Archived from groups: rec.games.miniatures.warhammer (
More info?)
In article <cr19bn$kvk$1@gnus01.u.washington.edu>, relkins,
relkins@u.washington.edu Varfed out the following in Timo speak...
> So, I was attempting to glue on the arms of my Canoness last night, and I
> had the most frustrating time with the superglue adhereing. I did scrub all
> the bitz with a toothbrush and soap, and made sure all the soap residue and
> water had been removed/dried off before doing the gluing. It took me three
> attempts to get it to finally stick, between each time I went and used a
> Dremel grinding head to get the dried stuff off the mini. My question to you
> all is do any of you have tips or tricks that you use to overcome this.
> Would pinning prior to gluing help?
Alright, lets see if I can sum up everyone's input as well as add a bit
of my own...
As folks have pointed out, super glue often fails to bond well under
certain conditions. First condition is very dry or low humidity. Super
glue requires some moisture and simply won't bond in cases where it
can't get enough to complete the chemical bonding process. Second
condition is joins with insufficient surface area. As Doc Rock pointed
out, the simple solution is to rough up or increase the surface are
where the glue bond is to be made. Third consideration (which wasn't
brought up) is the quality of the glue itself. There are better
'grades' of super glue, but you're looking at buying from a speciality
source rather than a chain store outlet. (Ordinary super glue typically
has a number of impurities that cause the glue to bond your skin
together while failing to bond the mini together,'quality' super glue
does not and works much better.)
Next up is pinning - which will almost certainly be of benefit to the
easy of gluing the parts together, and the strength of the join itself.
If you don't own a pin vise (hand drill) and good pair of heavy duty
wire clippers - get them. They should be an integral part of any
modeller's tool kit. I routinely pin together all large parts -
particularly metal to metal joints - with excellent results. Seeing
that I like not to have to repair models if I can help it, I often pin
plastic arms onto metal marine bodies as well to increase they're
ability to withstand handling and wear. It's worked very handily and
I've had to repair few models in spite of road trips, dropping, etc.
And the last consideration is that 'super glue' may simply be the wrong
glue for the job. Often times a good two part epoxy gives superior
results over super glue - which again is really important when joining
metal to metal parts. Pinning the joint, as well as using 'Play-dough'
childrens clay (non-oil based, cheap, and able to be reconstituted with
water if it drys out) as a support for the parts being glued makes using
5 or 10 minute epoxy extremely easy when it comes to the longer drying
times and positioning ackward parts.
1. Clean up the area to be joined as normal. (I gather from your first
post you're not trying to join two areas that have paint on them - that
always creates a weak bond.)
2. Drill the holes and cut a short piece of wire to serve as the pin
for the joint.
2a. Depending on the fit and nature of the join I sometimes glue the pin
into one of the parts first. If the fit is a bit tricky, I'll leave the
pin lose and make sure to put a tiny bit of glue into each hole before
placing the pin into one of the holes.
3. Create little towers or mounds of Play-dough as required to support
the limbs/parts being glued together in the position I want the parts to
stay in while they're drying.
4. Carefully place a reasonable amount of glue on one or both of the
surfaces to be joined (along with the pin areas as described above) and
fit the parts together.
5. Once the parts are together I can position them as needed with the
supports - which is why the slightly longer drying time is handy as well
as giving a stronger bond when it's done.
Let it dry and you're good to go - if you do get a bit of play-dough in
the epoxy, warm water will remove most or all of it - simply being
careful not to get it into your glue will avoid the problem all
together.
Hope that helps,
Myrmidon
--
And I want someone to slap me with a fish every time I buy something
new, assemble it, and then leave it unpainted for months.
- Jakearon
RGMW FAQ:
http://www.rgmw.org
Or...
http://www.sheppard.demon.co.uk/rgmw_faq/rgmw_faq.htm
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