Australia / English
17 February 2025
Gluing, Sealing and Painting
- by ScaleMonkey
Which techniques and products can be used to achieve a perfect result in model building? We at ScaleMonkey constantly find that more and more questions are arising here. The global market and new media such as social networks, forums, and model-building events introduce new and even better products every day.
In the best-case scenario, articles are promoted that are ideal for their intended use, but not for everything. One should weigh up carefully whether a product is truly needed. Unfortunately, there are also dubious characters and a lot of charlatans who re-label inferior products and circulate them as high-end. Most of the time, you later doubt your own skills because you supposedly used a “super” product.
We would like to emphasise in advance that our recommendation is aimed at the construction of models in the timber construction style—that is, authentic model building.
Gluing and Bonding
Particularly regarding the gluing or bonding of wooden parts for ships or aircraft, one often hears hair-raising stories, yet there is only one correct answer: wood glue (PVA glue). Anything else is just a waste of money and has no place in proper models.
Here, you should trust leading manufacturers and preferably use a waterproof white glue, such as Bindan D3 Propeller Glue or Ponal Express.
A small tip: stock up on your glue before winter. Delivery of these glues is no longer possible at temperatures below 0° Celsius, as they could otherwise be damaged.
These glues have the advantage that they can be easily diluted with water for certain applications, allowing for better dosing. Excess glue can be easily removed with water as long as it has not dried.
Unfortunately, white glue takes about 12 hours to cure, and sometimes you have tricky areas to bond that cannot be permanently held or fixed in place. In such cases, we use superglue to fix the parts with small dots first, and then fill the bonding surfaces with diluted white glue.
Medical-grade syringes with 1.2 mm needles are excellent for this purpose.
For hulls, especially in ship modelling, which are built using bulkhead construction, high stability is desired. Due to the many curved surfaces, the bonding areas are often not optimal. In such cases, it is recommended to subsequently coat the entire hull with thick resin. This fills any cavities and thus bonds the entire hull into a single unit.
For this, we use a 40-minute resin, which can be thickened with a thixotropic agent as required.
If additional stability is required in certain areas, it is possible to fill these in advance with resin thickened with cotton flocks. This is particularly helpful in the bow area or for motor mounts.
Sealing and Priming
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