Foamex for beekeeping ?

[little john]

Just thought I'd give you the head's up on a material I've not encountered before.

For silly money I bought a dozen 'planks' of a material which looked a little like uPVC at a boot (bring and buy) sale yesterday, which pretty obviously had formed some kind of display stand.




Thanks to Google I managed to track down the manufacturer, who had made these display stands for Homebase (one of our High Street 'sheds'), and discovered that this material is called 'Foamex'.




Turns out that Foamex is not as robust as the uPVC equivalent, but is a very common display and signage material. The reason I'm posting about this is that although Foamex isn't exactly cheap when purchased new, once a display stand has exhausted it's useful life, it's value becomes zero - even less than zero perhaps, as it then becomes a disposal problem. So - it might be worth putting your name down with large store managers as someone who will remove any unwanted display stands.

The planks I have are 10mm thick and will be used for tops and bottoms of Nuc boxes instead of the more usual plywood - which as we know has a tendency to warp.

LJ

[little john]

Apparently in the U.S., this stuff is made and sold under various names, including:

Sintra, Komatex and Celtec - so it seems you have a much better range of expanded PVC than we have - might even be much cheaper to buy new ?   Gatorfoam is different, but might be worth looking into.

LJ

[Michael Bush]

Most of our signs are on coroplast rather than the foam stuff.  I have seen the foam material used for signs in the past, but not recently.  The foam probably is better insulation.  The coroplast works fine as long as insulation isn't an issue.  There will be tons of the coroplast available in the middle of November here... right after elections.

[little john]

I've been playing with this stuff a bit more today - it glues very readily with either superglue or plumbers pvc solvent cement:




So - could be used to make feeders - and anywhere you might want to use plywood, but without the problems of leakage.  Also, to make mini-nucs with etc.
LJ