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Just looking for some suggestions regarding GS, basically, do you always need to super glue it? As I have found some tutorials confusing; some cut the shape and apply straight to the model, but do they then need to re apply it once it has hardened a bit and glue it to the figure? As I have found whilst sticking balls of GS inbetween the torso and legs of my SM to boost there height they do not stay there, only the bit stuck in the hollow of the body.
Next question is, as I am converting some old models to chaos, they are already in a mixture of primed or painted. Will it be necessary to strip the paint then do the new GS modelling or will I get away with being able to stick it to the paint or primer?
And if for example I am adding a new weapon / arm to a figure with green stuff filling the arm pit or covering up a cut part, is it best to let it firm up a bit before sticking it in? Or would I glue both parts between the GS and then try and squish it together to get it to stay?

Thanks, been going round in circles looking for answers, they always cover the basics of keeping tools wet and consistencies between colours but not the important part of fusing the pieces together.

Don't be afraid to go back over it to either add more and backfill cracks or slowly file down rough spots left from your scraping clean.

1. I would apply a dot of super glue between any plastic and GS joints. This helps hold it in place whilst you are working with it, and stops it falling apart after.

2. If you sculpt onto paint, it will be the paint it is stuck to, not the model, meaning that it will be a weaker joint, and any damage could pull a chunk of your paintwork off.

3. I'd let it cure for about 15 mins after kneading to let it firm up slightly and make it easier to work with, but you can work with it straight away if you want.

Have fun and share pictures of what you do

Greenstuff itself is sticky and many times it will stick into place on a model without issues, however it all depends how much its worked on and its overall shape. Eg if you've a part that adds, say, fur that wraps around a part of a model chances are it will stay there unless you start pulling it off.

However if you've a single knife you've sculpted it might be prudent to sculpt and glue it into place once its fully cured (remembering that curing can take up to a day).


A lot of how well it remains in a spot really depends on:

1) The surface of the model. Eg if its resin or metal and you didn't wash it with warm water and a tiny bit of soap and a scrub with an old brush, first then there might be mould release oils on the model. Which will create a weakpoint as the GS will latch onto the oil which just means its not holding onto anything.
This also answers your paint and primer question - if the model has paint/primer on it and you greenstuff over that paint/primer then the bond is instantly weaker.

2) The surface of the model in terms of shape and the total surface area and variation in angles. Baiscally what I said before; if you've very few angles and a small surface area its going to fall off; if it covers a large area of contact with mutliple angles and such then its got much more hold.

- If you are using GS to attach two parts together, gluing is a good idea. If you are just sculpting on top of something, you shouldn't need glue
- Never go near wet/ uncrued GS with super glue. You will make a mess. If you want to glue GS to the mini, sculpt on the mini, wait for the GS to cure, gently break if off and glue it after
- You shoudn't need glue most of the time. GS in its normal state is very sticky. To make it stick more strongly, you can lightly rough up the surface you want to apply it by scoring it with a knife
- Be careful with how much water you use to lubricate your tools. You need only a tiny amount; too much water will make it difficult to get the GS stuck to a surface, as well as making sculpting harder
- If you want GS to stick to an already painted mini, you won't need to strip it, but you should scrape away a small amount of paint over the area where you want the GS to be stuck


With your particular example with filling in an armpit, here's what I would do: It is best to try and get a solid structure before applying GS. If, like in your example, you want an arm to be raised up leaving a gap under the armpit, you should try gluing a small plastic spacer in between the two parts first. Alternatively you can pin the joint. Once you have the pieces held in place and glued firm, then apply the GS and smooth over the area. The greenstuff would not need any glue, and it will make the joint a lot stronger, so the original glue join doesn't have to be strong.

If you can't be bothered to do that, then you can do it a little differently: Start by roughing up the surfaces on each part where there will be GS. Then apply the GS to the torso piece, spend a little time pressing it into the surface and making sure it has a good connection. wait 5-10 minutes to let any water on the surface of the GS evaporate, then press the other part into the GS and smooth it all out. Once it's cured, try and gently break the join apart, if it budges, then break it off gently and glue it back in place. Depending on what the join is like and how it has been sculpted you might not even need glue.


My two cents [:

Agreed with answers, especially this:

shmvo wrote:

With your particular example with filling in an armpit, here's what I would do: It is best to try and get a solid structure before applying GS. If, like in your example, you want an arm to be raised up leaving a gap under the armpit, you should try gluing a small plastic spacer in between the two parts first. Alternatively you can pin the joint. Once you have the pieces held in place and glued firm, then apply the GS and smooth over the area. The greenstuff would not need any glue, and it will make the joint a lot stronger, so the original glue join doesn't have to be strong.

