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Hey guys,

Spent the weekend making a massive load of ruins out of foamboard. Now is this stuff safe to spray or will spray paint mess up the foam? Any tips on how to paint this stuff quickly?

Cheers in advance

The spray paint will attack exposed foam, usually it isnt too bad on foam core though, but you will want to test on some scraps to see if it is within your tolerances.

You can get foam safe aerosols, I usually use one of my small spray guns or external mixed airbrushes now, though you can paint them up fast with a regular paint brush (by regular, I mean like a 2" brush used for painting house trim). A quart or two of interior paint will cover a lot of terrain.

I use WATER BASED Krylon primer. Then I drybrush after.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/565459.page

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
The spray paint will attack exposed foam, usually it isnt too bad on foam core though, but you will want to test on some scraps to see if it is within your tolerances.

This generally.
I just sprayed a bunch of foamboard based terrain, it came out great. It can shrink the exposed foam on the edges, so if you want you can base there by hand before spraying.

I build whatever it is that I want to do, then, since I am making terrain with it usually, I cover the whole piece in watered down PVA glue and sand or waht have you. The PVA seals it pretty well and then I can spray without any issues.

For ruins the potential for melt or shrink is a negligible risk to the finished project. However if you elect to do something with it like building vehicles or structures (all the scratchbuilt aircraft in my gallery use it for wings) then you'll probably wanna do like I did & glue strips of card or paper over the edges.

lots of interesting tips and techniques here for working with foam-board. Such as keeping those exposed edges to a minimum. How, and when, to cover if necessary. I hope you find it useful.

I had some serious warping issues with putting basic paint on foam board. Used it as the base for two forests, and they are furiously warped, enough to make them spin if gently bumped. It may have been the paint, Elmer's glue, or the scenic cement I used, don't know which

Dessorag wrote:
I had some serious warping issues with putting basic paint on foam board. Used it as the base for two forests, and they are furiously warped, enough to make them spin if gently bumped. It may have been the paint, Elmer's glue, or the scenic cement I used, don't know which

I'm guessing that, a lot of cement type glues will simply destroy anything foam related, even through the paper coating. For what it's worth, this project I just finished had me spray foam board twice without detriment.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/588840.page#6754083