Monday 21 December 2015

Hobby Article - Plastic Glue

Hello Folks,

Recently I started using a new type of plastic glue which I read about on the internet and I have been finding it pretty good so I thought it might be a decent idea to have a post about it. Maybe everyone has already heard of this, but it's new to me so I thought with all the plastic stuff people are getting it can't be all bad. Before this I was always stuck with the Testor plastic cement, which you can get the toothpaste tube one which is super thick and leave strands, or the black liquid bottle, which is super hard to get stuff out of after the first use.


So this is the stuff we are talking about. I ordered it from their website, along with this long glass pipette type thinger. Seems that is works the same way as the testors stuff but is just allot easier to use with this set up, you have the jar so easy to open.

I figured that a good way to prove this works well is to assemble a helicopter from the new cold war sets, as I thought that would have a bunch of small parts, and also big flat parts that have to go together nicely.


So first you prep the parts same as before, make sure to have the instructions handy. I thing the kit has the parts to make a few different variant of this helicopter as there are some different missiles, and rotor holding things in there, but currently just this on in the game.



When you are ready to glue something you put the pipette thing in the glue with the metal bit up. This will fill it up with glue, then you take it out and turn it over quickly. because the metal bit is so small it won't just run everywhere. Then I take a paper towel and wipe the excess off the outside of the glass tube.


Then lay it on a pepsi cap so it doesn't roll around or spill everywhere. You can kind of see that it is full to just before the cap.

Now you just hold together the parts you want to glue, and run the metal tip along the seam. Some glue will flow out into the joint by capillary action and in a few seconds it will set. The small tip gives you allot of control, and how vertical you hold it controls how fast it comes out, but if you are to vertical there will be a drip on the tip which is not good, as this stuff leaves marks where it touches.

Also you have to be very careful that the glue doesn't touch your finger or you will leave a finger print!

I couldn't get a good picture of this process due to only having 2 hands, but I hope you get the idea.


So just hold the parts in place and run around the glue and soon you will have a very neatly done model with no glue strands or finger prints, and hardly any curses.

You have to be very careful sniping out the parts for this as some are very very thin and might snap, especially the tail rotar which is tiny. To glue in the big rotar which has magnets, I found you had to glue a piece of sprue in the socket cut to the right length so it would be flush, as it looks in the pictures I found of this chopper. Also be careful of magnet polarity, I had to reglue mine with epoxy (can't use plastic cement on magnets), as the super glue kept failing, and put the bottom one on upside down, so it won't stay on the flight stand now!

So hope you found this useful, I think it's worth giving this glue a rry if you do allot of plastic stuff.

Thanks;
Mike

4 comments:

  1. Good post Mike...myself, I've been using Loctite for some time now with pretty good results and plenty of cursing...I am very curious to try the Micro Mark though.

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  2. Loctite is super glue right? I think you will find that this kind of plastic cement is allot better for plastic stuff, but you can't use it for anything else.

    I can't imagine doing the helicopter halves with super glue, that would be a nightmare.

    Could always do a hobby night at my place sometime if you want to give it a try before giving them cash. They can be fun anyway once in awhile.

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  3. Very interesting -- I can see myself making a big mess with the applicator though.

    I keep meaning to get some (ferrous) metal discs the same size as the magnets so I can put the metal disc on one side and then the polarity of the magnet doesn't really matter

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  4. Metal discs is not a bad idea. But the magnets for the helicopters come with them so it's easy to just use them. But it can be a bit of an issue when they are in a deep socket and there is no way to get it out. But I will just have to use the other base for this chopper, and get it right this time!

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