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Hi all, I recently started using green stuff for custom additions to my models, but I've been having a lot of trouble mixing the materials. I bought a 4" strip from amazon, and made sure to cut out the middle portion adjoining the two pieces. However, no matter what I do to mix the putty, I am left with many hard yellow chips in the material, and it is really obtrusive for modelling. I've tried adding lots of water and mashing the material with tools, but it refuses to mix. Is this just a bad batch of green stuff that I've purchased? The brand was Reaper, which I just assumed was fine. Are there any better brands I should try?

I have had this problem many a time, and despite mixing it in increasingly small quantities always ended up with a hard yellow lump that rendered most of what I was working on useless.

I was advised that the GS I had been sold may have been out of its useful life. The brand might not be the issue so much as the individual seller if it is no longer working properly

Yup, sounds like you GS is just old.

The brand doesn't make a huge difference, as they're all selling the same stuff just rebranded.

I normally buy the tubes instead of the strips... seems to stay fresher, although it can sometimes be a bit of a pain getting the blue out of the tube.

Thanks guys, that's pretty much what I figured. I'll try buying it in the tube rather than strips.

I have a set of tubes that are 3 years old, and mix together with no issues.. I have never used the ribbon stuff, just seemed to me that it was a lazy way to package it..

I've never had this issue and i get my GS from "The Troll Trader" on Ebay.

mine always comes out fine.

Wolf

ruff wrote:I have a set of tubes that are 3 years old, and mix together with no issues.. I have never used the ribbon stuff, just seemed to me that it was a lazy way to package it..

Ribbon is fine if you cut the middle bit out. It's marginally easier to get the proportions right.

The stuff the OP had was probably well past its sell-by date.

I've heard that keeping epoxy resin in the freezer will help extend its life, which makes sense because cold slows down a lot of chemical reactions.

I'm having the same problem at the moment, which is annoying because it's the first time Heresy Miniatures have let me down; I'm only about two inches into the ribbon, and I have to mix twice the amount I actually need and then pick through it with tweezers to get the chunks out before I can begin working.

I found the tube to be even more of a pain though, frankly; you waste more material because it's harder to cut off the proper amount because of the way the tube distorts when you cut into it, and that same distortion quickly makes getting it in and out of the plastic casing a right pain in the backside.

I have found that, for some reason, adding a little bit(no more than 10%) of premixed Brown Stuff into the blob -before- you mix the GS up reduces the amount of yellow grit that forms.

it's not really a problem with Heresy, it's a problem with the whole "Manufacturing GS in a ribbon" thing.

generally when mixing gs I use an old knife and chop the gs into small bits, mix them together, chop them again and re-mix them - I find it mixes faster and more evenly this way, and I can chop up any cured parts

Charax wrote:it's not really a problem with Heresy, it's a problem with the whole "Manufacturing GS in a ribbon" thing.

generally when mixing gs I use an old knife and chop the gs into small bits, mix them together, chop them again and re-mix them - I find it mixes faster and more evenly this way, and I can chop up any cured parts

I'm not a complete newb, I know to cut out the centre portion and store it in the freezer, even in ribbons there shouldn't be any unmixable hard chunks of yellow unless it's been sitting on a shelf for over a year.

Yodhrin wrote:

Charax wrote:it's not really a problem with Heresy, it's a problem with the whole "Manufacturing GS in a ribbon" thing.

generally when mixing gs I use an old knife and chop the gs into small bits, mix them together, chop them again and re-mix them - I find it mixes faster and more evenly this way, and I can chop up any cured parts

I'm not a complete newb, I know to cut out the centre portion and store it in the freezer, even in ribbons there shouldn't be any unmixable hard chunks of yellow unless it's been sitting on a shelf for over a year.

If you've not had it for long, then you can probably get a refund? Depends when you got it I guess.

I've got a non-name brand ribbon of two part epoxy I bought... years ago (at least a decade) that still mixes and works fine. I don't have the original packaging (like I said - old) but it's blue and white.

Does Green Stuff really have a "shelf life"?

Yup. It's softer and easier to mix when it's new, and I've had similar problems in the past with the yellow component developing little hard bits.

Its too old. Throw it out and grab a tub from your flgs.