Today I bring a review of GW's new poduct Liquid Green Stuff. Now I will admit that this is based on a bit of use on a couple of my Dreadfleet ships and not an extensive test on lots of stuff but hopefully it will give you a rough idea what the product is like.
I first saw the product on Saturday and I have to say I was curious. I didn't buy any at the time but got it the next day after assembling a couple of Dreadfleet ships. Based on the description of the product in White Dwarf (yes I do buy the magazin every month), it is used to fill in small holes and joints. I thought that sounded like just the stuff I needed to fill in a few bits an pieces and will save me the effort of mixing some green stuff up and then wasting half of it (thats what usually happens anyway). So I gave it a go and here are some pictures.
Note the gap in the flame cannon turret.
Filled with liquid greenstuff.
After its dried and excess cleaned off.
After this little test I can say a few things about it. I was impressed with how easy it is to apply. It really is as simple as using your brush to paint it on. I found its consistancy to be similar to that of the foundation paints thought maybe just a bit more viscous. So far so good then.
The next thing I want to comment on is the drying time. I found this to be very quick, with the liquid greenstuff having pretty much dried within 30 minutes of appliying it to the selected area's. I had tried it after 10 minutes, as it looked dry, however it turned out it hadn't and it all ended up coming out so I would defineately recommend leaving it for 30 minutes.
Next up is the finish. If you juct apply it and leave it you'll find that you can see the brush strokes in it as I have noticed on a couple of area's of the 2 or 3 ships I've used it on. However on the area's that I did and then went over with a wet brush, I found the finish to be much smoother. I would say that mixing the water with it first would be better and achieve an ever smoother result.
So you may ask, 'can I sculpt it?' Now I did kind of try it so I'll give you my opinion. At first its a definate no. Trying to sculpt a liquid is clearly not going to work so why I tried it is beyond me. However I did find if you try it after you've given it bit of time, it is possible to do some very basic stuff with it. When I say basic I mean very basic. Essentially there is a point in its drying time where it is similar to the putty we're all used to and at that stage you can, to an extent, push it round to fill a gap better and smooth it off a bit.
Now I have to point out a drawback. From my limited experience with it I would say that, as it dries it contracts a bit. I say this because the gap is still visible in the flame cannon on the dwarf ship despite it been completely filled when I applied it. Now this could be that I may have tried to fill a gap bigger than its intended to fill. If this is the case then there's no supprise that its still visable, it simply settled in the gap. I'll have to use it a lot more before I can say for definate that it contarcted and left the gap visable but its something worth thinking about.
My closing comments on this product would be that its definately not going to outright replace the greenstuff putty we all know and love. I discussed this at length with Zebulon. I feel that for larger gaps traditional putty is the way to go however this liquid version would be well suited to finish it off at the surface. Or maybe you filed away some iconography and its left the surface a bit rough, then this would be handy to smooth it back out without adding a layer of putty, especially on small area's. We also talked about why GW would have released such a product. One word: Finecast. As we know the quality in some cases has been less then expected, I myself can certainly attest to that. So while it will work on metal, finecast resin and plastic, I feel its main target was finecast. A way to speed up filling in little air bubbles and such because having to mix up some putty just to fill in a small air bubble hole was a bit silly. Overall however I feel that the product is an interesting new tool to add to our boxes and no doubt various uses for it will be found by the community outside of hole and gap filling.
Blackmane
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