Wednesday 16 January 2013

Tips & Tricks: Speeding up drying time.

It's sometimes really annoying waiting for the paint and glue on your terrain projects to dry. Especially since sometimes it can take all night, and require several steps, all of which take all night to dry. Fortunately, there are some tricks to speed up drying times.

Light Globes:
I used these all the time in the early days. Just move your desk lamp nice and close to your project, and the radiant heat from the globe helps to speed things along. I tried this recently with a Halogen globe, and it put out so much heat the PVA started to smoke slightly... best limited to 75-100 watt tungsten globes I think!

Heaters:
Along the same lines, placing things in front of a heater will help speed things up as well. Obviously there's the disadvantage that this will heat your house up as well, and that's not always something you want! When using a heater, I make sure I turn the terrain regularly so it's evenly warmed.

Sunlight:
On a good, hot, sunny Australian summer's day, just placing things in the sun speeds up the drying time immensely. I have a small table under an area of laserlight (that's transparent corrugated-iron looking plastic stuff in case you were wondering) which is used for spray painting under coats, but also makes a great drying stand during summer.

As you can see, heat helps to speed things up. I have heard of ovens being employed, but I wouldn't recommend it. Especially if you don't own the oven.
Of course, if you object to heat for any reason, just use Tamiya Acrylic paints. They dry so fast you cannot even drybrush with them. This will not help if you want to use PVA glue of course...

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