Hi Mr Grips

Hi Steve, 

Keep popping up everywhere don't I?

Not a good idea to use neat PVA. Always thin it with water to apply basing medium. It should say this in the instructions.

Agreed. I have two small jars, one for basing glue, one for fixative. Basing glue is thinned a bit, about 2:1 glue to water. This lets me get good control with a brush, without it pulling back from edges too much. The second is fairly thin: 3:1 water to glue I'd say. Once the grit is down, washed and dry, I lock it all together with the washing glue. Then drybrush and grass.

Incidentally I sell a similar basing kit here in the US and I have found the PVA needs a full 24 hours to really and truly dry. So I just do a batch each night - one gets started (sand glued down), one gets a brown wash, one gets sealing glue, one gets finished.

Thanks for the tips guys.

Somewhat counter intuitive though and, I agree, should be clear in the instructions; several people on this and other forums have mentioned thinning the PVA.

The Wing Commander beat me to it.   If you dilute the PVA (I take it to the consistency of milk), I think you will find that you'll get better results.   The sand particles are very small and very light and can't get past the surface tension of the neat glue.  Watering down lets the sand 'grip' the glue and gives the desired results.  Trying not to labour the point, but if the glue supplied didn't work at all, none  of the bases shown in the catalogue would have any covering and this forum would be wall to wall moans about the stuff!

As I said, we supply very good quality glue, hence the need to water it down slightly which also  means it goes a lot further.  

Thanks Peter,  works really well diluted.  Just wonder why it doesn't say that in the instructions. 

Cracking results though. :-)

Morning Mollinary! 

Here's a tip I use. PVA glue, then the sand, however I use a different wash technique. I use a thin wash of yellow ochre with some PVA glue mixed in to provide a binding agent. When thoroughly dry I then do a brown wash using the Fat Wally Magic Wash technique. After this I use the three layers of dry brush and then the static grass. This does add an extra couple of days to the drying process, but is worth it for the effectiveness.