Mythbusters super glue what kind

The advantage is that you have plenty of time to position the materials; when you're all set, you aim the light and--bang! A fan of our MythBusters show once sent me pre-impregnated fiberglass that uses UV light to cure.

He said he wanted me to cover Adam in it and make him run outside to see how far he got before he froze up in the sun. I build 90 percent of my projects with this family of adhesives.

They're fast and they come in different viscosities. With an accelerator, they set in under 10 seconds. I'm not kidding. In our workshop we usually call it Zip Kicker, which is the name of our favorite brand. But be forewarned: CA accelerators have a smell that puts some people off. If you've got CA glue that you want to set in a few seconds but don't want to have your nostrils reamed, here's a cheap off-the-shelf trick: baking soda.

After you lay in a little CA, sprinkle on baking soda-and voila! It kicks instantly. And there's no smell. There is, however, a rapid exothermic reaction--that is, it gets hot--so use caution. Baking soda also adds mass to the glue, which means I can use it and the CA as a structural medium for strengthening joints.

Even a CA is not real strong on small surfaces, so I made a sort of fiberglass. I took a piece of cotton cloth, wrapped it around the joint, and let the glue soak in and kick.

I colored the cloth with a black Sharpie, and Adam was back at work in 5 minutes. You can also use a CA as a varnish. Not only that, but you can take a softwood, like redwood, and make it feel like a polished hardwood.

You can buy it in a larger quantity at a hobby shop--you can get 2 ounces or larger there--and squeegee it onto the surface with one of those credit cards that companies are always giving away.

Try it first with a medium-viscosity glue. The porosity of the wood usually kicks the glue within a few minutes, although if you use the spray kicker very lightly and evenly, you can lock the glue right away. One weird thing: The glue sets so quickly that you don't get "grain raise," which occurs when a varnish soaks into the wood and dries. The woodgrain swells somewhat unevenly, and you end up repeatedly sanding and revarnishing. Very tedious. Hot glue is a thermoplastic substance.

That means it is highly reactive to heat and cold and moves a lot with temperature variation. At room temperature it is a moderately flexible plastic that comes in stick form. When you feed the glue stick into a glue gun with a heating element, it comes out as a thick, hot, honeylike liquid. As it cools, it sets. For anything that you want to last, I would tend to avoid hot glue like the plague. Hot glues most often come in a clear or translucent form, but can also be bought in colors.

Hot glue can also be used to make castings. I know of a theater show that needed chicken legs for a dinner scene and the scenic department used hot glue squirted into a silicone mold made from an actual chicken leg.

These are thermoset glues wherein you use two separate liquids—a resin and a hardener—and mix them together to create an exothermic heat-generating reaction that chemically sets the mix.

Two-part epoxies are often brittle glues, but there are more flexible formulations out there as well. They cannot be remelted with the application of more heat. Epoxies are a great nonsmelly product to use with fiberglass. Boats around the world are built using glass matte and epoxy resin. All the ships in the original Star Wars were put together largely with epoxies. The big downside of epoxies is that they can be quite bad for the human body, so make sure you use gloves and work in a well-ventilated area when your project calls for it.

JB Weld is a particularly fine tube-based example of these glues. Also a thermoset adhesive, epoxy putty is a big family of glues that can join things but can also be used as a maker material in its own right. There are versions for plumbers that can be applied around leaky pipes. Others are made to repair leaks on boats. There are versions formulated specifically for metals, for woods, and for plastics. There are super lightweight versions, too.

Because they come in a claylike form, they can also be ideal for one-off constructions. Like the glues, epoxy putty has two parts, often in two different colors, each the consistency of clay. Some set fast, others set slow. Often referred to by the brand name Krazy Glue, this class of glue, cyanoacrylate, is the soul of the special effects industry.

The fact is, few glues can get you into more trouble more quickly than a super-thin CA glue. I have glued hero props to my own hand with super-thin glue more times than I care to admit.

You have to be vigilant with the entire surface of the object to which you are applying it. Working on a commercial for Jamie back in the mids, I spent a week making brass corners and filigree for an incredible glossy lacquered box that my colleague Lauren built out of hardwood. On the day of the shoot, while trying to hold down a recalcitrant brass corner, I used super-thin CA glue and it wicked into the joint, and then ran right down the front of the prop, on the camera side.

I still remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach. He ended up having to use crayon wax that he mixed and formulated to match the lacquer finish to hide my glue streak from the camera, and he had to redress it for every shot. His head was bright red the whole time! Long story short: super-thin CA glue, beware. They come in spritz bottles and spray cans, and can also be applied with a needle applicator.

Little known fact: baking soda is also an excellent accelerator for CA glues. These are a special class of adhesive. A weldbonded glue melts both sides of the bonding equation and then dries out effectively making one part.

Model airplane glue is a thickened type of plastic weld bond, but it also comes in a much wetter form used for making things like acrylic boxes. The glue that plumbers use for joining PVC piping together is a weld bond. I love weldbond glues, they create strong joints, and they do their work fast. There are different formulations of weld bond for different types of plastic. I tend to use styrene and acrylic mostly in my shop, so my glue of choice is Weld-on 3.

Q: This book is, in many ways, immensely practical, from a taxonomy of glue to full-page reproductions of your own project sketches.