My first attempt at attaching the rail to my ties and tie plates the first time didn’t exactly go swimmingly, the tie plates seemed to go on pretty well but the rail not so much.
I had some free time this evening after the kids went to bed so I gave it another shot. I found the LED lights for my photo box worked well for iluminating the surface. This time I tried gluing along the rail and then placing it on the ties. That seemed to work at first but it ended up not really bonding to either. Then I tried doing just a couple ties at a time, and putting the glue directly on the tie plate and using one of the really strong magnets to hold them in place. Hopefully letting them sit like this to cure. If this doesn’t work I’ll probably have to figure out a different glue to use.
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It sounds like a cleanliness issue. Might it be your prepainting of the tie plates is coming back to haunt you?
That could be. I could have sworn somewhere on the Proto87 stores website I saw a recommendation to paint them first. The glue was just behaving weirdly though. I should have taken a picture of this but the line of glue I ran along the bottom of the rail came off in long chunks and was sticking to the tie plates slightly better than the rail (which wasn’t painted on the bottom) so there were bunches of ties still attached by strings of glue.
While putting things away last night I did check ties that had been left with the strong magnets holding things tight and they were definitely a lot firmer grip which might suggest that by doing a bunch at a time I wasn’t getting a good contact for the glue possibly compounded by not having perfectly aligned tie plates which was preventing a good flat fit… or at least that’s what I’m hoping. I’ll be honest last night I was a quite frustrated and considering throwing in the towel but having slept on it softened my stance for now and will try to give it another go 🙂
I’ve been there many times. When you get through it, you’ll be glad you persevered, even if you decide not to use the method in the long run.
Try cleaning the rail too. There could be some oily residue from the manufacturing process.