The Little World

I’m glad that I own more than one garment – because I sure as heck own more than one kind of adhesive. I did not realise just how many until I got a kit that is moulded from cheese and determined to try out which would be best to stick it. In many respects it is teaching me more about the craft than a more finely-moulded one would.

My childhood plastic modelling was accomplished mostly with Revell cement – that or Pactra. They were common names in the Canadian shops and as good as any for getting fingerprints on the outside of fuselages. The odd choice out was the little ampoules of cement that came with the boxed Airfix kits of the early 1960’s.

It may have been made in Porton Down or Windscale, for all I knew, but I didn’t mind, because it was the most effective model cement available – it would dissolve anything.

Years of scratch building with glass-fibre, wood, and cardboard taught me to make use of slow epoxy, fast epoxy, PVA white glue, and rubber contact cement. There was also a little flirtation with red resorcinol glue for waterproof applications and I must say I liked it – that and polyurethane glues for tough bonds on weird materials.

The cyanoacrylates were a wonder for a while – they still are for some purposes. I am wary of them, though, as I have ruined articles with the off-gassing that some of them do. I also encounter strange episodes when they are strong but too brittle to succeed.

Now that I’m working on plastic kits again there seems to be a wide variety of cements – characterised by their viscosity as much as by anything else. Call me a sticky traditionalist, but there is still a place for the dear old Humbrol tube of glue…it may be viscous and tend to blob over but there are places in the insides of models where the ability to blob and fill is good. And the bead of cement will not evaporate as you lay it out ready for the mating part.

I’ve just recently started to use the other two consistencies – the micro-tube poly and the poly in a bottle. The squeeze bottle of the micro-poly is a pain to use – but I persist to get value out of my purchase. When it is gone I shall carry on with the tube and glass bottle with internal paintbrush and not replace it.

One final surprise was the usefulness of the hot glue gun. I re-inforced areas within the problem kit that will never see the light of day and this blobby glue was perfect for it. It’s not a primary adhesive, but you should try it where you can.