Model Railroading > Favored way to bond styrene sheets to plywood, Homasote, etc.

What is your favored way to bond styrene to a surface to make roads, streets, sidewalks and parking areas?

Rick

For a decade or more, I have been using Bron Tapes “Killer Red” double-sided tape for similar needs. It is extremely strong and very thin. I use it to bond Campbell’s corrugated siding to styrene buildings, bonding metal weights inside freight cars, etc.

I was originally buying it direct from Bron Tapes and met the minimum order through a couple of group buys. Now you can find it on eBay…search for “Bron Killer Red”. I buy the ¾” wide size. The price might seem high but a roll is over a 100 feet long…enough for a lot of projects. It is the type of product that, once you get some, you will find a lot of uses for it.


Jack Burgess

gorilla glue adhesive works great but once you bond it together you will not get it apart except with a pry bar and a lot of muscle

And then there is the old school way of doing it. Contact Cement.

I have been looking for a good way myself. I wasted a big batch using spray contact adhesive, as it was to hot and melted the plastic, not to mention it never fully bonded it.

One thing you have to be careful about - if the substrate is wood, it will expand and contract under the styrene and possibly deform it or at the very least detach it from the substrate. At the club we had some issues with that in a large auto plant model. I now use only heavy styrene as a substrate and cover it with a styrene finish sheet using liquid plastic cement. I drill a number of small holes in the cover layer to allow gluing it, in addition to brushing on a layer of liquid cement to the thicker substrate. You get only one shot to attach it....so I put 6 brass guideposts around the edges to make sure the cover layer goes on straight before the liquid cement evaporates and then go back and use Squadron putty to fill in the small holes used for added gluing. You need excellent (and explosion-proof) ventilation and wear a respirator but so far so good...I bought the explosion-proof fan from a marine fan supplier.

Bob