A slight variation on the "fattening" theme is to mix acrylic paint (e.g., PolyScale) in with the white glue. The resulting mixture is considerably stiffer, thus easier to build up. Remember that as the glue dries it becomes transparent. A drop of dark blue paint mixed with a drop of Elmer's, for instance, will produce a pale blue, but it will darken as it dries.
I hope a borderline-senile Olde Phogey can be forgiven for offering a general observation about this thread. I can remember when the products available to the plastic warship modeler consisted of a few dozen kits, on "fit the box" scales, from Revell, Lindberg, Aurora, Airfix, and Renwall. They only covered the most famous vessels (frequently more than once; every company had to have a Missouri), and skipped many important subjects completely. (For quite a few decades the only Japanese warship kit available in the U.S. was the Aurora Yamato, which, in terms of scale fidelity, can most gently be described as a joke.) The aftermarket parts available consisted of some "white metal" (i.e., lead alloy) castings from firms like Marine Models, Boucher, and H&R - all of them on scales far larger than that of any plastic kit - and a spool of thread from the drugstore for rigging. We consoled ourselves with the observation that if a real ship was far enough away to look like it was on 1/500 scale, we wouldn't be able to see the guardrails anyway, so we didn't really want such things on our models. So we said.
Now we have plastic and resin kits on standardized scales, representing virtually all the important warship classes - and some decidedly offbeat prototypes as well. (I haven't counted, but I suspect the number of 1/700 kits, including those from cottage industries, is over a thousand by now.) I have a book from the late seventies that describes radar screens as "unmodelable" on 1/700 scale. Now we can buy 1/700 photo-etched reproductions of almost all the radar screens ever used by major navies. We have 1/700 watertight doors with retaining clips arranged in different patterns. And we have websites, where we hold perfectly serious discussions of how best to represent human beings on 1/700 scale.
Folks, maybe you can't find the particular ship or the particular fitting you want, but give some thought to how lucky you are. This is a great time to be a ship modeler.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.