chasw

I'm frustrated with my thin ca; sometimes it sticks and sometimes not. I bought it from lhs, could it be old? Am I doing something wrong? I can never tell if its going to work. Please help!

Thanks,

Chas

Bruiser-RCU

My Feedback: (1)

Two possiblities I can think of:

1) Are the joints tight enough for thin CA? There can not be any gaps.

2) Is the wood really old? Old wood is very dry and CA needs moisture to fire.

-Bob George

Tattoo

Hit the glue joint with a very fine mist of plain water from a spray bottle. Makes a HUGE difference. In fact I used to use the real smelly (and rather expensive) accelorator...until I found out that water works just as good, is not toxic, and is free

Giant Scale

Tattoo what a great idea. I have had a hell of a time lately with medium and thick CA when using it on plywood or hardwood. Just seems to take forever to setup. The commercial accelerators have an amine or ammonia type odor I'm not sure what's in them. I'll give the water a try.

chasw

Thanks for your help guys! The members on this forum are a great help for this novice.

ChasW

Tattoo

Thanks!
I found this out by accident one day when I was having a terrible time getting my glue to work. Over the last 25 years it finally sunk in that the glue works better on high humidity days, and on really dry days or on old dry wood it doesn't work well. I have a cat (named Spinner) who sometimes doesn't like to leave my airplane stuff alone, and loves getting in the middle of my projects at just the wrong time (like when I'm gluing something!)...so I set up a squirt bottle to give her a spritz to keep her off my work bench when needed...then one day I was having a bad glue day and didn't have any accelorator...the water bottle was sitting there and I though what the heck...and I'll be darned, it WORKED like a charm!!!

MHawker

My Feedback: (16)

I've also found that if you take the air out, the glue sets very fast. In fact, for the longest time, I thought THAT was what set CA.

I've gone so far as to cover the bead of glue with plastic, and it would set immediately.

Mike

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

There's another basic principle here that you need to be aware of. THIN CA works on a capillary principle. That means that it has to have a porous surface (like balsa) and the pieces (as mentioned earlier) cannot have gaps. What I have seen many times is someone who uses thin CA and gets a poor contact between the two parts, so he tries to re-glue them with thin CA.

Sorry, it won't work. You have sealed the wood with CA which has now hardened so the wood is no longer porous. You will now need medium CA or white/carpenter's glue, or epoxy. The thin CA just won't work anymore.

Personally, I RARELY ever use the thin CA anymore for just that reason. About the only time I use it is to install CA hinges, and there's a trick I do for edge gluing two sheets together, where I lay the sheets side by side, then sand the seam so that any tiny gaps get filled with sanding dust (which is porous... See where I'm gong here?) Then apply a line of thin CA to the seam and sand again. It makes for unbreakable seams!

Other that that, I use medium CA and epoxy for all my gluing

BUTCHMAN-RCU

My Feedback: (2)

CA does have a shelf life,but I'm not sure what it is.I bought some from a store that carries hobby stuff but does'nt sell
everything as fast I guess.The CA I bought would not set up
and it had a greenist tint to it.I even tried spraying it with
CA set up spray and it would not set up.I took it back and the cclerk said it was 1 years old at least and he replaced it.This was
both thin and medium CA Something to look at.

Gastronom-RCU

My Feedback: (5)

I was told by a friend that CA is an acid, while soap is a base, this is why CA bonds to our skin almost instantly. Is this true? If so, wouldn't it logical to say that you could use diluted soap water as an accelerator????

BingoFlyer

Baking Soda and water makes it fire right now, I have not tried plain water but surely will.