This week I put together the base piece of my project. I was, and arguably still am, having issues with some of the properties of the material I used for it: insulation foam board. Initially, I cut up my pieces and tried to use CA glue (superglue) to put them together. Unfortunately, this was the result:
Turns out that CA glue eats through insulation foam. Not only that, but it actually melts it into a glue-foam slough that gets very messy. After I got it to dry, I tried assembling it with packing tape. I got it stable, but the tape is painfully obvious:
I need tape both inside and out to get everything to stick together, so other than starting over with new materials, I cannot think of a way to do without the shiny effect with the tape. I then tried spraypainting the entire piece, as even in the darkness, the pink is not the color I want to stick with. Spraypaint also melts this stuff. At this point, I think everything melts this foam.
All of that texture effect is because the spraypaint melted the foam. One one hand, adding paint made the tape issue even worse, I need to see if minimal light can alleviate some of that. As for the visible melting, at this point I think I can say it actually turned out for the better, as it creates a more natural-looking asphalt look.
One last minor issue that I’m working through is acquiring materials. Three-way PVC connectors aren’t that common, so the Home Depot trip wasn’t a complete supply run. Thankfully I’ve found most of what I still need online.