View Single Post
  #23   Report Post  
Posted to sci.electronics.repair
Dave Platt[_2_] Dave Platt[_2_] is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 201
Default Super-glued finger

In article ,
wrote:

I quit using Super Glue years ago. About the only thing it seems to glue
well, is a persons skin. I've used it on plastics, IT FAILED. I've used
it on wood, IT FAILED. I've used it on metals, IT FAILED. I've used it
on porcelin (like a broken cup), it somewhat held, but did not last
long.


The newer formulations, applied and used properly, seem to be better.

Plain cyanoacrylates (e.g. the lower-viscosity ones) seem to be rather
brittle. They don't deal well with materials that flex at all, and
are best reserved for entirely-rigid materials. The low-viscosity
types have very little gap-filling ability - work OK on clean breaks
but not well if the joint is rough and has any air-space.

There are newer varieties - composites of cyanoacrylate and other
materials, sometimes including what seems to be something like
nanoparticles of rubber of some sort. These are often marketed as
"toughened" cyanoacrylate. I've had better luck with these, when used
as a more general-purpose adhesive. I presume that the added materials
prevent small fractures from propagating through the solidified
adhesive. The occasional ceramic cup or dish I've repaired with the
toughened cyanoacrylate have held up OK.

Low-viscosity cyanoacrylate also makes a nice quick (and hard) finish
for small lathe-turned wood object such as pens. You can use it as a
structural fill, too... put a few drops into a hole, sprinkle in some
baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), stand back while it fumes, and wait
a minute. The result is a rock-hard white solid. To fill large
holes, do this in repeated small layers for best results (warning, it
exotherms a lot for the first few seconds - hot enough to burn you).

I'll stick to glues that WORK, such as epoxy. Partiucularly JB
Weld, that stuff is the best!


Another good one that a friend turned me onto, a year or two ago, is
West Marine's G/flex 655-K. It's a thickened epoxy, sold for the
purpose of repairing plastic boat hulls. It'll bond a lot of the more
difficult plastics (flashing a torch flame over them for an instant is
recommended - this oxidizes the low-surface-energy plastic and creates
bonding sites for the epoxy to react with) and it works a charm on
metal and wood as well.

My friend learned about it when he asked a supplier for a glue to use
when installing stone counter-tops. He tried it out, epoxying a
length of pipe and a flange to a piece of polished granite... just
scuffed up the surface a bit with some carbide paper and glued the
flange down. After it cured, he banged sideways on the pipe with a
sledgehammer. The epoxy didn't fail, the steel didn't fail... when
he managed to bang it free, the granite failed, and a bunch of
crystals tore out of the slab and remained firmly cemented to the
flange.

The kit isn't dirt-cheap but isn't ridiculously priced, and you get a
lot of epoxy (8.4 oz). It's become my general-purpose go-to epoxy.

If you only glued two fingers together, you'll live.


You'll also learn why it makes good sense to buy a small bottle of
cyanoacrylate de-bonding liquid, and keep it in your shop next to the
cyanoacrylate adhesive. Cheap insurance against torn skin, and having
to admit an embarrassing oops to one's significant other :-)