I'm not surprised, myself. It is in fact quite water resistant. It takes quite some soaking, with the addition of a surfactant (detergent) to soak into the stuff. And no, it doesn't just turn to mush. I believe the history behind Homasote includes that the inventor at one point was using the material in some city in Ohio for sewer pipe. It was made in the pipe shape, not the flat 4 x 8 sheets, and I think was treated with tar or something. It really worked quite well....for a while. Then somebody invented plastic sewer pipe.
Darrell S --- In [email protected], "t.hawley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It was Dale Baker who told me that Homasote could be bent to desired curvature by soaking it in water over-night. He said he had done it, and I believed him. I had never tried it myself, but I passed the idea on the this bunch of unbelievers. > > I think we are sometimes our own worst enemies. Without trying something, building a kit for instance, many people just know they can't do it. > > Doubter #1 said > If you do this, the Homasote will turn to putty. You will have lost dimensional stability and you'll have nothing but a mess to clean up. ...Presuming you can actually get the stuff onto your layout without it falling apart as you lift it out of the bucket... > > Doubter #2 said > I never tried this either but I suspect that if you soaked homasote in water overnight you would have mush in the morning. - Hard to lay track on mush - > > So I soaked a section of the stuff overnight, and this morning I took it out in the back yard, tacked it down to a pallet, and photographed it. It is not mush. I could not bend it to as sharp a curvature as AF track, though I didn't try real hard. > > You can see the photograph in this Yahoo group's PHOTOS section, probably photo 79 of 79. There is some AF track in the picture, just for degree of curvature comparison. > > I don't claim this is the ideal way to do it. It remains to be seen how long it will take to dry. But it's an option. > > Tom Hawley -- Lansing Michigan > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] To REPLY to the list, use REPLY ALL; to reply to the sender, use REPLY. For those of you on DIGEST mode, all REPLY messages go to the list (remember to edit the SUBJECT of your message). Change message settings, use our CALENDAR or LINKS, view shared files or photos, view the list archives, GO TO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
