle the ballast onto the track and then use a brush to make sure that it is evenly spread and not above the sleepers.

Mix equal parts of pva glue and water in a bowl with a drop or two of washing up liquid. This will help the glue/water mix to penetrate through the ballast.

Apply the mix with a syringe or something similar but before doing this, use a squeegee bottle filled with water to dampen the ballast first.

Hope this helps.

[bluedepot]

hi rg,

cheers for the reply.

ok so i take it that i just do the same as you but use the scenic cement rather than pva/water/washing up liquid combination...

i was going to use the 'classic' pva method... but i saw the scenic cement and so got that instead...

i'll try it on a spare track / wood and see what happens...

cheers

tim

[Chinahand]

Equal parts of PVA & water is much stronger than needed and will set rock hard like concrete which will make the track quite noisy.

I use a mix of 1 part Copydex to 3 parts water & 1 part methylated spirits. I also spray the ballast with water/meths in equal parts before applying the glue mix. In both cases the meths acts in a similar way to the washing-up liquid in that it reduces surface tension which helps the glue/water/meths mix to permeate the ballast but it also speeds up the drying time. I use Copydex instead of PVA because it is latex based so does not dry hard.