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Hi and thanks for reading.

I'm working with plaster to create some scenery pieces for certain sets of models. Now after you layer plaster to desired shapes etc. i'm having some problems with 1. gluing parts of resin to the piece and afterwards painting it (as the water will loosen up the plaster).

Now my questions would be:
1. How to attach certain plastic, metal or resin parts to a plaster piece.
2. What is the best way cover a piece so it will be ready to receive paint (would perhaps ardcoat or a primer work?)

Thanks!







Automatically Appended Next Post:
And on a sidenote: blisters are great for building scenery!

maybe try thinning some PVA glue and painting it all over the surface. It should soak in and create a barrier that will allow paint to adhere to it. For gluing stuff to it, you may need to glue some pins to the bottom of your addition and sink it into the plaster.

when you plaster a wall, you seal it before painting with what is basically watered down pva glue.... I think perhaps there is more pva solids in the one builders use (perhaps not though)

One really thin coat of watery pva should be enough to make it ready to accept paint. This should also help you with the glueing problem; the raw plaster is probably very pourus and just soaks up whatever you put on, untill it gets sealed with pva

Ah nice. I'm really starting to like plaster because its so ridiculously cheap Once i do the final touches i'll try it with pva-glue (this would also be the right time to add textures etc

Edit: or would you advice to do 2 layers of pva? - 1 to seal, second to glue sands etc?

Yeah I would seal with some watery pva, and then use some thicker stuff to glue on the sand. I find when you thin the pva too much sand tends to fall off it after a while compared to if it was thicker glue.

I imagine sealing first is the way to go or the plaster is going to soak up all the glue you wanted to be holding the sand on.

Thanks for the information. I just mixed a half filled dropper bottle with a loot of drops of water and shook it all up. After applying the watery pva its now under the lamp I can't wait to see how it turns out. If it looks good then I'm going to try to get my hands on some more plastic trash!

And on second thought, if i put in too much water i can probably do a second layer (tomorrow or so)

All I can say is that; what a painter/decorator puts up on a fresh plastered wall is incredibly thin. Far too thin for actually glueing anything more than paper - even then you'd have soggy paper!
That is enough to stop the wall soaking up the first 5 coats of colour when it comes to painting. It dramatically reduces the overall paint cost and number of coats.

I see. Well then, in this case i let 1 layer just drip out of the mixing cup (also half of a blister) to create the slope to from the top (right) to the overall height. Guess that will take a while to really dry.

Edit: Although i must say that it dries really quick (still)

Be warned, normal plaster is very inflexible, and will shatter at the first decent knock or drop. Fine if it's not going to be transported much and will be stored out of the way.

Thanks, and yes i noticed that too. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to start building on something made out of plastic with absolutely no support in the middle (where most of the weight goes to as is). But that's, nothing that can't be fixed some way or another.

Here are a few pictures of how it looks now, the plaster is pretty much dry although some of the pva is still a little wet in the deepest pools. And i tried to fixed the sides to look a little better, to close it off, i'll most likely use a piece of plastic, glue it to fit the open corner, then model plaster and other stuff to it to look like the inside of the hill or something.








Edit: broken link.