The Little World

Call it what you like – the mixture of styrene chips and solvent is becoming the universal tool for my modelling.

Not every kit fits well. Some barely meet where they touch. You can discover sinkholes, cracks, gaps and yawning gulfs. This is where the sprue goo comes in. The joy of it is it stays in and can be worked with.

The idea hit me first when seeing a segment of Phil Flory’s YouTube channel. He cut up fragments of Plastruct or Evergreen sheeting and dissolved them in Tamiya thin cement. brushed or wiped into plastic defects, it set hard overnight and could then be cut and sanded. The consistency was the same as the surrounding model – no hard ridges of cyanoacrylate or soft trenches of water putty.

My own take on it used sheets of scrap plastic bought from a bargain bin plus acrylic lacquer thinner from Supercheap Auto, Small empty Tamiya or Gunze bottles were filled with the chips and the thinner poured in. Eventually it melted and I was able to create thick and thin versions – they get used for different-sized gaps.

The clever thing is the sheet plastic was pink – and so is the sprue goo. it is so different from any of the kit plastic colours that you can clearly see where it is and what the contour will end up like.

The best thing is the price, which is pennies.