I’ve admired Paul Budzik’s work for a long time. He’s hands-down a “master modeler” and I think everyone can learn from his construction and scratch-building techniques. Amongst all the things I’ve learned from his videos, one of the easiest to pick up was his work using cyanoacrylate glue and dental acrylic powder.

The mix allows you to still have the strength of CA glue, but the powder makes it much easier to sand. It’s also impervious to lacquer based primer which means you won’t get any ghost seams that need to be filled after your primer coat.

I’ve now tried two different variations on his technique, the first using talcum powder and the second using acrylic nail powder instead of the dental acrylic. I found that both work rather well, with the talcum powder being a little softer than the acrylic powder. This may be handy in some situations but for general use, I’m going to stick with the acrylic powder.

I haven’t tried this combination with different cyanoacrylate brands, however. Using some slower setting glue should give some more working time and different viscosities will change the properties a little bit. For this video, and what I’m using at the moment, I’m using Gorilla Glue’s light blue-capped super glue and Modelones acrylic nail powder. Both can be found on Amazon.