@Mark Boyce posted:John, It sounds like you got a bade case of it, but are slowly getting better. I'm sorry.
You have an excellent question. I have seen where some folks have been so exact in their cookie cutter process that plywood/Homasote/cork/track all form perfect curves. Mine certainly never turns out that way, though I have a lot of trouble controlling the saber saw to begin with. I did a lo of it with a hand keyhole saw, but my layout is a lot smaller than yours. I tried to make my cookie cutter plywood extra wide to take into account 'slop', that is where the upper layers don't line up. Also I thought I would have something to attach scenery to. I then laid out the track again to mark how I wanted to cut the Homasote. Hopefully there wouldn't be as much slop. That didn't always work out as hoped. After Jeff @ScoutingDad showed where He made trapezoids of plywood to fit to make the curves, I tried that. It turned out not bad for me. All said, I think I was in the same quandary as you.
If I do another layout, I'm not going to use both Homasote and cork, much like Bruce wrote. In fact, I ran out of cork on this layout, and just went with the Homasote until I used it up too. I'm not going to mess with grades either. I'll just work on one level.
Hi Mark,
I am getting better, and glad for all help my wonderful has been through this ordeal.
Sounds like Bruce, Bob and yourself are all in agreement with using cork on elevations. I question my ability to use the saber saw for cookie cutter curves. Haven't used saber saw in a while, lately its been jig saw. I will heed the having something to adhere scenery to, as this is where I am totally in the dark. Making scenery , walls, hills, cliffs, distance from track, distance from curves. I will have to keep my passenger cars and largest loco out to check for clearences. I do have the NMRA clearance plate which I will use for the tunnel.
Again thanks for the directional advice. Now to get on the right track and continue the build. Next quest will be to roughly outine/imagine area's for painting backdrops. I might attempt my own, if it doesn't work out well then I can always redo with another plan.
Thanks
John
