Hi!
I would have posted this before on my Russian Green post, but I forgot...
I have Humbrol's liquid polystyrene glue (the one with brush).
I always experienced difficulties while attaching big pieces with this glue, such as the two hulls of a tank, as it is too liquid and tends to dry or evaporate in a very short time!
As I'm going to my local store tomorrow, is there a kind of poly glue which is denser and takes more to dry?
I was thinking to get the "tube" format or a needle dispenser...
Which is better?
Thanks for any answer and goodnight!

James the Glue you have is fine. The way it is to be used is you hold the two parts together, then with a small brush, flow the glue into the joint, hold for 10 secs, then let go! Very simple and much superior to tube glue.

Thanks!

You can get CA glue as well(hobby specific superglue). The medium viscocity tends to do well for large joins and most assembly(but dries somewhat fast), and a thick version does really good for the largest joints and parts and takes much longer to set. Usually the best selection of glues for buidling models is a medium sized bottle of medium CA, a small bottle of thick CA and some sort of liquid model cement. I really never use liquid cement for anything other then indy tracks. Tube plastic cement is pretty much outdated altogether. Once you use a medium viscocity gel CA glue, it does about 85% of the work.

Giacomo,

Just to show that different folks require diofferent strokes, I never use CA glue for attaching styrene to styrene. I find that CA just doesn't have the shear strength needed to do major structural work on the relatively thin sections of kit parts. One little knock and the bond breaks. Now I don't go around beating up my models, but stresses are imposed on my kits when I travel to shows and contest, so being sturdy is important to me.

For resin, where the contact area is usually much larger, CA is fine. For PE pieces I use CA exclusively, but the solvent/cement action of the liquid glues provides a superior bond for styrene to styrene.

I certainly agree, though, that tube glue is a dead end. It actually takes too long to dry and,if put on too thick, can have really bad repercussions on the parts involved. There are rare occasions when tube glue is slightly better than liquid, but those cases are rare enough that you don't really need to even own a tube anymore.

Paul

super Jet (Jet's medium viscocity) actually melts styrene slightly. I was working on my 1/350 North Carolina and the magnifying lamp fell on it square on the deck from full extended height and flipped the ship across the table . The vast majority of the styrene parts were attatched. Only the top part of the superstructure popped off, the 50" long 1/8" wide joint around the entire deck never even blinked, nor the repeat bond at the waterline joint. Thank god I hadn't installed the vast majority of the guns or 500+ pieces of PE-although the 15 40mm quad mounts with full pe frames and gunsights and PE catapults all survived intact The other guns were not yet mounted. This was the entirety of the damage-two small chunks/scratches in the plastic. The little PE rail didn't budge:



Its plenty strong, didn't even loose a deck fitting. A little touch up paint and moved right along:

Thanks!

John Steinman's advice about the liquid cement is the first thing you should look to do. Have you tried it yet? The only thing to add is that be careful where you are holding the part. If your fingers are near the seam of the two pieces, the cement will also flow under your finger, leaving an ugly mark.

However, John's advice about application is the best way.

I bought a bottle of Tamya SuperThin cement because it's applicator is the finest.

Now I add methyl ethyl ketone to the same bottle because I love the brush (I'm cheap) and it works fine.

I use revell contacta gluw mainly. It's less viscous than tube glue, but thicker than the very thin stuff, so for big joins you can apply it to one of the surfaces you want to mate. For finer work, or areas where a glue stain would be a disaster, I use a thin glue and the method John suggested at the beginning of the thread.


Sean

On big glue jobs like you mentioned, I go back to the old red tube glue from testors

Testors plastic cement (3502) is the slowest cure time. It doesn’t damage the plastic as badly.
Dan

¿HAve you tried Tenax or Plastruct plastic weld? Works almost instantly, pretty good to join hull halves and big parts....be careful when using it to glue small parts though

Cheers

Hello All

I thought I might add that I have a large range of glues which I use, but for general plastic assembly, both figures and large vehicles, nothing beats a 50/50 mixture of chloroform / ether. You can buy this from a pharmacy and / or ask them to mix it. 250ml costs about 16.00 ZAR (or USD 2.20) or so. It works great on small parts and welds the plastic permanently.

Thought this might help as a useful (and cost-effective) tip.

Garth