I started on the swamp section a few days ago. It was not a success. I wasn’t keen on pushing spikes in on the elevated section in mid air so thought I would spike and glue the balsa ties on to the rail and then put the piles in underneath.
I drilled a series of holes but met a couple of snags – one, my piles were a tad too short and two, the spikes and glue wouldn’t hold the ties as the balsa just kept parting from the glued layer and it’s not amazingly firm for the spikes. After a couple of days of annoyance I gave up and started again.
This time I put in an extra layer of wood to shorten the depth, drilled the holes again and used pins to fix the ties to the piles for extra strength. I also tried aliphatic glue so that it would seep in more and give a stronger bond.
I let the sections dry with their bottoms in the holes and glued them upright with a bit of wood across the top to ensure that they stayed level. I first tried it upside down but all the glue ran down the piles. A bit of dullcote should sort that! I put the next lot of glue on the right way round so at least gravity kept it in place!
Here’s a close up of the ties with the pins through.
I put the block on top to keep all the tops of the ties level.
The whole lot has a slight lean… let’s hope it doesn’t look too bad but obviously my drilling is slightly wonky.
