#hobbytiptuesday - Priming Foam

 I tend to use a decent amount of foam in my basing, either to build up areas before I add texture, or EPS insulation for large scenery pieces - or in this case, using extra hard foam cuttings for making to-scale wood planks.

 In ay case, using any sort of aerosol or plastic cement will melt foam (I believe it's the xylene/toluene thinners in rattle can sprays that does that). This limits your options when priming foam and likewise limits your options when gluing plastic figures. As a planned workaround for future gluing, I inset cut sheet styrene pieces and built the rest of the base scenery around them - one problem solved!

 But what about priming? An easy fix is to either seal the foam prior to any rattle-can spraying with watered-down wood glue (in the case of larger pieces of scenery), to just directly paint it (craft paints plus large foam scenery are a cheap alternative), in this example: to use a brush-on primer on the foam areas to seal those prior to using my regular rattle-can primer on the rest of the base. Problem #2 solved!

#hobbytiptuesday - Fun with Plastic Glue!

 I'm not sure how many people have ever played around with plastic weld glue or pure acetone, but both can be used to smooth rough features on plastic models or even remove mold lines... if you are very careful! I generally use Testor's Model Master Liquid Cement for Plastic Models when gluing plastic figures together as it has a nice thin metal applicator tube that doesn't clog and comes in a slightly thicker viscosity. After the fact, or if it's parts I can hold together, I generally use Tenax 7R plastic welder (possibly discontinued, I've had it a while) or Ambroid ProWeld (still available in a goodly-sized bottle) for the same thing.

 Now for the tricky stuff - using a fine tip nylon/synthetic/Taklon brush (as this will eat natural hair brushes alive), you can actually apply either of the thin viscosity plastic weld glues directly by gentle brushing and they will smooth out modeling imperfections like file marks, mold lines, and the like. You need to be very careful with the amount of liquid and how much pressure you apply, as this literally melts the plastic of your model, but trial and error are your friend. Acetone also works, but evaporates much quicker and is even more runny. What to do when your nylon brush gets clogged with plastic? Give it a quick dip in acetone and clean it - caked-in plastic gone!

 Hopefully goes without saying that anything that welds plastic is toxic and has fumes you shouldn't be inhaling...