# Background



## Ekans (Jul 4, 2014)

I was thinking about making a background for one of my enclosures, a 120cm long glass tank. At the moment it houses my water dragon. I have a question though, I don't want to apply the background directly to the glass so I will be making one that I can put in and take out. Has anyone worked with corflute as a backing? Can expanda-foam be applied directly to corflute? Or will the chemical reaction melt the plastic? Or will it not adhere? The reason I'm thinking about using corflute is I have tons of the stuff laying around. I looked up some of the MSD sheets for popular brands of expanding foam and didn't see anywhere that recommended not using with plastic. If nobody knows I'll test it and probably post it up for anyone else who may have the same question.


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## CrazyNut (Jul 4, 2014)

Just cover a pice of cardboard with silicone and expanding foam over that... That will make your removable background of course you have to shape and paint the foam etc but you would already know that


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## Jacknife (Jul 4, 2014)

expandafoam wont adhere to corflute well in the long run as it has a very smooth, waxy, high gloss surface. Thick cardboard is your best go.


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## MrVic (Jul 7, 2014)

Go to your nearest large hardware store and grab a thin sheet of ply or any other natural material. Stronger than cardboard and easy to cut to size. I wouldn't use MDF though, the cocktail of chemicals that go into making it is rather nasty. 

Not that a silicone covered piece of cardboard won't do the trick. 
It all comes down to how valuable your time is


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## Cypher69 (Jul 11, 2014)

Jacknife said:


> expandafoam wont adhere to corflute well in the long run as it has a very smooth, waxy, high gloss surface. Thick cardboard is your best go.



Maybe drill holes into the corflute so the expanda foam will wedge into the holes & dry "attached" to it.


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## Ekans (Jul 11, 2014)

That is what I was thinking Cypher, I was going to cut strips out of each 'run', enough to make a gap but leave a lip for the foam to expand around

As for the slippery surface, I was planning on sanding the surface roughly


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## Native_EWD (Jul 11, 2014)

How much water is in the tank? Is it in a container? Just wondering if the cardboard would be able to get wet or moisture build up. 
Sheet of Perspex? My diy background has styrofoam as a backing then the expanda foam applied on the face, Corflute is rubbish IMO


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## Ninabuddha (Jul 13, 2014)

Native_EWD said:


> How much water is in the tank? Is it in a container? Just wondering if the cardboard would be able to get wet or moisture build up.
> Sheet of Perspex? My diy background has styrofoam as a backing then the expanda foam applied on the face, Corflute is rubbish IMO




im new to the DIY part of reptile keeping. i was curious how does the expanding foam hold the styrofoam to the perspex? or do yu glue it down?


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## Native_EWD (Jul 14, 2014)

Guess it depends how coarse the surface of the styrofoam is, the rougher the face the better it will stick. I ran out of other glues and only had wood glue, from memory, which ate into the styrofoam pretty bad. But in saying that it kept it all together to this day, Wouldn't recommend using it though lol. Ive also heard of people who have pushed in nails, toothpicks and kebab skewers to hold the expanda foam to the other foam, with the help of glue off coarse. 

Maybe someone can give you more advice on which glues would be best?


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## Jacknife (Jul 14, 2014)

Any solvent based glue will react with and dissolve styrofoam.

... You can actually make a form of napalm if you get the ratios right though...


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## bdav70 (Jul 18, 2014)

Yeah be careful with craft glue- it melts right through the foam! I had reasonable success making mine out of styrofoam sheet as a base (pretty cheap from Clarke rubber) and then gluing chunks in the shape of rocks using tough as nails. From there it's the usual painting on tile grout, an acrylic water based top coat for colour with few sprinkles of sand to get rid of that high gloss look. Came up pretty well! 


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## MrVic (Jul 19, 2014)

Cypher69 said:


> Maybe drill holes into the corflute so the expanda foam will wedge into the holes & dry "attached" to it.



In that case use pegboard instead. It is covered in holes for the expand-a-foam to bite into and hold.


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## J-A-X (Jul 23, 2014)

water based liquid nails will stick polystyrene foam to almost anything, including itself.


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## divinescales (Aug 14, 2014)

I use Loctite power grab. Its safe for use in water or reptile enclosure. Does'nt dissolve foam. Yes you can use it to glue foam to coreflute and use toothpicks aswell to strengthen and hold into place while adhesive or expandafoam sets.


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