Tutorial: Improper use of two component water effects and hot glue

Howdy Jungle!

Waterbases.
And me ...

Want to know what happened here?

Well,
Josua wrote this amazing article a while ago,
called "Proper use of two component water effects" and gives inspirational insight into a great preparation and his way of doing his beauties of water bases, like the ugly truth.

The ugly truth is:
I am not Josua. I do things different, even I try to follow his instructions.
I did a small waterbase recently and was happy with the result:

Plain, simpel, one corner

Of course I thought, now I got it. I mastered waterbases.
I did not, but I still think this is an important article ...

Tutorial: Improper use of two component water effects and hot glue

I was working on one waterbase already and had another in the pipeline that I was about to begin soon: A comission piece for a collector and friend.

Base building start

Baking Milliput to make it harden faster under a
warm lamp ...

Painting the beauty ...

Preparing the pour

Hot Glue involved, extra tablet underneath and pouring ...

Looks great, it worked, I am happy ...

Fck!
It is pouring out somewhere ...

I can stop that with my hot glue gun. I will fight it.

Please look at this beautiful studio sunset, while I spent 3 hours fighting with hot glue, burning my fingers and trying to stop the leak ...

Interesting ...

An intense fight was lost as it really found its way
all the time.

Had a little leftover of 2k water and pourred it in,
still it lost height ...

11 hot glue gun sticks later ...

Some different kind of beauty appeared ...

Told myself: You shall not win. This base is not a fail ...
and left the studio for some days. I thought, as soon as it dries, it shall work :)

While giving this some days to harden, I did different things in the studio or outside, ignoring this completly ...


... listened to fine music ...

... or watched cats doing cat things ...

Allright,
some days later I gave this another pour.
And thought to myself, like I always do: Everything happens for a reason. Painted some fish, a skull and some shells and added them before the pour :)

I was right, it was not pouring out :)

Still staying close by to check back and remove air bubbles ...

Getting this out of my 'hot glue artwork' was still a miracle to me ...

I did this one with better preparation and wow it works better :D

Time to protect the process of hardening from dust and wait again ...

While waiting I started to scratchbuild a 40K Inquisitor and his retuine ...

3 days later ...

Yay!

Yay #2!

Now to the ugly truth, getting this out of ... this ...

Did the first rough work with my table saw ...engine power!

Still weird ...

More detail work ...

What a mess, but I made it ... base was already at the sanding machine ...

Now I recieved some interesting pieces from Hot glue and 2k water effect.
A strange mixture, but I might find good use for it for future astronaut
projects to sent them on weird adventures ...

Ok,
to be honest: I am proud that I fought that beast and won without hurting myself too much.
My best tip from this experience: Avoid it. Prepare yourself better and do not be lazy in the preparations ...

Thank you, Josua for your great article that explains it all so good:
http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2017/05/tutorial-proper-use-of-two-component.html

Do it like Josua!
Or do it like David:
http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2019/04/sbs-wading-ashore.html

... and if you do like I do, know that you can rescue it, if you got the will to fight!

Happy Painting to all of you!
Yours,
Roman


PS: Kyle Maitland posted his story on failing with two component water effects so funny on facebook, that I decided to include it here - a lesson can be learned from this too:

"I can do worse, never fear. Whenever possible I will rise from the ashes to detail what not to do.

I started a large base in a tile base. 3x3 square of probably 50mm tiles. So a 150x150 base, which I built on. This base though, it needed a column of water on one side. With a little crab, and some fish, and a cave. About 100mm tall, 50 wide 40 deep. Something like that, 250ml volume they say.

So I bought a litre of polyester resin and some catalyst, thinking this was the best way to deal with a deep placement like this. Hint, this stuff is never the best way to deal with a placement like this. It is nebulous, it requires witchcraft. Catalyst amount depends on temperature and layers and varies and omg... Polyester resin also stinks to high heaven of styrene as it cures. I read warning of the smell (not the headaches) but I figured I have a balcony. That was not really Enough.

 

So it's 2am (working nights at the time) and it's time to start my resin pour. Got my mixing cups (this stuff melts styrofoam) so they are not styrofoam and I start pouring layers. And watching them get lower... Slowly. It's 2am. It's dark. Whatever. I'll stop the flow with more resin!. So I begin overpouring a bit to compensate for loss, it is of course, only coming out the bottom and curing pretty quick. And I can cure it faster with more catalyst. This continues until something dawns on me. My base is bulked out with blue foam insulation. You think you seals everywhere with paint, primer, etc right? WRONG. So this realization changes modes a bit, a few thin 'coating' layers set to flash fast, like A skim coat. Eventually this did work. But between layers and an overall unpleasant experience I ended up texturing the surface for a moving water look . This stuff was also incredibly hard and sanding it to buff it was days of work. I also had rivulets of water randomly on my cliffs, but that was actually ok. I had to clip the tiles into an organic shape in a bought of I meant to do that . 

 

Paul (Stockley) can tell you how heavy that base is , having had all the foam replaced with resin wholesale. I do not recommend polyester resin . Or resin in the dark. These simple lessons are sometimes better learned through others."

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