The Little World

And there is no racial overtone to that headline – the glue is white and that’s all. You can use it no matter what colour you are.

And you can use it for damn near anything. I am still discovering modelling tasks to which it can be  the perfect answer – even things that I would never have expected:

a. Use it to attach canopies to model airplanes. As it dries to a clear finish, any inadvertent over-glue tends to disappear. Also good for adding windows to buildings for the same reason.

b. Use it to attach wooden parts. Don’t expect to be able to fly a balsa wood aircraft after gluing with white PVA glue, as it will be too heavy. Also don’t expect to be able to float a model boat in the local pond when it is put together with this glue. The boat will unglue and sink. I have confirmed both of these facts by the most practical means.

However, gluing up a shelf model will not subject the adhesive to stress – and it may well be the best and toughest stuff for the job.

c. Use it to attach card and paper parts to wooden frames – or to each other. Fibrous materials like this are what PVA is best for. You’ll get a little slipping time to position things and then a reasonably short curing time under pressure. Just don’t slop the glue layer on too thickly.

d. Use it to attach leather parts and fabric to substrates. If you’re not sloppy, it can be nearly perfect.

e. Use it to reinforce plastic joints made with other glues and cements. This may sound silly, as one assumes that the proper plastic cement will make the joint strong enough…but the designers of some kits like to make scale parts that are not going to be able to hold together with a scale-sized cement joint. Even cyanoacrylates may not be enough for the job. You will sacrifice some scale accuracy if you apply a blob of PVA to a tiny joint, but it will have enough support and a bit of flexibility to last under handling. This is particularly the case with small-scale landing gear.

f. Use it to seal an otherwise unbridgeable gap before you apply sanding putty.

g. Use the special forms of PVA to fill clear windows in small models. Micro Kristal Klear is the stuff you want.

h. Use it to mask model windows for painting.

i. Use it to stick your fingers together.

j. Use it thinned down to act as a surface binder for model ballast or ground surfaces.

k. Use it mixed with builder’s sand as a modelling material – like plasticine that sets.

l. Use it as a toughening agent for water-based acrylic paints.

m. Use it as a wire stabilising agent when running cable bundles.

Pretty much wherever you have a need for a reasonably powerful glue that will adapt itself to most materials and then go clear, you can use PVA. I’ve even had success clapping odd materials to ABS and styrene parts as long as there is enough surface area to hold. If you need to remove something in this case, it can be carefully peeled apart, but if you let it sit undisturbed, it will stick.

It gets a go with bookbinding, leather craft, and the odd clothing repair when I cannot figure out any other means to a temporary end.

The brand I recommend is the Canadian Weldbond – available at Bunnings – for most PVA tasks. Thin it with water if need be but you’ll not need to let it evaporate to thicken it up – it is plenty thick for most purposes. The squeezy bottle is also well suited to making glue reinforcement fillets after you have gotten the main parts set – the shape has been cut down to fit in a 90º angle space.