I have finally gotten around to assembling the structures for a South River craftsman kit I purchased quite a while ago. I spent about 3 days meticulously painting and weathering the hydrocal wall castings and they are looking pretty spiffy if I do say so myself. I am now in the process of assembling the windows which consist of styrene castings, thin cellophane glazing, backed by paper shades. I’ve used liquid cement for the glazing and I am going to see if this will work for the shades as well. I am stumped as to what adhesive will work best to cement the windows to the hydrocal walls. The instructions are very vague on this point. At the beginning, they list a number of adhesives at the beginning of the instruction manual but I can’t find any specific instructions for attaching the windows. The hydrocal has been sprayed with a gray primer in the window opening. I was going to try some super glue but as typically happens when I want to use this product, I’ve discovered the bottle had dried out since the last use. We had a snow and ice storm last night so making a trip to get some more is not a great option right now. I’m not sure if super glue is the best option anyway. I would appreciate suggestions for an adhesive that will work with both the styrene windows and the painted hydrocal walls.
I used Elmer’s Carpenters’ Wood Glue to fasten the wall sections together on some hydrocal castings. I don’t recall what I used for the plastic window and door frames. Super Glue will cause your windows to cloud up if you inadvertently get it onto the glazing material.
MicroScale’s Kristal Kleer works great. It holds better than white glue. “Tacky Glue” from the crafts dept or craft stores works good too. Regular white glue will get rock hard and non-porous stuff like plastics can pop off eventually. the KK and Tacky Glue stay a little flexible.
I’ve found that ‘Plumber’s GOOP’ works well. It’s clear and dries relatively quickly and is somewhat flexible. Use only in a well ventilated space.
I’ve used silicone caulk to fasten Hydrocal to styrene. It’s about the only thing that seems to work well. However, you can not paint silicone at all, so make sure none of it gets on the surface. It stinks, too, so once again, use in a well-ventilated area or get an aqualung.
Thanks to all for the suggestions but I stumbled upon a solution that seems to have worked quite well. All the windows on the upper floors of this hotel structure were given window shades which I cut from an off-white printer paper I bought at Staples. This paper is fairly thick, almost like a card stock. I discovered I could attach these shades by placing them on the back of the window glass and then applying a drop or two of Ambroid Pro Weld to them so that it soaked through and the shades adhered to the window. Ambroid sets up very quickly. You might think this would cause the glass to get cloudy and it probably does but since the cement only contacts the glass if front of the shade, no cloudiness is apparent. Once I had the shades firmly in place, I realized I now had a glue surface that would accept white glue. I put a thin bead of white glue around the perimeter of the shades and then pressed the window assembly into place on the hydrocal wall. For windows in which I had the shade in a raised position and there wasn’t a lot of glue surface, I put a small bead of white glue on the bottom of the window frame to help hold it in place. This worked extremely well. After the glue had dried I turned the wall face down and shook it to see if I could dislodge any of the windows. They all stayed in place.
I had different problem with the large arched windows on the ground floor of the hotel, which were made of brass and had no window shades to attach. For this I used spray cement to attach the glass to the back of the windows. I had to cut the glass from a clear sheet of cellophane and the panes I cut were slightly outside the margins of the frames. This turned out to be a plus because the added size allowed me to wedge these windows into place on the wall without any adhesive. This method passed the shake test as well.