Hi.

I am building my first kit with an aluminum barrel. I have worked with PE but that was mostly small pieces; for those I used CYA. I don't feel that will be strong enough to bond the end of the barrel to the plastic breech block. The only other adhesives I have on hand are white glue and Gator Glue. My closest sources of adhesives are Home Depot and Lowes home stores.

What are other options?

Thanks in advance.

I use 5 minute epoxy usually for this...

Super Glue (CA) works fine for me and holds just fine. I have never had a problem with it.

Unless the barrel is huge you should be ok with CA "superglue" - I've never had any trouble using it on clean aly barrels. (Clean is important - give it a wipe with white spirit or isopropyl alcohol to clean off any finger-grease.) White glues won't help - if the CA isn't enough you need to reach for 2-part epoxy. But bear in mind epoxy is a chemical reaction that heats up as it cures, so might not be kind to plastic parts...

Hope this helps!

The heating depends on the thickness of the glue, thick fillings can get warm but I would assume that we are talking about thin layers of glue between breach block and barrel (unless the fit is extremely bad ....).

If you are worried that the glue might not grip properly you could try and roughen the aluminium surface with some fine grit "sandpaper" on the areas where the glue should go.
CA will hold unless you are planning on very rough handling of the finished masterpiece

/ Robin

Thanks for the answers; now I can continue almost unabated.

I often use epoxy glue,yes is warm during the reaction but the normal commercial one does not heat up enough to damage the plastic, to damage model you should cover it with an abnormal glue layer and at that time the heat is no longer a problem because the model would be covered under a blob of glue ...

Furthermore, the metal barrel dispels the heat by its nature

I also use epoxy, I've never had any problem with heat, (you can get heat with CA if you use accelerator with a large quantity of CA) and I like being able to have a little time to adjust the alignment.

Time to adjust the barrel alignment is a plus using epoxy...
never had a problem with heat and epoxy...

Generally the faster the cure of the epoxy the the faster the heat generation, i.e 5 minute epoxy will create more heat than 24 hour epoxy. (Sciencey content - From what I understand this is not strictly true, 24 hour cure just creates it's heat over a longer period so it's temperature doesn't rise as much. Heat and temperature not being the same thing).

Applied thick enough even 24 hour cure will get significantly hot and actually cure quicker.

The hottest epoxy I have personally used was a 90 second cure which got noticeably warm to the touch even in a thin layer, but still not enough to effect plastic.

I have managed to burn myself with a superglue reaction gluing bits of balsa together. It heated up a lot within seconds.

I use both. The main thing is to clean both surfaces WELL before hand. When machining aluminum they'll cool it with a fluid, usually water based but back in the old days we used kerosene. So wipe the barrel down with IPA, windex or a clean evaporating thinner like lacquer thinner. I also roughen up the areas where you are going to apply glue, both on the barrel and the plastic. Don't need to do a lot of sanding with 400 grit, just give it a bit of tooth for the glue to grab and make sure you clean off any dust and debris after sanding. And I use Loctite 5 minute epoxy that I get from Home Depot or Wally World.

The problem with epoxy is you must either stay through the cure process or hold the parts in-place so they don't "drift." Otherwise you could come back to a seriously-crooked barrel. Also there is "undo" solutions for CA glue that let you start over. They can attack plastic, however, and should be used separate of the styrene parts if possible (for example, removing a brass muzzle brake from an aluminum barrel).

I also endorse dulling the barrel's shine with some sandpaper which will help primer adhere better.

Another vote for epoxy love the working time

Some Gorilla Glue should work OK.