Connecting foamboard baseboards

[SteveyDee68]

Asking the collective wisdom of the RMWeb...

 

Having looked at several builds on RMWeb using 5mm foamboard to construct lightweight baseboards, I am contemplating rebuilding my Woodhey Quay micro in order to have a touch more length (I was building on an offcut from an aborted initial layout build and have been restricted by the board length). Foamboard seems ideal, but how to go about joining such baseboards?

 

My plan is for a two board build, a scenic board and a fiddle yard. If I can succesfully join those together, I then plan to use foamboard for my Broadchurch layout, which will need multiple boards joining together.

 

Any advice, comments, tips and/or thoughts gratefully received.

 

I have foamboard, a hot glue gun, no more nails, a stanley knife, rule and square, and a sense of adventure...

 

HOURS OF FUN!

[Geep7]

I've not joined any pure foamcore baseboards myself, but my first exhibition layout had 3 baseboards built from 5mm foamcore. However, I then added 1"x3" softwood on the ends, and 6mm ply on the sides and then used flat-back hinges with the pin removed (and replaced with a bent nail) to join them.

 

If you are going to just join the foamcore boards, as is, you're going to need something pretty fool-proof to keep the track in alignment. I think I saw something reviewed in the latest Modeller or Hornby Magazine that you can solder the track to. To hold the boards together you could you those sprung loaded hand clamps. However, over time these are likely to squash the foamcore.

 

I would suggest, as a minimum, some softwood at the board joints, with alignment dowels (even just wooden ones) and coach bolts would be the way to go.

[Andy Hayter]

I have not used foamboard but I have used 4cm extruded foam boards (5mm sounds very thin to me but I don't know the product) which I think suffer the same issues.  The edges of any of these board types are going to be vulnerable to damage, so as suggested above I have surrounded my boards with ply - which then allows conventional fixings to be used to connect boards and hold them in place.

[SteveyDee68]

Thank you for the replies/suggestions - for some reason I wasn't notified of them, despite setting the thread to alert me to replies.

 

I was really hoping to avoid using anything other than the 5mm foamboard itself, but the advice seems to be to either add ply facings or use another stronger material at baseboard joints. Yesterday I happened to be looking at self adhesive Velcro strips and pondering whether those would be strong enough to pull boards together, but the mention of materials compressing over time/in use is a valid one to consider.

 

As Del Boy said, "He who dares wins, Rodney"

 

HOURS OF FUN!

[markw]

I have experimented using the top from a 1 litre drinks bottle, the cap will only screw down so far so prevents crushing the foamboard.

 

[Sophia NSE]

On 27/09/2020 at 14:56, markw said:

I have experimented using the top from a 1 litre drinks bottle, the cap will only screw down so far so prevents crushing the foamboard.

 

I'm using 5mm foamboard for my layout and THAT IS GENIUS!!! Ahem sorry for the shouting 

[Wheatley]

Foamboard will crush or bend unless reinforced, that's just what it does. If you only add a ply skin across the ends they will eventually pull away from the rest of the structure which is why most people using foamboard eventually end up skinning it with thin ply. The advantage over an all ply board is thst you don't need much ply, the foamboard provides the rigidity and the ply is just there to protect it. 

 

Foamboard has many useful properties which can be exploited but brute strength isn't one of them. To use old fashioned aero modelling as an analogy, most of the aircraft could be made from balsa and doped tissue, but the engine was usually bolted to some fairly meaty obechi or spruce bearers around which the rest of the structure was then designed. 

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by Wheatley