Thursday, January 19, 2012

Next stop the bonfire

Last chance fixOn Monday, things weren't looking good for my little Isle of Man test track. The boards had warped and I'd dunked them in the bath to try and fix this.

After 36 hours drying, I checked the board on a flat surface. Resut: still warped. Maybe things had improved slightly but not enough to be any use.

So, as a last attempt at fixing the problem, a length of softwood was cut to length and glued in diagonally between the corners. Plenty of weight to make the board flat again and lashings of Resin W wood glue to fix the wood were my last hope. The whole lot was left overnight.

Result: Still warped.

Would you like to guess who has been down the wood shop again ?

3 comments:

Michael Campbell said...

For such a small board, it might be worth trying foamcore board? It is probably more stable.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanllan/ said...

Phil,

May I suggest that before turning your new pile of wood into a set of baseboards you exercise a bit of patience. All that timber is going to be chock full of moisture .... It will be quite a while before it drys out and during that time it will shrink a bit.

Ideally you need to store all the materials in the same location that they will live when converted into basebaords.

Regards,

Tanllan

Phil Parker said...

Foamboard is an idea that I'd like to try but I think it needs more bracing than a tiny, box-based layout has space for. I also wondered about blue insulation foam and decided against it for the same reason.

The odd thing is I have bought lots of ply from the same supplier and never had a bit warp like this. Maybe I was just unlucky. We'll find out.