I know, liquid greenstuff has been out for a while now and I just got my hands on a pot of the stuff. I thought I might pass along my thoughts on it for those who still haven't picked some up yet themselves. Nothing like a timely review.
Setting aside an old paintbrush seemed to be a no brainer for this one. Not knowing exactly how it was going to work meant I didn't want to scrap a perfectly good brush using this stuff. The other thing I figured would be handy would be a handful of Q-Tips for cleaning up the excess greenstuff off the surface of the model.
Where does it shine and where does it fall short?
This stuff is great for smaller and I mean smaller gaps or surface imperfections on models. You still need to take some time putting your models together cleanly. This stuff is not magic and it's not going to erase everything because you threw your model together real fast.
The stuff goes on easy enough. A quick dip into it and you paint it onto the joint/imperfection in question. You have to move quick as the stuff dries fairly fast and gets glue-like in its consistency almost immediately after coming out of the pot. I'd say it dries quick too, but I don't know for sure since I have a habit of giving greenstuff plenty of time to dry already.
It doesn't work in larger gaps. You can add a few layers of it giving each one plenty of time to dry, but you'd be better off using actual greenstuff to fill in larger imperfections or misalignments.
If you've got something on a surface that is minor, then this is the stuff to use. When it comes to cleaning up, the damp Q-Tip is perfect. You can apply as much pressure as needed to remove the excess material.
Where have I used it to consider myself an "expert?"
A couple of places. The first place was on the collar of a Space marine I was building. It would have been far better to use real greenstuff to fill the gap despite having trimmed it down a little bit beforehand.
The second place was on the surface of my Eldar Corsair conversion wing assembly. It kinda worked, but I could have done it by shaving away the excess surface texture just as well and using paint to fill in the irregularities.
On a Necron warrior shoulder. The gap was way too big and despite numerous passes to try and build up the material, it just would not fill the gap. Another place I should have used real greenstuff.
Even on my current Dark Angels FW dreadnought, I skipped the liquid stuff all together in favor of the real stuff. And I had seven places that needed "fixing."
Short answer, if you're looking to get visual perfection from your model, you painstakingly clean all your mold lines already, apply your model glue with great care and delicately fill gaps where needed, then this stuff will make a nice addition to your arsenal. It's there to help with the smaller problems and keep you moving at speed.
If the occasional mold line doesn't bother you and a little excess glue isn't an issue, then save your money for something better you'll put to use. By getting this stuff, you may end up trying to force yourself to use it instead of a more appropriate method and you'll find yourself disappointed and wasting your time more than anything else.
UPDATE: It's been almost a year since I've bought this stuff and I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've used it. I find the regular greenstuff works so much better for filling small imperfections. Maybe that's because I'm used to working with the regular stuff.
Make sure to check out these posts as they might help:
Assembly: Cleaning mold lines
Assembly: Repositioning space marine arms
Assembly: Building Space Marines