I have a feeling your confusion, DrBavers, is partly being led to believe GS is a structural glue, rather than a mouldable patch-over.

Wonderful thank you for the answers, this is exactly what I was after! Just purchased some more odd bits and weapons today from my FLGS, so will be sure to crack on with my conversions now! Got a bunch of custom fallen and chaos to modify! I'll make a thread for them soon!

Get some colour shapers. Rubber tipped tools that are a total godsend. To get really smooth surfaces, I find a touch of vaseline on the surface helps an awful lot as well.

I am new to green stuff and I have learned (experts feel free to correct me)

Buy a set of silicon shapers they are great and GS doesn’t stick to them.

GW green stuff is expensive

Put a little bit of your water on your fingers before manipulating with your hands

Greenstuffworld.com is a great resource for all sorts of stuff you won’t have thought of. Just Play Games and MightyLance are uk stockists. Otherwise you have ship from Spain (I think) and with Covid delivery times are aweful.

Also consider they are different coloured stuffs for different uses although haven’t tried them. And milliput is good for big jobs like walls etc and add green stuff for detail

mrFickle wrote:
Buy a set of silicon shapers they are great and GS doesn’t stick to them.

Like Flinty says, clay shapers are great for smoothing, but for pushing the putty around you might want something a bit more solid. There are a lot of options from wooden toothpicks to blunted knives and wire loops, but the usual go-to for wargaming hobbyists are wax carvers. These are the sets of metal 'sculpting tools' you find in hobby shops and elsewhere.
You can also go for dental-quality wax carvers, that are usually a bit finer and more polished in manufacture (in my experience), but still pretty cheap on ebay. The different types each have their own name - alongside a general search, look for Zahle (what used to be known as the Wax #5, the sculpting tool among some mini sculptors) and Lecron/Le Cron (the type of tool that GW used to sell) wax carvers. These have the shapes that, in my opinion, are useful for 95% of putty sculpting: a pointed blade and a convex oval.

GW green stuff is expensive

Greenstuffworld.com is a great resource for all sorts of stuff you won’t have thought of. Just Play Games and MightyLance are uk stockists. Otherwise you have ship from Spain (I think) and with Covid delivery times are aweful.

Coming back to this hobby after a few years, some of the usual places I bought putty have stopped selling it or are gone, and Greenstuffworld looks like the only retail supplier of brown stuff, so that all puts them at an advantage. Brown stuff! I thought that had disappeared forever, even back then. I'd also point out Sylcreate as a UK supplier of useful putty.
Case in point: the green stuff inna tube that both GSW and Sylcreate sell. When you have an epoxy compound that hardens when the two parts come in contact, you want to store them out of contact. The individually wrapped bars in the tube do that. Standard advice for the GS strip is to cut out a couple of mm from the middle, where the blue and yellow meet. Although you don't have to worry about that with GSW's strip with a gap in the middle. Good idea that. Wonder why it took so long.

Also consider they are different coloured stuffs for different uses although haven’t tried them.

It's like a spectrum and a venn diagram rolled into one. You've got elastic putties like green stuff, brown stuff and procreate. These stretch like gum or sticky tack when freshly mixed, and are a bit rubbery when fully cured. Then there's the claylike putties like milliput, magic sculp, and apoxie sculpt. These are... like clay. Not so stretchy, slightly water-soluble, easy to smooth, and cure hard.

Brown stuff is very easy to smooth, and easy to sand and carve. Great for very fine details and sharp, mechanical objects. Used to be that you'd mix a bit of it into GS to make the GS easier to handle, but that kind of went by the wayside when mixing apoxie sculpt or just mixing more yellow did something similar. (BS's removal from general availability might've had something to do with it too.)
Procreate was initally made to recreate the effect of a GS+BS mix, and does it pretty well. It's a great starter putty. Although I think it stays a bit too rubbery to sand well.

Claylike putties: magic sculp and apoxie sculpt are similar, soft, fine-grained and slightly waxy. User-friendly, pretty easy to handle. Milliput is good stuff and people do great things with it (google Joaquin Palacios) but I think it could take newbies unawares. In terms of handling it's like the rottweiler of modelling putties, kind of aggressive: very sticky, coats your fingers after mixing, makes more mess with water, and is maybe best left to firm up a while before trying subtle details; but when you figure it out it's as good as anything, very strong, and last but not least, cheap. The finer grades are a bit easier to handle, though YMMV whether it's easier to sculpt in black or bright white than with a middling greyish-yellow.

