Ground cover and spraying glue

Generally if your using Elmers glue. 50/50 works for ballasting. But your applying it through a mustard bottle or a turkey baster. I’d go probably 70 water to 30 glue for spraying. The variable will be your sprayer. Not every nozzle is the same. You want to basically mist it on. The Woodland Scenics sprayer works well and they sell pre mixed Matt Medium bottles. Just make sure you pre wet the area your spraying.

Are you just going with the look of the crushed walnuts as your final ground cover ? Or are you planning to add additional grasses, soil and turf over it. I’m not familiar with the walnuts. I know they use it in media blasting. I’m guessing it’s the texture of fine ballast.

I’d go with the straight white glue applied with a liberal coat. Sprinkle on your ground cover. Then give it a mist of water with a bit of dish soap. You don’t want to soak it. Just get it damp. Come back in a day and you may be good to go and not need to spray.

@Dave_C posted:

Generally if your using Elmers glue. 50/50 works for ballasting. But your applying it through a mustard bottle or a turkey baster. I’d go probably 70 water to 30 glue for spraying. The variable will be your sprayer. Not every nozzle is the same. You want to basically mist it on. The Woodland Scenics sprayer works well and they sell pre mixed Matt Medium bottles. Just make sure you pre wet the area your spraying.

Are you just going with the look of the crushed walnuts as your final ground cover ? Or are you planning to add additional grasses, soil and turf over it. I’m not familiar with the walnuts. I know they use it in media blasting. I’m guessing it’s the texture of fine ballast.

I’d go with the straight white glue applied with a liberal coat. Sprinkle on your ground cover. Then give it a mist of water with a bit of dish soap. You don’t want to soak it. Just get it damp. Come back in a day and you may be good to go and not need to spray.

Hi

This is the first time i am attempting this, so i have a question what does the mist of water with the dish soap do ?

The mist of straight water with a drop of dish soap just allows the glue to flow easier rather than sit on the surface. It also keeps what is still loose in place. In your case with the spray. It may not be needed. As the dilution rate for spraying will have a lot more water than glue. It’s more needed when applying a 50/50 mix by dribbling it on.
What your applying with the shells I’m guessing has the consistency of fine HO ballast. You should be able to get plenty of info on You Tube to see how it’s done. Everyone has their favorite glue and way to do it. Lots of ways. Just find the one that works for you. Start off with just a small area till you get the result your looking for.

I never saw a need to spray glue mixture and deal with clogged sprayers.

Do what Dave C said. The misting with water draws the glue up through the ground cover on top to secure everything.

Follow his advice and make that initial coating of undiluted glue good and thick. Then give the whole thing plenty of time to dry after the final water misting.

Jim

For ground cover I bought 1-gallon bottles of Elmers glue. I poured it on liberally and spread it with a paint brush. I then poured the ground cover on top if the glue seeps through I add more ground cover. After 24 hours of dry time, I take a dry paint brush and gently sweep up the excess for future use. I then use a shop vac holding it an inch or so above and vacuum up what dry brushing left. I'm hope you'll get a lot of opinions on this as it's a good topic.

From experience, the absolute BEST WAY to glue any kind of ground cover and/or ballast is to:

1) Spread a thin layout of dried, cheap sand-box sand. Doing this will save on your expensive scenic material.

2) spread the scenery material down on top of the sand, exactly as you want it to look.

3) Moisten areas with cheap 70% alcohol.

4) Carefully add diluted Matt-Medium to the consistency of whole milk (or white glue), using pipettes. The diluted glue will follow everywhere the alcohol was put down.

5) Within about 24 hours, everything will be set/glued, with no actual signs of the glue.

I've found these hair-dressing style plastic bottles to be useful when applying diluted glue/soap for ballast and/or ground cover. They can be found relatively cheaply on the big A or other 'net sources.

For applying fine turf, I've found that painting the area with an earth brown latex paint and then sprinkling with the fine turf while the paint is still wet, to be effective. After the paint dries, spray the area with a cheap hairspray to hold any loose particles in place. Hairspray can also be used to hold light ground cover in place.