Bondic for Filling Gaps on Miniatures

One of the great shames I hold is that I am really lazy about removing mold lines from my miniatures before painting. One of the things that simple painting methods generally do is highlight those mold lines. Don't believe me? Try dry-brushing, washing, or using contrast paints on an area with that mold line. Not only will those things show the line, but it will highlight it as the light catches on the edge and magnifies it.

Oh the shame!

Another area that is a problem, especially with the newer Games Workshop snap-together miniatures, is that they are designed to snap fit tightly. But if they don't, perhaps because of some imperfection in the plastic injection, they do not come together, creating a gap, and are next to impossible to pull apart without breaking the posts, or even the whole miniature.

In the picture below you can see the better side of a squig. This one did not go together very well and created a huge gap (red dashed area). In the past I tried a number of solutions: gel super glue; baking soda and liquid super glue; gloss varnish; various adhesives like white glue/PVA, tacky glue, and Modge Podge; sculpting material like Miliput, Green Stuff, Vallejo Modeling Paste; and Squadron Putty. Success or failure largely depends upon your ability to get the material into the gap, how fluid the material is, setting and curing time, and the size of the gap.

Things like adhesives tend to be very fluid, and thus hard to keep in place if the setting time is too long. Solids like putties and pastes tend to be harder to get into place (and only into the gap) and have long curing times.

I have heard of Bondic before, including as a gap filler for modeling, but had never tried it. Bondic is a liquid adhesive that is cured by shining a UV LED light on the material for 4 seconds or so.

Given the quick cure time, I decided to give it a try. It is not exactly cheap ($40 for who knows how many gaps and models), but as you can see with the gap above, if I can fill that easily and cure it quickly (so I can continue to prime the figure immediately afterward), it might well be worth it.

As you can (hopefully) see in the image above, Bondic easily filled this very large gap with ease. Although the material is fluid and thus runs, it is pretty viscous so it does not flow everywhere like white glue/PVA or superglue would.

If I were to have any complaint it would be that there is no real sign that the material is cured. It does not change colors or frost over; it simply remains glossy and clear. Because of that, if you need additional layers to fill the gap you might have to fill, cure, paint, inspect, and then repeat. Given the incredibly fast cure time, however, this is possible.

Further, because the material does not cure at all until UV light hits it, you do not have to worry about the material hardening if you leave the cap off, or that you have to rush to cure. In fact, I had a set of 9 miniatures that needed gaps filled and I was able to do all of them at once, cap the adhesive, then cure all of the miniatures. Doing something like that with baking soda and superglue or fast setting epoxy is not really possible.

As I use it more I may revisit the issue, especially if my opinion changes, and update you here.