Styrofoam Risers - My Swing At Them

After reading Michael's post about how to fabricate custom styrofoam risers, I officially abandoned my initial plan to do a traditional cookie cutter approach on top of a door by using nothing but foam to support my track.  This past weekend I took a good crack at my benchwork (which is another post...Maybe I'm clever with how I did mine, maybe not, but stay tuned for it...) and the base of my layout, and here's my trials and tribulations with building the styrofoam risers myself.

First off, go see the wonderful illustrations Michael has done on his own website.  http://www.modelrailroader.ca/whrc/benchwork/styrofoam-risers/  I basically followed what he did, with a few minor adjustments, particularly with how I cut the foam.

This entire thing of course assumes that you are using two inch thick foam sheets for this...

I started out by drawing a line an inch inside my track centerline and measured it out with a string.  It turned out my first grade needed 48" of run with a rise of 1", making my length easy, as I had a 48" wide piece of foam to cut it from.  I marked off one end, held down a nice thick level, and started cutting with a very sharp knife. This is where my problems began.  While cutting, I noticed that my cuts were not perfectly perpendicular to the surface of the foam, in part my fault for not having the steadiest of hand, and also because the blade of the knife was relatively flexible, it wanted to bend slightly as it was cutting through the foam.  My first "wedge" from the foam ended up looking a lot like a roller coaster.  I sanded it down smoother with a drywall sanding block (which sands foam very well) but still had issues with the preciseness of my cuts.  So it ended up in the trash, and I began to think of different ways.

So, about an hour later, inspiration, and a desire to attack the foam with power tools hit.

I flipped over my 48" wide piece of foam and marked the other side to begin cutting.  This time however, I decided that I would cut it with a jig saw.  But that might not work out to be too straight...Well, this is where I got a little creative, and it worked out great!

I measured my jig saw from the blade to the edge of the base.  It ended up being 1 7/16", so I again marked the foam with an offset that matched.  I took my level, which is 50" long and about 1 1/4" thick and began tacking the opposite edge to the foam with simple thumb tacks about every 3 - 4", giving me sufficient sturdiness.  This allowed me to run the edge of the saw against the level.  The blade of my jig saw (the cheapest one I could find, a Black & Decker from Target for 29 bucks w/ blade...For the money, a MUST BUY) has a blade travel of just over 2 inches, perfect for my needs.  The result?  A butter-smooth dead-straight and perfectly flat cut in all of 30 seconds.  The blade moves so fast, it leaves little to no roughness on the cut.  Seriously, it is butter smooth.

After the wedge was cut, I started marking the outside edge of my future risers, and marked them in 2 inch increments.  After that, I numbered every single one of 'em keeping the numbers to the outside as well.  You'd be surprised how similar two of them can look when they are just a pile of 2" square blocks of foam.

I then cut each one by hand, and laid them out along my curve, checking each one with a smaller level.

So that's all there was too it!  A little PL300 adhesive and the job should be done!  After switching to the jig saw, this entire process took me about 15 minutes.  If I didn't struggle with hand cutting the first time, I'd guess from measuring the curve to gluing things down wouldn't have taken more than 45 minutes, tops.

 Originally I was going to lay MDF on top of the risers (it's a relatively stiff fiberboard, but not the cheapo stuff you're thinking of) but I'm now thinking of changing direction on that.  I'm thinking about wrapping them in plaster cloth, then hitting the tops and gaps with drywall compound, which has a tortured relationship with me.  However, it's easily sanded, easy to smooth, and I've worked with it lots before.

Anyhoo, that was my productive weekend.  Eventually I'll get around to posting about my benchwork too.