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I have seen this happen on many peoples armies and was just wandering what might be the cause?
I have not ever encountered this on my own mini's however (maybe because I use superglue to glue on the sand the majority of the time, appart from armies)...
So what are people doing for the sand to come off the base in strips?
Thanks,
Tom

It's where people coat the vase in PVA glue and dunk it in sand and don't seal it properly. You should paint a watered down mix of PVA glue after the sand has dried to help seal it together.

What filbert said really. I have started to do this constantly after having this issue. Also spraying your bases with primer after the watered down pva is dry will help seal the sand in, haven't had any bases peal on me yet after doing this.

Use superglue and never look back. You need a meltabomb to get it to come off.

Hehe, ok cool! I always seal with pva after anyway (when on the odd occation using pva)... Just because I thought it made sense to do so. This has solved the mystery however, now I can spread the knowledge to those with pealing bases!

Peeling PVA is natures way of telling you to strip old bases and update them with much cooler looking bases

Also, tell them to seal the base with some varnish too - that should help stop them peeling.

SilverMK2 wrote:Peeling PVA is natures way of telling you to strip old bases and update them with much cooler looking bases

HAHAHA! Maybe!

I need to get me some sand...

I have rarely had strips come up- usually it is the whole base. In this case, just slap some CA glue on the bottom and glue it back down.

I have had large areas of the PVA come up on my 11-12 year old Space Wolves... the sand was not primed, but painted over.

I always dip my sand covered bases in some Scene Cement, it works great, its really just extremly watered down PVA glue.

I use my standard mixture of thinned pva (pva/water) and add a drop of dishwashing liquid (or other surfactant).

It lowers the surface tension allowing the slurry to properly coat and lock together all of the sand. Otherwise, all you are doing is coating the tops, and any air trapped underneath.


The difference:

With surfactant:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xOOxxOOOOOxxOOOxxOOxxx
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

Where B is the base, O the sand grains and x the glue mix.

Without:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xOO OOOOO OOO OOxxx
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

I have bases going back 20 years made this way and the sand is still rock hard and firmly attached.*

*You do need to use a waterproof varnish over it all though, as pva can be softened and removed with warm-hot water even when dry.