A word about spackle

I've mentioned my use of spackle as a ground covering and said that I've always used it right from my earliest layouts. But I don't think I've ever said how I use it.

I use a lightweight spackle. (For the Brits reading this It's kind of like polyfilla except pre-mixed.) I spread it out onto my ground surface much as I would when I'm icing our Christmas cake. It doesn't really matter how roughly you do it. Because lets face it unless your modelling a cricket wicket or something else thats dead flat you can have tiny little bumps and undulations in there. That perhaps later you can fill with puddles of water.

So there you are you have a baseboard that looks like a rough iced Christmas cake. Then you leave it for a while for the spackle to start setting. Mine is a quick setting spackle. So I've just about got time to write this post. Then I go and smooth it out by tapping down on it with my finger... back in a minute then

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Right that's that done.

You have to wait for the spackle to start to set because otherwise it sticks to your finger and when even the tiniest bit sticks to your finger then it will pull more off the baseboard. Which is not what we're trying to do here. We're trying to smooth out what we have already done. Just tapping a small area down with your finger is really quite effective.

As I've been burying a couple of sidings in the spackle I've been taking great care to clean the rails off and running a wagon along the sidings to make sure everything still runs perfectly. Which it still seems to do.

Next task I think is a trip down to the hobby shop and get some more materials to clad the wall with. That will take a couple of hours. Plenty of time for the spackle to dry and then on my return I can paint it.