Meat Tray Miracles (#1)
- a JSGeare Tutorial
Meat tray foam -a gift to modelers! Can be precisely cut, is easy to glue up, takes paint, can be sanded, can be embossed! Has actual structural strength.

Where do you get it? Look in your trash and your refrigerator. That's right. I'm talking about those foam trays that hold your burger, chops and chicken at the supermarket. They're yellow, black, white and green and maybe some other colors. Your grocer will probably GIVE you a stack for nothing; mine does. And if you need really THIN foam, then buy a stack of foam picnic plates for the measly 75 cents they cost.

In this article, I'm going to show you some of the things you can do with meat tray foam, and give you a few pointers. You'll catch on and be modeling with foam in the blink of an eye.

Need to model stone? How about THIS:

There you go! A cut limestone wall, made of meat foam. (Pay no attention to my paint smears along the bottom). How was it done?
  • First, I scored the mortar lines with the tip of a round toothpick. You use whatever you like -a ball point pen, small screw driver blade -you get the idea.
  • Then I came back with a sharp hobby knife blade and dragged out some material here and there to indicate missing chunks of mortar and other signs of decay.
  • Then, I wacked the surface with the end of a screw driver handle to create some texture, and punched it here and there with my thumb nail.
  • Next, I cut the wall out of the host piece of foam. Doing this LAST made it easier to work with the material as described above. Use a really sharp, new razor blade so you don't tear the foam. Just line it up along a ruler and pull it through the foam. Badda-bing!
  • Then I painted the wall with cheap grey acrylic (Walmart) and gave it 15 minutes to dry.
  • Then I painted on white acrylic, being careful to work it into the mortar joints.
  • Next, wipe it away, leaving the white grout lines behind as well as some accumulation in the natural nooks and crannies of the stone.

Install it with CA glue -done! Total time? Maybe 20 minutes. Don't worry about how you handle the foam. Handle it, handle it! Rough it up!

Was that easy, or what?  Made a mistake, don't like it? So what, it came from your trash for the luv 'o Mike! Do it again. OK, here's another wall:
 

This one mimics an old wall made of hollow cell, terra-cotta tiles. Exact same technique as above, just different paint. On top are concrete slabs cut out of foam and glued in place. Doesn't show in the pic, but there are control joints evenly spaced along the top. You gotta a problem with this? I didn't think so.

But now, let's suppose you want to get REALLY fussy about masonry. "Fussy" is my middle name. Here is a tunnel portal:
 

In this case, every "stone" is individually made and placed. How?
  • I cut a nice, flat section out of a picnic foam plate.
  • Then I made a template on my computer to give me evenly spaced cut lines, being the horizontal mortar joints between the stones.
  • Glued that over the foam with rubber cement, then glued the foam to a scrap piece of cardboard.
  • Lined up a ruler on my template lines, and cut strips with a razor blade. The strips, however, stayed glued to the cardboard scrap.
  • Are you paying attention? Good.
  • Then I turned the ruler to the vertical, and cut the strips into sections. Some wide, some not so wide. Everything still glued to the cardboard with rubber cement.
  • Peel away what remains of the paper template from your cut stones, and peel the stones from the cardboard scrap; push 'em off to the side.
  • Now cut a section of regular meat tray foam to make the portal opening. Then cut away the sides and top to leave a naked tunnel portal. A template glued on the foam helps.
  • Brush slightly diluted white glue on the naked portal, and press your strip sections onto the glued portion. Don't brush glue on the whole thing, just an inch at a time, and work from bottom UP. Put a row of sections on the left side, then the right. Make them line up with a ruler.
  • Allow a wee bit of each section to extend over the outside edges and into the portal opening -you'll trim that away later.
  • When you get to the start of the portal arch, glue on your stones (cut from regular thickness foam) as shown above.
  • Then work your way up with the strips, row on row, to the top.
  • Cut out your top stones and glue them in place (still using white glue).
  • Now trim away the ends of the sections that extend beyond the sides and into the opening of the portal. Do it gently, and finish with a few passes of fine sandpaper.
  • Then draw your hobby knife blade along the inner sides of the portal, to match cut lines with the spaces between your rows of stone. Same on outside, if you want some exposure of the edge.
  • Paint it up - done!

Yes, this process IS tedious, BUT it goes faster in the doing of it than in the writing about it. Total time? Maybe 45 minutes. And it's ready to go!

What is MOST helpful is taking the time to draw out your cut lines on paper to guide your work. On a computer drawing program, this goes quickly.

OK, here's another portal:
 


Same deal as above. Now here is a concrete, cast tunnel face:

This was done by cutting the raised panel outlines from the thin, picnic plate foam and gluing them on a piece of thick foam. Yeah, its rough, I know.

Friends, ALL of the above were done by instinct when I had the thought about how to do it. ALL could be improved with a little more care, a little more time. And no doubt, you will apply such extra care and time.  What I'm trying to show you is that you need to have a new relationship with your kitchen trash. You can go BUY the equivalent product, or reach into the trash. The foam doesn't know.

I've given you real close close-ups so you can see the good, the bad and the ugly. But trust me when I tell you that most people who walk into the train room look at the above work and say, "How'd you DO that?!"

I promise you that if you spend just a couple of hours fiddling around with this stuff, you, too, will be a believer.

For information on modeling roads "on the cheap," follow this link to Meat Tray and Juice Carton Roads.

Or maybe you'd like some ideas on scratch building structures? Try this Juice Carton Board link.

Go to my Home Page.
 
J. Scott Geare (known as "JSGeare" to his customers) is an HO Scale rail modeler who returned to the hobby in his retirement, some 5 decades after he put his layout away when he was a teenager. "It is a dream I have maintained over the years," Geare says, "to once again take up the hobby and THIS time, to do it right." The jury's out on the question of him getting it "right," but few argue that he has some ideas about how to go about it. And one of these ideas is that the hobby should be as accessible and as affordable as possible to all who wish to try it; kids, beginner adults; men, women - everyone.

Selling is one thing, GIVING is another. Geare insists that the "know how" of modeling should be given away, one modeler to another, whenever possible. Consequently, he has written extensively about the hobby in an attempt to make it comprehensible and useful to modelers of any experience level. He is also a frequent contributor to rail modeling groups.  Geare says, "if I think I know how to do something, I'm going to GIVE it to you, not SELL it to you." Many of his customers often refer to his 'splainit web page, which you may see here. (This window will stay open while you review it).
 

Click to see JSGeare's for sale inventory. Cheap.