How to flatten a roll of orange track
I have a 50-foot roll of orange track that I'm going to cut down to create 2-lanes for my shelf track. Just wondering if anyone has any tips on how to unroll it and stay flat?
I'm figuring I need it mostly flat to even just cut it down to the size I need, let alone having it be flat enough for the track. Any tips or experience is appreciated.
Discussion
So far the wife's hair dryer is working pretty well...that thing gets crazy hot. Thanks for the tip. The only problem now is having the room to lay it all out and flatten in...50-foot is a lot longer in person that it sounds! Anyhoo...back flattening.
The heat gun did a good job at getting the track to a flat state out of the coil. The issue isn't it rolling up by itself, now it's just wavy/bacony when it lays flat. The hair dryer flattens this too but it just goes back to wavy after some time. I'd like to avoid having to heat the track every time I want to race.
I did some Googling to see if anyone else out there had some fancy solution but just ended up back here, ha! I was thinking there might be some sort of liquid that you can rub on it that will help keep its flatness...or something...gotta be some way.
I've never used the rolled up track, but I use a heat gun to flatten sections of old orange track...I'm sure a hair dryer would work as well.
The track might want to curl back up as it cools, so you might want to warm a section and lay something on it as it cools...a 2x4, a piece of shelf, etc. Maybe put some weight (books, etc) on it as well. Just do a section at a time and it should flatten out.
Try that and see how it works.