In constructing scenry I have diluted Elmers glue 50/50 with water. I cannot get a fine “mist” spray from several different brands of one quart spray bottles.
I am a new beginner and also had the same problem. I found that the mixture is too thick to pass through the nozzel in a fine mist. when cleaning out the nozzle with water it ‘misted’ just fine. I thinned down the 50/50 mix again, probably to 25/75 maybe a little more and it worked fine. Worried that there was not enough ‘tack’ in this mix I just resprayed it all 5 mins later. This worked fine for me and everything is stuck well. It looks real white, wet and messy when it is wet but all of mine dried OK. Some pics are here :- www.geocities.com/karldesign/riverarea
Have fun and good luck.
I spray a light mist of water with dish soap in it and use a glass cleaner bottle and soak the ballast or ground foam pretty good. Then I use an old glue bottle with about 1/3 glue and 2/3 water mix.
I never spray the glue. I get a plastic “ketchup bottle”, one of those with the long pointed nozzle. I mix 50-50 glue and water in the bottle.
I spray a mist of water with a couple drops of dish detergent (to make it “wetter”). when the ground foam or whatever is damp to wet, I take the ketchup bottle and dribble white glue very gently onto the scenery and let the glue flow into the scenery. I let it dry and then repeat it. I have been very successful with this technique and have used it for over 20 years.
Dave H.
Don’t try to spray the glue, dribble it on out of an empty glue bottle with the orange plastic closable top. I have found, too, that rubbing alcohol is better than the water/detergent mix for moistening the ballast or scenery before and after applying the glue. What I usually do is spray alcohol, dribble on the glue, and then spray more alcohol until the area is fairly saturated. The alcohol evaporates faster than water.
mix more water and thin the glue out more…and you will be able to get it to mist out of a spray bottle… i would say about 80 water to 20 glue…works the best… elmers glue is water baseed anyways…so when it drys out… a thinner mix is still enough to hold senery together…
csx engineer
I’ve had a lot of success spraying Elmer’s yellow glue diluted about 2/3 or more with water. For some applications, particularly ballast, I’ve found the sprayer to be much more effective at not disturbing the loose scenery material and thus preserving its shape. A mixture with only 25% - 30% glue is still plenty to hold most scenery material in place, but if you want more strength just wait until the sprayed glue dries, and then apply a thicker mixture dribbled from an old glue/ketchup/whatever bottle. The original shape will still be maintained.
For base scenery applications other than ballast, I apply the same glue mixture directly to the plaster shell with a brush. Final details are secured with the sprayer.