You can mix GS with Milliput & you get the advantages of both.
I buy GS in tubes rather than strips. It's hard to find but well worth it as you get way more for you buck & you don't have the thin strip down the middle that's already cured. EG - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Green-Stuff-Yellow-Epoxy-Putty/dp/B002MB61RQ/ref=sr_1_37?dchild=1&keywords=green+stuff&qid=1594135623&sr=8-37
I also keep mine in the freezer to keep it fresh.

 Vermis wrote:
Brown stuff is very easy to smooth, and easy to sand and carve. Great for very fine details and sharp, mechanical objects. Used to be that you'd mix a bit of it into GS to make the GS easier to handle, but that kind of went by the wayside when mixing apoxie sculpt or just mixing more yellow did something similar. (BS's removal from general availability might've had something to do with it too.)
Procreate was initally made to recreate the effect of a GS+BS mix, and does it pretty well. It's a great starter putty. Although I think it stays a bit too rubbery to sand well.

As someone who has only used brown stuff very recently, this is a little strange to read! The stuff I have bought from Green Stuff world is not like how you describe at all. Rather, sculpting with Brown Stuff feels like trying to work with GS that has been left to cure for 1-2 hours; more like mxing extra bluie into the GS rather than extra yellow. ie it's much tougher and generally a bit of a pain to use, but it cures almost rock hard (albeit after about 20 hours).

So GS world's 'Brown Stuff' might be an entirely different product to whatever you used to use?

Simetimes GS does not stick to the surface, ether model is dusty, oily fingers, or GS is old.
I had good luck with putting fresh GS on top of superglue bead. That is how I attached these shoulder pads, and then finished molding them into shape.

Tip - Use bagbalm to prevent GS sticking to fingers or tools.

shmvo wrote:
As someone who has only used brown stuff very recently, this is a little strange to read! The stuff I have bought from Green Stuff world is not like how you describe at all. Rather, sculpting with Brown Stuff feels like trying to work with GS that has been left to cure for 1-2 hours; more like mxing extra bluie into the GS rather than extra yellow. ie it's much tougher and generally a bit of a pain to use, but it cures almost rock hard (albeit after about 20 hours).

So GS world's 'Brown Stuff' might be an entirely different product to whatever you used to use?

That's peculiar alright. I checked back at GSW and they describe it as 'Kneadatite brown stuff', the brand name used by the original manufacturer.* I can think of a couple of possibilities.

- I'm comparing it to the old 1:1 green stuff mix. Green stuff with more yellow - especially twice as much yellow like the GSW strips - is much more pliable.
- it was a bad batch, or had gone off. The stiffness and slow hardening sounds like the time I had some wonky green stuff. Although I was using some brown stuff tonight that was sitting around for years, and it wasn't too bad.
- at some point it changed from Kneadatite Brown/Aluminium - brown and white parts - to Brown/Neutral - brown and grey parts, like the stuff sold by GSW. I don't recall anyone mentioning a different consistency, but I wonder. The stuff I'm using is the old Brown/Aluminium, but I've some old Brown/Neutral hidden away too, and I could get some GSW brown stuff to compare the three. I don't need much of an excuse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

bubber wrote:You can mix GS with Milliput & you get the advantages of both.

Surely. One reins in, the other loosens up.

Mothsniper wrote:I had good luck with putting fresh GS on top of superglue bead. That is how I attached these shoulder pads, and then finished molding them into shape.

Nice. No cracking off or peeling at all?

* EDIT: they also describe it with 'a thicker consistency'. D'oh. But it's still easy to smooth and form sharp edges with.

Not an expert. But water on tools works great. Also petroleum jelly or vaseline.

@Vermis
None that I experienced.
Began to do that while working with Petroleum jelly when sculpting. It oils up the putty making it absolutely not wanting to stick to anything. So I figured to super glue it so it sticks while I work the putty.
I have not done sturdiness tests, but so far nothing randomly flaked off.

I even painted not fully cured putty due to lack in patience. Logic was that chemical reaction in 2-part epoxy putty will take place no matter if the surface is exposed to air not.
And because I planned to seal everything in last step with Varnish, I figured any instability in paint layers is not too much of an issue.

@Argive
Yes, I used to use water, but still had problem with it sticking to the tools. Petroleum jelly or Vaseline is perfect