Monday, January 3, 2011

Loctite Superglue Trick

Like a lot of modelers, I use superglue more often than plastic glue.  While I like the durability that plastic glue provides to finished models, my free time is at a premium, and superglue just allows me to get more work done faster.

I'm a big fan of the Loctite Super Glue Control Gel, in the cool little "side-squeeze" dispenser:

The only bad thing about this bottle is that it's difficult to tell how much glue is left.  The other day I was building a model and was almost finished, but it seemed I was out of glue.  I figured out a neat little trick:

You can pry the bottom off of the bottle...


...which exposes the tube inside.  With a little manipulation, you can fold the tube over on itself a few times...


...which will give you a little bit more glue to work with:


...this was enough to finish the model I was working on.  One note of caution:  While I was squeezing the last remnants of glue out of the internal tube, it broke open, gluing my finger inside of the bottle!  Nothing a little gentle prying didn't resolve, and the skin on my hands is no stranger to being covered in glue - still, be careful.

4 comments:

  1. Good tips. In the last case, you even took a hit for us! The worst thing about superglue on the fingers is that it sticks around so long and in that time makes it trickier to work with delicate objects.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cool. I love that stuff too. That inside part looks like it might be a good "trash" bit to use for...something...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I can't help thinking how brilliant it is that you actually stopped to take photographs of this. Amazing!

    It is a useful tip though. I try to avoid superglue as much as possible and try to pin all of my joints and connection so that all the glue is doing is finishing the job rather than supporting any weight.

    ReplyDelete
  4. GDMNW -

    Heh, it occurred to me as I was doing it that it might be a useful tip for the blog, so I went and grabbed the camera.

    I tend to pin all my metal models. In a perfect world I'd do every model this way, but I'm trying to get three 2,500-point armies on the table simultaneously, so sometimes it comes down to superglue and a quick prayer... ;-)

    ReplyDelete